How to boost Your Productivity Using Deliberate Slowness | Cal Newport

[00:00:00] Cow Newport has wrote such great books about basically how to be more productive and more creative and more... Like, well, the titles of books speak for themselves. So, so good they can't ignore you, deep work, and this latest one is called slow productivity, basically by going slower and sometimes doing nothing, you ultimately need to pay more.

[00:00:29] So, this isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

[00:00:59] I feel like, Craig, I feel like you were on this podcast yesterday. Like, when was your last book out?

[00:01:04] Oh, God. Two years ago. Two years ago. So, you must have come on around then.

[00:01:10] I guess so, but I write a lot of books. So, who knows? I could have been the book before that.

[00:01:14] Like, the last book came out during the pandemic. So, that was weird. So, it's not like a normal

[00:01:18] launch. But yeah, it was either for that book or the book before. And that was... I think it was

[00:01:22] that book. It was digital minimalism. No, see, I had a book in between that and this. What was that

[00:01:27] book? A World Without Email? I feel like we did talk about that. You've been on three or four

[00:01:34] times at this point. So, this is like the fourth or fifth time. You're first of all, I'm like in

[00:01:39] 2016 with deep work. Yeah, it would have been like deep work or so good they can't ignore you.

[00:01:45] Yeah, those books. Yeah, I think we combined it because I really like both of those books.

[00:01:50] And of course, slow productivity. This is like my theme song. Like, this is how I live my life,

[00:01:57] a slow productivity. And everything you mentioned in this book works. But I love the stories you tell

[00:02:03] in the book, like about John McPhee, Benjamin Franklin, Jewel. And correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:02:10] And this is where we could begin the discussion, which is that there's this idea with work that,

[00:02:16] hey, the more hours you put it and the more you'll get done. And if you're not doing anything,

[00:02:20] you're like a slacker. But your point is, is that less is more?

[00:02:24] Yes, I mean, I think that's a central theme. And let me say also just more generally first,

[00:02:29] you know, I'm glad you like the stories because there's a there's a backstory to how I thought

[00:02:35] about this book, which was I got tired of citing studies in books. I just got tired of that format.

[00:02:43] Most of us it's meaningless for most people. Most authors can just find social psych studies that

[00:02:49] vaguely connect. And it just I could not write again. A team of researchers from University of

[00:02:55] Pennsylvania looked into this and found out that your creativity, I just I couldn't do it anymore.

[00:02:59] I think that the actual social scientists can do this very well. So I was like, why don't I just

[00:03:03] let the actual social scientists quote studies? And so I realized why we can get just as much wisdom,

[00:03:09] I think out of people's stories, right? I mean, it's it's let's we have a human instinct for

[00:03:13] understanding people and their stories and a novelistic approach almost just felt more real.

[00:03:20] I just got tired of citing studies. So anyways, I'm glad you I'm glad you pointed that out. There's

[00:03:24] no studies. There's no studies in the book. Let's say the category of this book is sort of a

[00:03:29] business self help. Then I would say there's there are two types of books. There's the ones

[00:03:35] like let's say, Brene Brown's books on vulnerability, or I really love Angela Docworth's book grid.

[00:03:42] But these kind of there are some stories, but they also have a lot of studies, which is good too,

[00:03:48] because it sort of proves that they're they're going to explain these studies and kind of plain

[00:03:52] English and sort of give prescriptive advice based on what the research shows. But then you have like

[00:03:59] Seth Golden, Ryan Holiday, Malcolm Gladwell, you, where I think the stories are very moving

[00:04:07] and very important and and and kind of speak to the common sense, which the studies just try to

[00:04:12] prove anyway. Yeah. And the key the key difference between the first group and the second group

[00:04:17] is that first group of authors you mentioned, this is their field. So yeah, Brene Brown studied

[00:04:23] vulnerability as a researcher, Angela studied grit, like that's what she did. And so then it's like,

[00:04:28] great. It's like, you know, if I'm going to read a Danie Kahneman book, great, I want to hear about

[00:04:32] the stuff you did that won you a Nobel Prize. But I'm not a social scientist. So yeah, I like that.

[00:04:39] Right. So I'm on I like that category, Ryan's good at that, Malcolm's good at that, for sure.

[00:04:44] The human condition, like you get into a story, you try to understand what's going on. We shouldn't

[00:04:49] downplay the power of that, like we shouldn't be too much into scientism and think there's not as

[00:04:55] much power in story. I think there is. There's something cool there. You know, I was once on

[00:04:59] John Stassel's TV show. I don't know if he's even still on the air, but he had a TV show where he's

[00:05:04] largely like skeptical of lots of things going on in society. And there was an economist on the

[00:05:08] show with me. And the economist kept citing studies. And like as professor so and so said,

[00:05:14] blah, blah, blah. And then during the commercial break, John Stassel turned to him and said,

[00:05:17] don't just just say it. Don't say the study. We don't need that. Like, just say what you think.

[00:05:24] Yeah, like this is bad. I like this. You know, just go for it. Yeah, I'm with you.

[00:05:29] Yeah. And so, but the study is really brought to mind. Like that's when you start to relate it to

[00:05:34] yourself. Like, do I do this? Do I not do this? And it made me think of a lot of different questions.

[00:05:38] So maybe describe what you mean by slow productivity other than my comment less is more. And then I

[00:05:44] can go into the stories and I just have questions because although I feel like this has been sort of

[00:05:50] my MO, the slow brook productivity concept, it hasn't always been and for good reason.

[00:05:56] Yeah. Well, I mean, I think of slow productivity as the answer to the question,

[00:06:01] how do I do work that I'm proud of and it's impactful and allows me to, you know,

[00:06:05] support myself and support my family without burning out without work taking over all aspects

[00:06:10] of my life. Like, that's a question. A lot of people, especially in knowledge work, have been

[00:06:14] asking, especially starting the pandemic period, which put a lot of existential queries into people's

[00:06:19] heads, slow productivity was my answer to that. So how do I solve that riddle? Here's one answer.

[00:06:24] It's a philosophy of organizing your work and your goals and work that I think answers that

[00:06:30] question. You produce stuff that you're really proud of and matters and you don't burn out

[00:06:34] and work doesn't become a totalizing force in your life. You know, that's the whole goal.

[00:06:38] So some jobs lend themselves to that. Like, for instance, when I was a computer programmer,

[00:06:44] and this was when I was once younger, I could program everything I needed to do for the week,

[00:06:48] like in an hour or two. And then the rest of the week was sort of mine without my bosses really

[00:06:54] knowing that. But some jobs, if you're a secretary, for instance, you have to be on,

[00:07:00] you're literally on call almost 24 hours a day. Yeah, so we definitely have a,

[00:07:05] there's a variety of knowledge jobs. But more than you think, I think slow productivity is relevant,

[00:07:11] right? Because it's part of what's going on with slow productivity. It's, and I think this is a

[00:07:16] misunderstanding people have, is they think it's about completing less things. Like, okay, I'm going

[00:07:24] to just do less things. I could be producing less things. I will be less valuable to my clients

[00:07:29] or my boss, but I'm going to be less valuable because I want to reclaim things that are valuable

[00:07:34] to me personally. It's not actually such a zero sum dynamic because my underlying argument is the

[00:07:39] way we're working now, like the fast productivity that we implicitly put in the place. We're busy,

[00:07:44] but the rate at which we actually produce useful things is a lot lower than we realize. And so,

[00:07:50] when you embrace a slower approach to productivity, this is the paradox that keeps coming up in the

[00:07:55] book, you can end up to the outside world seeming phenomenally productive. Like, it's actually a

[00:08:00] good strategy, not just for your soul, it's also a good strategy for, you know, your bottom line.

[00:08:07] And both of those things are true at the same time.

[00:08:09] Yeah, like, I mean, like a classic example, it's interesting. You talk about

[00:08:13] many famous writers throughout the book, and particularly towards the end, it's like writer

[00:08:17] after writer who had this approach. But writing is a classic example. Let's say you write

[00:08:23] 300 words a day, which once you're, you know, I'm not going to say for every professional writer,

[00:08:31] this is true. But that's not necessarily a hard thing. And 300 words a day is roughly a page.

[00:08:38] It's a book a year. And after 20 years, you have 20 books, then you seem like the most,

[00:08:44] and you give the example of John McVee with 29 books, even though he spent two years on one

[00:08:49] article, he had also wrote 29 books along, you know, in his career. So you could amass like,

[00:08:56] what seems like an enormously productive career of many, many books, but spend an hour or two

[00:09:01] a day writing only. And that's kind of like the myth of productivity is that it looks different

[00:09:08] on the outside than what it is on the inside. Yeah, I mean, it's why I open with McVee, right,

[00:09:13] because I use him as a purified example of slow productivity. And I open not just on McVee,

[00:09:18] but a particular week in his life in the late 60s working on an article, a two-part series for

[00:09:24] the New Yorker. And he spent the entire week laying on a picnic table in his backyard,

[00:09:29] looking at a tree, just thinking, like, how do I, he was working about how do I structure this

[00:09:33] article? He spent a whole week just laying on his back, looking up at the tree, and I was like,

[00:09:37] let's think about this. If you zoomed into this week, you came like time traveled back, went to

[00:09:42] his backyard and printed, you'd be like, look at this lazy guy. Like, this is the opposite of

[00:09:45] being productive. He's not doing anything. And yet you zoom out to today, you're like, oh my god,

[00:09:49] he's one of the most productive writers, you know, of all time. So the key trick of the book,

[00:09:53] it's why I opened on McVee, this like super purified, clarified version, is it's easy to

[00:10:00] imagine like I did until I sort of had a conversion on this, that these stories like McVee are

[00:10:06] drenched in nostalgia and unapproachability. Wouldn't it be great to be a New Yorker writer in the

[00:10:12] 60s and like you could do this? Too bad we can't do that today. And the whole setup for the book is

[00:10:18] what if actually the not the particular approach, and you can't lay on a picnic table for a weakness

[00:10:23] necessarily, but what if the same idea of being less busy and doing a lot less right now in the

[00:10:29] moment could be compatible with over time, you being a very productive person, someone who produces

[00:10:33] a lot of stuff and is very successful. What if that's way more widely applicable? And in fact,

[00:10:37] what if it's applicable to jobs that use computer screens and desks and zoom? And it's like the

[00:10:42] whole prog program of the book is how do we isolate these principles from traditional knowledge

[00:10:48] workers who seemingly have nothing in common with a modern knowledge job? How do we isolate

[00:10:52] principles from how they approached work and then apply them to these modern jobs? And my

[00:10:57] argument is you can do this more than you suspect that there's a principle in John McVee laying on

[00:11:02] his back for a week that we can actually adapt if you work in the marketing department at General

[00:11:08] Mills. There's timeless principles we pull out of stories and we have to do work to adapt them.

[00:11:14] We're not mimicking how Jane Austen wrote books, but there's a lesson in how Jane Austen wrote

[00:11:18] books or how Georgia O'Keefe unlocked her creativity. There's lessons in that that if we're careful,

[00:11:22] we could adapt to a job that's in a cubicle or has a slack account.

[00:11:26] I think if I can, I'll extend that a little, which is that everybody is a creative of some sort

[00:11:35] or other or has that latent creative ability inside them, but often if you have distractions

[00:11:42] and you comment stories on this throughout the book, if there's distractions, you might not be

[00:11:47] able to really have your full creative potential, but you still have to make a living. You still

[00:11:53] have responsibilities and the stories in your book and the ideas in your book try to meld these

[00:11:58] concepts together into something functional. Yeah, I mean, I think that's the whole challenge.

[00:12:03] Because I mean, what's really going on? My bit of sort of work culture critique early in the book

[00:12:09] is here's the whole setup for the trouble we're in right now is that knowledge work as a sector

[00:12:15] emerges as a major thing mid 20th century, the term knowledge work is coined in 1959.

[00:12:20] All right, so this idea that we're going to have a major sector of the economy where people don't

[00:12:24] build things with their hands, but add value to information using their brains, it's relatively

[00:12:28] new. So this thing emerges in the post-war period. And we have this issue of how do we manage

[00:12:34] knowledge workers? Well, if you look to the industrial sector, which was ascendant, this productivity

[00:12:39] miracle, it was generating the wealth on which the modern world was built, they had these really

[00:12:45] quantitative and clear definitions of productivity. It's model T's per labor hour input. You had

[00:12:50] numbers and ratios and I'm using this production system and it produces this number of model T's

[00:12:55] per labor hour. And we tweaked this and that number went up. So this is better. So now we're

[00:12:59] going to do this. I mean, it is very quantitative. Knowledge work emerges and they realize this

[00:13:04] doesn't work. Like knowledge workers don't sit there and each produce a model T. They do four or

[00:13:09] five different things and what you're doing is different than what I'm doing. And the system by

[00:13:13] which we organize and approach our work is obfuscated. That's all left up to the individual to figure

[00:13:18] out how to organize themselves and manage their time. So there's not even a system we can evaluate

[00:13:22] in a clear way. We didn't have any of that. And so almost in a panic, because my argument is almost

[00:13:27] in a panic, the managerial class said, well, let's just use what I call pseudo productivity.

[00:13:32] Visible effort will be our proxy for productivity. If I just see you doing things, that's better than

[00:13:39] you not doing things. And if we need more productivity, then do more things like we'll make the work

[00:13:43] day longer or say come in early. And that's what we did for decades. And like it kind of worked,

[00:13:49] you know, okay, Mad Men 1960s, it's like show up at the office and be there and then take the train

[00:13:53] home and it worked okay until we got portable computing and the internet. And now suddenly I

[00:14:00] could bring work home with me and email gave me a chance to demonstrate visible activity at any

[00:14:05] moment, whether I'm at the office or not. And I think that's when the wheels came off.

[00:14:09] And so it's the the opening critique of the book is that pseudo productivity plus technology

[00:14:15] made knowledge work increasingly untenable. And that's where we began to get rising through the

[00:14:21] 2000s, this sense of I'm exhausted, I'm burnt out, is this office space, mic judge office

[00:14:26] space style existential nihilistic despair of like, what is my job even? I'm just like sending

[00:14:31] emails between meetings like, what am I even doing here? All of that picks up in the 2000s.

[00:14:36] And I think it's because technology interfacing with pseudo productivity, this crude heuristic,

[00:14:41] they didn't play nice together. And knowledge work has been unsustainable ever since. And almost

[00:14:46] everything we're doing now is trying to grapple with that reality. Like how do we, how do we

[00:14:50] grapple with that reality? And it's clearly causing a lot of trouble. A lot of the suggestions

[00:14:55] that people are coming up with are not getting to the core of the problem, but we all kind of care

[00:14:59] about this now. And it's, you know, it's what we have to figure out is the essential problem

[00:15:04] of this style of work right now. Well, I mean, and a lot of this then came to a head with the

[00:15:11] pandemic where people suddenly started working from home. And now they just don't want to go back.

[00:15:17] Like they like working at home. And are people more productive now? I mean, this actually does

[00:15:23] lend itself to scientific study like, are people more productive now? Are they less productive?

[00:15:28] Is the work higher quality? Like, what's the story? It's mixed results, which tells us

[00:15:34] clearly it was not a panacea. So there's certain things people like better about working from home.

[00:15:40] If you survey people, the strongest signal you get, which I don't think is at all counterintuitive

[00:15:45] or surprising, is they want flexibility. So actually the dominant mode of working right now. So where we

[00:15:50] re-stabilized after the pandemic is hybrid. Gallup has great data on this. They surveyed 18,000

[00:15:58] employees every three months throughout the whole pandemic. And they can plot these trend lines.

[00:16:02] And essentially, we went

[00:16:05] It's a dominantly remote May of 2020, and then hybrid just came, came, came until now.

[00:16:09] It's the majority twice as many people are hybrid is remote.

[00:16:13] It's now the dominant mode of work.

[00:16:14] If you survey people, they say, yeah, I want flexibility, not necessarily exclusive remote,

[00:16:19] but they're like, I want flexibility, which I think it's kind of like asking people, you

[00:16:23] know, do you want extra options for dinner?

[00:16:25] You know, it's like, yeah, sure.

[00:16:26] Right.

[00:16:27] Why do they want to go back to the office at all?

[00:16:29] Because they also, a lot of people didn't like being fully remote either.

[00:16:33] So it's interesting.

[00:16:34] It's a hybrid future actually that the trend line of exclusively remote work, it jumps

[00:16:39] from a very low percent to something like 60% of all jobs May 2020, it's back down in

[00:16:44] the 20s again.

[00:16:46] It's hybrid, right?

[00:16:47] So we're not really remote.

[00:16:48] We really are hybrid.

[00:16:51] There's a couple of things hidden here though that I think are important.

[00:16:54] I think one, the reason why there was so much battles over remote work or hybrid work in

[00:17:00] like 2022, early 23, after the any sort of health threat of the pandemic wasn't a big

[00:17:04] factor anymore, is that it came from that original problem I talked about.

[00:17:10] Knowledge work was becoming untenable because of pseudo productivity plus technology.

[00:17:14] And people just wanted some sort of reform, like we got to do something, here's something

[00:17:18] we can do.

[00:17:19] I really think that was a lot of the remote work battles of early 2022 was people just

[00:17:25] saying I want some control and we got to change something and it turns out just change the

[00:17:30] location of work doesn't get to the core of this issue.

[00:17:32] But I think that's where a lot of that came from.

[00:17:35] There's also a lot of ways that this has made things worse.

[00:17:37] In particular, it increases administrative overhead.

[00:17:41] So if I can't talk to you in the hallway, we're going to do a meeting.

[00:17:44] But if I do a meeting, what's the default interval of my calendars 30 minutes?

[00:17:48] So now we have all of these extra 30 minute meetings all over our calendars because I

[00:17:52] can't grab you in the hallway and that has a lot of trickle down effects.

[00:17:56] There's a Microsoft report that was showing, I know it's ironic, I'm quoting studies now

[00:17:59] after what I said before.

[00:18:01] But it's interesting about this half hour thing, how that that's the default time interval

[00:18:06] of a Zoom meeting.

[00:18:07] So I think it's 15 minute is you can go down to 15 minutes.

[00:18:11] But it's hard.

[00:18:12] It's hard.

[00:18:13] You have to have dexterity.

[00:18:14] It's funny.

[00:18:15] It's like a dexterity issue.

[00:18:16] It's hard to do on a trackpad.

[00:18:17] The 15 minute interval is hard to drag.

[00:18:19] So you just drag 30, so there's something like a 252% increase in virtual meetings from

[00:18:25] 2022 today.

[00:18:27] So it's kind of a mess right now.

[00:18:29] And I think it's because none of this stuff is getting to the fundamental issue, which

[00:18:32] is we are burnt out from pseudo productivity, plus having this type of technology, just

[00:18:39] shifting where we do work doesn't get to the problem.

[00:18:42] I mean, I've said, if you're going to fix one thing right now, fix workloads, location

[00:18:46] fine.

[00:18:47] What's flexibility is fine, workloads is the problem, concurrent obligations on your task

[00:18:51] list is where my book starts on the second part.

[00:18:54] That's where I think we have a much bigger issue like a lot of people do a lot of things

[00:19:14] now.

[00:19:15] I think the story of our mutual friend, Jenny Blake, she had 10 different sources of income

[00:19:20] and she had to figure out, she was burning out.

[00:19:22] She had to figure out what to do.

[00:19:23] But let me ask you first, you have a lot of concurrent things going on.

[00:19:28] Like, you're a writer for The New Yorker.

[00:19:31] You write these books, you know, one every two or three years.

[00:19:34] You are a computer science professor slash researcher, you know, and then probably have

[00:19:40] lots of other things going on too.

[00:19:42] What's your day like?

[00:19:43] How do you structure your day?

[00:19:44] Well, I would say, I don't have a lot going on.

[00:19:46] I do two things and like I figured this out when I was an undergrad.

[00:19:51] I said, "Here's what I'm going to do."

[00:19:53] I had signed my first book deal, guess it on the grad, and had my grad school acceptance

[00:19:59] letter.

[00:20:00] I was like, "This is what I'm doing.

[00:20:01] I'm going to write and do computer science."

[00:20:03] And that's what I've been doing now for God's coming up to 20 years.

[00:20:07] I'm getting old, but I've been very focused on that.

[00:20:10] I write, I do computer science.

[00:20:13] Now what happens is when you're stick with the same thing over a long period of time,

[00:20:17] sequentially you do different things.

[00:20:19] Like I wrote this book and then I did a bunch of magazine writing, then I wrote that book.

[00:20:23] You're doing these things sequentially over time, but when someone then retrospectively

[00:20:28] looks at your career, you push them together.

[00:20:31] And then you imagine like you're doing all these things at the same time.

[00:20:34] But actually, I think about what I'm doing as being much more focused.

[00:20:37] I do two things.

[00:20:38] I'm a professor and a writer and I've really tried to keep that focus.

[00:20:43] And so my week looks like that too.

[00:20:45] I have on-campus days when I'm teaching.

[00:20:47] I do all sorts of my Georgetown administrative meeting with students and paper reviews and

[00:20:53] Georgetown stuff I do on those teaching days.

[00:20:57] And then I also have much more writing focused days.

[00:20:59] Like I'm just thinking and I'm writing.

[00:21:01] The only new thing I've added in 20 years is podcasting.

[00:21:04] And my rule there was it gets a half day a week.

[00:21:07] And it's not allowed to take up any more time than that.

[00:21:10] And if I want to grow, do something new with my show, I have to figure out a way to make

[00:21:13] that fit.

[00:21:14] So if I have to hire someone to take something else off my plate, sure it has to fit in a

[00:21:17] half day a week.

[00:21:18] So I have a half day a week podcasting and then I have sort of on-campus days and deep

[00:21:22] work days.

[00:21:23] And that's my schedule.

[00:21:24] How many podcasts do you release a week?

[00:21:26] One.

[00:21:27] Okay.

[00:21:28] So it seems like just from reading the book, and there's lots of techniques in the book

[00:21:32] and there's lots of suggestions in the book.

[00:21:35] And I still want to get to some of the stories that I'm curious about.

[00:21:39] It seems overall like there's two techniques.

[00:21:42] One is delegate and that's where we see Benjamin Franklin's story a little bit.

[00:21:50] Another technique is structure your day based on in a weird way knowing who you are.

[00:21:57] So for instance, my day, before noon, nobody, I don't respond to anybody.

[00:22:04] Nobody calls me.

[00:22:05] I don't even have my phone around me.

[00:22:06] No email, nothing.

[00:22:07] I just am focused on whatever it is I'm being doing creatively, whether it's writing or

[00:22:12] something else.

[00:22:14] And then between, let's say, noon and like three or four o'clock is podcast.

[00:22:20] Like we're doing this podcast right now at 2 p.m.

[00:22:22] Because you still need to be creative, but it's not like, it's kind of like shared creativity.

[00:22:27] Like I'm talking to you and it's a little easier than, let's say, writing a book.

[00:22:34] And then after that I return like business related calls, because again, not that business

[00:22:39] is easy, but it's not rocket science.

[00:22:42] You know, I have 30 years experience.

[00:22:44] I could do phone calls and I don't need to be like have super high energy at that point.

[00:22:50] And so that's me scheduling and structuring my day.

[00:22:54] Very rarely will I switch from that format.

[00:22:56] And that's how if I'm productive, like if I produce output in each one of those time

[00:23:02] frames, then it looks like I'm amazingly productive.

[00:23:05] Well, and also that structure you have on your time is implicitly a back pressure on

[00:23:11] your commitments as well.

[00:23:13] Like you might not think about it this way.

[00:23:15] Like I have an exact count of what types of things I work on and how many things I work

[00:23:18] on them.

[00:23:19] But you figured out this is a reasonable day that over time is going to produce a lot of

[00:23:23] good stuff.

[00:23:24] Be creative, do podcast, finish your business calls like normal end of day than be done.

[00:23:29] This is probably a thousand times without you even really realized it been the back pressure

[00:23:33] that got you to say no to other opportunities.

[00:23:35] Because your mind is thinking, if I took on this, where's that going to fit?

[00:23:39] That's going to take a lot of time.

[00:23:40] Where's that time going to come from?

[00:23:41] Well, I'm going to have to take away the creative time in the morning.

[00:23:44] I'm going to have to work later.

[00:23:45] So there's something to being really clear and structured about this is my day.

[00:23:50] Like I commit to investing in these things these time carefully chosen and just let that

[00:23:56] aggregate for a year and good stuff is going to happen in 10 years, it's going to be very

[00:24:00] impressive.

[00:24:02] That's going on as well.

[00:24:03] Yeah.

[00:24:04] So do fewer things and then be very intentional about how you structure and approach those

[00:24:07] fewer things.

[00:24:09] That's it.

[00:24:10] That's the recipe to slow productivity.

[00:24:11] Everyone who, I everyone, but most people who you find stories of who have produced this

[00:24:15] super productive interesting stuff, that's kind of what they're doing.

[00:24:20] One thing that's tricky though is that being younger is different than being older.

[00:24:25] So being in your 20s is different than being in your 30s, 40s, 50s.

[00:24:31] And this is where the Benjamin Franklin story comes in.

[00:24:33] So when he was in his 20s, that guy was just like kicking ass, like he had his publishing

[00:24:40] house.

[00:24:41] He was writing books, he started franchising his publishing to other cities.

[00:24:45] He was like Elon Musk of the 18th century.

[00:24:48] He was doing a lot of things like, and it's not like travel or zoom was around to set up

[00:24:54] a publishing house in Boston in South Carolina while he lived living in Philadelphia.

[00:24:58] It takes days to travel.

[00:25:01] And so he got burnt out.

[00:25:04] And as you point out, he, and this becomes a classic story throughout the book basically,

[00:25:10] he delegates.

[00:25:11] So and in order to delegate, he has to give up some or in some cases half of his income.

[00:25:17] But then, you know, if he's, if he had someone running all the administrative sides of his

[00:25:22] publishing, which is what he did, he suddenly blossomed to become the Benjamin Franklin.

[00:25:26] We know he, you know, invented the battery, the lightning rod, became a statesman and so

[00:25:31] on.

[00:25:32] But my question is in your 20s, it's harder to delegate and also you do have energy to

[00:25:37] do everything.

[00:25:39] So maybe slow productivity is not the right remedy for someone in their 20s.

[00:25:44] Someone in their 20s is just like kick ass all the time, maybe.

[00:25:47] Well, I mean, it's certainly easier to not do slow productivity in your 20s, but there

[00:25:51] is also still a long term cost.

[00:25:53] If we think about aggregate benefits over time, because let's say to Franklin's story,

[00:25:59] the flip side of that coin is also the, the Jane Austen story.

[00:26:03] They both get at the same point, but with different strategies for getting there.

[00:26:07] So Franklin didn't start doing cool things until he got a lot less busy.

[00:26:12] So he gave David Hall, this young shop, says that you take over the business, I'll give

[00:26:15] up all this money.

[00:26:16] I don't care.

[00:26:17] I want to, you know, invent the lightning rod.

[00:26:19] Jane Austen did something similar, right?

[00:26:21] There's this myth around Jane Austen that she would write surreptitiously on scraps of

[00:26:25] paper and then like people would come in, like Mr. Darlene would, Darlene would come

[00:26:29] in the room and he did, she'd have to hide it.

[00:26:31] It was this trope that everyone knew that the door to the sitting room had a creek.

[00:26:35] When she would hear the creeks, she would hide her writing.

[00:26:37] It alters out the be nonsense during the socially busy parts of her life.

[00:26:41] She got no writing done.

[00:26:43] It wasn't until later in her life after her father died, her and her mom and her sister

[00:26:46] and a friend were like, we're done.

[00:26:48] They went to this cottage that was owned by their brother.

[00:26:51] Started wearing common labors, clothes, and working in the garden.

[00:26:54] No more social engagements.

[00:26:55] They're just like, we're just going to take a break from life.

[00:26:58] She wrote five books in five years, like all of her famous books were done there.

[00:27:02] So there's this lesson there.

[00:27:04] When you're busy, you can't do great things.

[00:27:06] So yeah, when you're in your 20s, you can get away with being very busy, like you can

[00:27:10] do it.

[00:27:11] And it's not a bad strategy for advancement as well, right?

[00:27:13] In a world of pseudo productivity, the 25 year olds, the person that can be up slamming

[00:27:18] on slack all night long and showing people that they're, hey, I'm visibly active, but

[00:27:22] you're also giving up the time that you could be getting good at things, like down the line

[00:27:26] are going to make the big difference.

[00:27:28] Franklin didn't start doing awesome things until he was well into his 30s because that's

[00:27:32] when he started working on awesome things.

[00:27:35] But it was in his 20s that he was able to set up the scenario that could provide him

[00:27:41] a lifetime of income, albeit less income than he would have if he stayed devoted to it.

[00:27:47] But he built the business that he was unable to delegate so he could go off and do what

[00:27:51] he wanted because now he had this steady income.

[00:27:54] Yeah.

[00:27:55] Same with similar to the story is Jenny Blake in your book, which is she had like 10 different

[00:28:00] streams of income from her coaching, but she was getting burnt out.

[00:28:04] So she wanted to take two months off a year and reduce her obligations, but she had to

[00:28:08] reduce the income also, but she built it in her 20s.

[00:28:12] Yeah, but Jenny's interesting because she's kind of the answer to this conundrum, right?

[00:28:16] So yeah, we have this issue of, you know, in your toys, you're hungry, I got to make

[00:28:21] money.

[00:28:22] I got to establish myself.

[00:28:23] I mean, Franklin had nothing, right?

[00:28:24] I mean, he had to hustle.

[00:28:25] He showed up with, you know, the proverbial diamond as pocket in Philadelphia and just

[00:28:29] had to somehow make it work.

[00:28:31] So then how do we balance both of these things where you have to get established in a world

[00:28:35] that supports pseudo productivity and you're able to, you don't have the ability to hire

[00:28:40] David Hall yet or to move to your cottage on your brother's property, but also you don't

[00:28:45] want to give up the opportunity cost of getting good at things that really matter, right?

[00:28:50] That long term are going to really give you the options and the support.

[00:28:53] Jenny Blake is an interesting answer.

[00:28:55] So she didn't give up her company.

[00:28:57] She didn't move to a cottage, but she engineered her life saying, "Okay, I'm going to take

[00:29:01] two months off every year."

[00:29:03] And yeah, that's about 20% income.

[00:29:05] Great.

[00:29:06] I'll live 20% cheaper so that I can have this extra time in my life.

[00:29:11] This is what I think people should be doing in their 20s, not necessarily taking two months

[00:29:14] off specifically, but engineering in time, really well protected time, where I'm going

[00:29:21] to just be working on core skills and become really good at it.

[00:29:25] All my other work, I have to make fit around that and you know what you will, you get more

[00:29:28] efficient, you get more careful at what you say yes or no to, but don't start at 100%

[00:29:33] saturation and busyness.

[00:29:35] Start with a commitment to at least part of my day is towards the slow development of

[00:29:39] something that matters so that you have that rewards of the compounding interest of skill

[00:29:43] building.

[00:29:44] So when you hit 30 or 35, you're not just starting then, you're like, "I'm a great writer now.

[00:29:49] I'm a great coder now.

[00:29:50] I'm a great artist now.

[00:29:53] I've been developing that skill."

[00:29:55] So I mean, I agree with you, your 20s are probably, you know, you got to hustle, but

[00:29:59] don't hustle 100%.

[00:30:01] Start from the very beginning, protecting your sort of Google 20% time.

[00:30:06] And do you think that's more possible than people think, like this reminds me of a story

[00:30:11] where it's like in the 'ohs, I had already written a bunch of books or maybe no, no,

[00:30:16] it was like 10 years ago, so like 2014 or so.

[00:30:20] I'd already written a bunch of books and I went out to dinner to see some friends I

[00:30:24] hadn't seen in like 10 or 15 years.

[00:30:27] The whole dinner they were talking about, the books they were going to write, the plays

[00:30:30] they were going to write and it's 9pm, 10pm, 11pm.

[00:30:34] And I'm thinking to myself, how are you guys going to do anything?

[00:30:37] Because you're up this late.

[00:30:38] Now you're going to wake up late, there's no time to do anything.

[00:30:42] I sort of feel people have more time than they realize.

[00:30:46] And you know, there's a concept of time auditing.

[00:30:49] Like people don't, like I know one guy who's been on this podcast, David Levine, he started

[00:30:54] writing murder mysteries just by writing a page a day on the subway ride to his work

[00:30:58] every day.

[00:30:59] Like because you kind of have a hidden gaps of time where you could, not that you want

[00:31:03] to fill up every moment to your point, but you do have these moments that are wasted

[00:31:08] that people, yes they're resting but maybe it's like wasteful resting.

[00:31:12] Yeah.

[00:31:13] I mean, I think that's absolutely true, especially when you're young.

[00:31:17] You have a lot more give.

[00:31:18] I mean, young people often approach work like in this bullish, let's just get after it type

[00:31:23] of mindset, not realizing how inefficient they are.

[00:31:25] I mean, all throughout grad school, I was writing books.

[00:31:29] Which people around me thought I was crazy, but grad students aren't very organized.

[00:31:32] And I was like, okay, this isn't so hard, like be 50% smarter about time management than

[00:31:38] like the average grad student, which means like, you know what day of the week it is,

[00:31:41] right?

[00:31:42] This is not a tall order and I'm like, oh, there's plenty of time.

[00:31:45] This is fine.

[00:31:46] And it's not like it was an easy grad school, right?

[00:31:47] I was in the theory group in the computer science lab at MIT, like this was a pretty

[00:31:52] hardcore grad school, but there's a lot of time.

[00:31:55] You know, I was writing people, my students hate when I talk about this, but I was writing

[00:32:00] a book while writing my doctoral dissertation because I was like, there's not enough to

[00:32:04] do while you're writing your doctoral dissertation, like how long can I spend each day working

[00:32:08] on this?

[00:32:10] everyone is saying like, just focus on your dissertation.

[00:32:12] I was bored.

[00:32:13] So I wrote an unrelated book at the same time.

[00:32:15] So I'm with you on that too.

[00:32:16] You make the time and then try to make everything else fit.

[00:32:19] And then you realize,

[00:32:20] oh, I can actually make a lot more fit than I think.

[00:32:22] There's so much more give than people realize they have.

[00:32:27] Most of what they fear turns out to be not,

[00:32:29] I'm not gonna get enough done.

[00:32:31] It's much more about the social interactions.

[00:32:33] Like, well, what if like a boss doesn't see me respond?

[00:32:36] Way more of what we think of as necessary work

[00:32:39] is more about necessary sort of negotiation

[00:32:42] of the social capital surrounding work.

[00:32:44] And that's its own issue.

[00:32:45] But it's not the workload that's gonna kill you.

[00:32:47] That's not really what they're worried about.

[00:32:49] It's still like, what if someone notices,

[00:32:51] I can't go to immediate at nine a.m.

[00:32:53] because I'm writing right then.

[00:32:54] I think that's where people really get more worried.

[00:32:57] - You know, and there's also this mythology of speed.

[00:33:00] Like, you know, you have this way of Jack Kerouac,

[00:33:03] where by the way, I always thought he wrote

[00:33:06] on the road in three weeks, which is the myth of Jack Kerouac

[00:33:09] until I read your book where essentially you describe,

[00:33:12] it was six years of drafts and then revisions and so on.

[00:33:17] And so it's, I think also, and there's this concept

[00:33:21] of forgiving yourself if you're not fast.

[00:33:23] Even the people who seem like super fast

[00:33:26] really took years to either develop the skills

[00:33:28] or they started playing with an idea

[00:33:30] and then it developed over time.

[00:33:32] And it's time really that compounds, you know,

[00:33:37] the outputs of your productivity, not speed.

[00:33:41] - Yeah, and you see this time and again.

[00:33:43] Like, I took scientists were a good crystallization

[00:33:47] of this, I thought, because they really get

[00:33:49] to this point well, so I told the classic scientist stories.

[00:33:53] You zoom in on the actual TikTok series

[00:33:56] of the greatest scientists from history.

[00:33:58] It's all over the place.

[00:34:00] It's like, wait, you took 20 years

[00:34:02] to actually write down the Principia

[00:34:04] after you had the original insights

[00:34:06] about the Inverse Square Law

[00:34:07] when the apple fell from the tree Newton.

[00:34:09] What were you doing, Galileo?

[00:34:10] You timed the swinging pendulum lights

[00:34:13] in the church with your pulse and it was five years later

[00:34:16] until you actually bothered to write that down in a paper.

[00:34:19] Marie Curie, you're like honing in

[00:34:22] on the radioactivity theory.

[00:34:24] You're isolating it in the substance

[00:34:25] called pitch when you're finding radium.

[00:34:27] You're gonna win a Nobel Prize for this work.

[00:34:29] You're honing in on it.

[00:34:30] You're like, oh, we're going on a three month vacation.

[00:34:33] So scientists get at this, great.

[00:34:35] We're like, oh, Einstein, Galileo, Marie Curie, Newton,

[00:34:40] how productive, they changed the world,

[00:34:42] but they're over time.

[00:34:45] You zoom in, Galileo really loved playing the loot

[00:34:48] and was very in the poetry and theater

[00:34:50] and they took their time working on things.

[00:34:55] This is something I've pointed out

[00:34:57] as early as my early writing career when I used to write

[00:35:00] about successful students.

[00:35:01] I had this phrase I used to call

[00:35:03] the paradox of the relaxed Rhodes scholar.

[00:35:06] I said, I know some Rhodes scholars,

[00:35:07] why are they not as busy or stressed out

[00:35:09] as a bunch of these pre-meds that I see around me?

[00:35:13] And I was like, because you see their CV

[00:35:15] and you collapse all the things they've done

[00:35:18] and you imagine what would it be like

[00:35:20] to work on all of these things at the same time?

[00:35:22] Oh my God, how would you even find enough time in the day?

[00:35:24] But they don't.

[00:35:25] They do one thing after another.

[00:35:27] They just keep going and eventually it all adds up

[00:35:31] into something really impressive.

[00:35:33] We can't compress time out of the picture.

[00:35:36] And so it's like, good news, bad news, good news,

[00:35:37] that means you don't have to be working 50 hours,

[00:35:40] the next three days on your work.

[00:35:42] Bad news is you kind of always need to be working

[00:35:45] on something.

[00:35:46] So you can't aggregate results

[00:35:47] if you're not producing things to aggregate.

[00:35:49] So it's like, that's the bad news.

[00:35:51] But the good news is you don't have to work 12 hours today.

[00:35:55] You can go slow but steady.

[00:35:56] It's really true and it's scientists are a good example

[00:36:00] or writers are a good example.

[00:36:02] Like we look at their bios and we think like,

[00:36:06] I'll take an example of a story, not in your book

[00:36:08] but like Larry David who created Seinfeld

[00:36:10] and also obviously writes the excellent show

[00:36:13] Curb Your Enthusiasm.

[00:36:14] He's in his 12th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

[00:36:18] So we think, oh my gosh, you know, 0.1% of shows

[00:36:22] have 12 seasons, he must be incredibly hard worker

[00:36:25] and he probably is.

[00:36:26] But sometimes there's five, six years between seasons

[00:36:29] and it's, we don't, that's not in the biography.

[00:36:33] The biography is he has 12 seasons of this show

[00:36:36] where you know, Thomas Pinchin has these six or seven

[00:36:40] excellent novels.

[00:36:41] People forget there was like a 20 year gap between,

[00:36:43] you know, gravity's rainbow and whatever came next,

[00:36:46] I forget.

[00:36:47] But I always think, and I think maybe this is true

[00:36:51] for everyone, I always think if I'm not putting up

[00:36:55] a win every year or every few months

[00:36:58] or every day in some cases, everyone's gonna forget about me

[00:37:02] and I'm gonna lose everything I built.

[00:37:04] And I think the misconception I'm having internally

[00:37:09] is that is the quantity versus quality.

[00:37:12] If you put out something quality,

[00:37:15] it brings everybody back even more.

[00:37:17] But, you know, quantity means nothing.

[00:37:20] I think that's right.

[00:37:22] I think that's exactly right.

[00:37:23] The quantity, I mean, outside of,

[00:37:25] and maybe this is a social media effect, right?

[00:37:27] Because it gives you less opportunities

[00:37:30] throughout the given year to put something out

[00:37:32] that's impressive.

[00:37:33] But that is like a theme I come back to again and again.

[00:37:37] It's over time that's what matters.

[00:37:39] And because of that, why be stressed out about today?

[00:37:42] Like this is how I describe my writing output.

[00:37:44] I write a lot, right?

[00:37:45] I mean, I write books pretty commonly.

[00:37:47] I do 20 or 1000 words a year for the New Yorker as well.

[00:37:50] I always say I write a lot, I'm always writing,

[00:37:54] but I never write a lot.

[00:37:56] That's the way I think about it.

[00:37:57] Like it's just a part of my day is like,

[00:37:59] I'm not happy if I don't write some.

[00:38:01] But I very rarely write a lot.

[00:38:02] I'm very, I'm very rarely writing at night.

[00:38:04] I'm very rarely doing really long things.

[00:38:06] It's just I write a lot over time,

[00:38:09] not a lot in any one day.

[00:38:10] You know, I wrote this morning.

[00:38:12] It was an hour, hour and a half.

[00:38:14] I'm working on a piece for The Atlantic.

[00:38:16] Not a big lift at all, 90 minutes of work.

[00:38:18] Not a big deal.

[00:38:19] If I do that every single day, you know,

[00:38:21] exempting Saturdays, it adds up.

[00:38:24] And they're like, oh, there's seven articles

[00:38:26] and I got this book done, you know?

[00:38:27] And that's a lot of things.

[00:38:29] That's Larry David.

[00:38:30] I'm always kind of working on something,

[00:38:31] but never too hard.

[00:38:32] Like it's just, let's be working on something cool,

[00:38:35] but keep the pace reasonable.

[00:38:37] You know, keeping a natural pace is maybe harder now

[00:38:41] than it used to be before.

[00:38:42] I think suit or productivity makes it harder for sure.

[00:38:44] But when you look at these class--

[00:38:45] - So suit or productivity being again,

[00:38:47] the concept that activity matters.

[00:38:50] - Both your brain and your bosses

[00:38:52] and maybe your spouses are judging you

[00:38:55] based on how many hours a day you're, you know,

[00:38:57] hitting a hammer against a stone.

[00:38:59] - Yep, how visibly productive are you?

[00:39:01] And again, this gets really bad in knowledge work

[00:39:03] because digital tools give you all of these ways

[00:39:06] of signaling productive activity that we didn't have before.

[00:39:09] So now it's like I got to be answering like emails

[00:39:11] and Slack and the whole thing becomes like Kabuki theater.

[00:39:14] Hey, look, I'm a worker.

[00:39:15] See, I responded to your email really quickly.

[00:39:19] And so that pushes us to be like, I got to be busy here.

[00:39:21] And then what's the irony?

[00:39:24] We produce a lot less Larry David shows.

[00:39:26] We produce a lot less New Yorker articles.

[00:39:28] The good stuff can't get finished

[00:39:30] because we're so exhausted trying to be busy

[00:39:35] that we can't actually do the good stuff.

[00:39:36] And it's the cruel irony of it.

[00:39:38] It's not like if you work really hard, it's tiring,

[00:39:42] but you also produce a lot more work.

[00:39:43] So it's a good trade off.

[00:39:45] When you do the really busy pseudo productivity game,

[00:39:47] it's not just that you're exhausted and it's hard.

[00:39:49] You actually do less of the stuff that matters.

[00:39:51] So it's a double whammy.

[00:39:52] There's an irony to it that's almost tragic.

[00:39:55] - I think also it's not even just about producing.

[00:39:59] It's about learning who you are.

[00:40:01] So for instance, Tate Benjamin Franklin,

[00:40:04] if he spent 20 hours a day working on his printing business

[00:40:08] instead of outsourcing half of his time to someone else,

[00:40:13] maybe he never would have realized

[00:40:14] he was interested in the elements of electricity

[00:40:17] or what was politically going on in the world.

[00:40:22] And so on, I find when I don't have things to do,

[00:40:26] it's when I find what it is I'm really interested in.

[00:40:30] - Yeah, well, it's a trap of being smart too, right?

[00:40:33] So smart people have a really hard time

[00:40:35] with pseudo productivity because whatever game you fall into,

[00:40:38] you realize I can do good at this.

[00:40:40] Like that's been Franklin.

[00:40:41] He's like, oh, I can win at the game of printing.

[00:40:44] Like this, okay, I get it.

[00:40:45] I won here, I expanded here.

[00:40:47] I can outdo you, I can outmaneuver you

[00:40:49] 'cause he was smarter than most of these other people.

[00:40:51] I mean, if you read, I was reading the H.W. Brands biography,

[00:40:54] I really like even more so than the Isaac's in biography.

[00:40:57] He was just smarter than the other printers in Philadelphia.

[00:41:00] Like they just, it was a different,

[00:41:02] they didn't have the same like at all costs,

[00:41:04] capitalistic mindset.

[00:41:06] And he was just really well read.

[00:41:07] I had a very quick mind and just like solve that.

[00:41:10] The problem is that's so appealing.

[00:41:12] So when you're smart, like, well, let's just keep rock

[00:41:14] and rolling with what we're doing.

[00:41:15] I can win at the game of pseudo productivity.

[00:41:18] And you're right, then you never get

[00:41:19] the downtime required to find yourself.

[00:41:22] And like that's what I think, for example,

[00:41:24] Lin-Manuel Miranda did.

[00:41:25] So I really get into his story of writing his first major play

[00:41:29] in the Heights, which won a bunch of Tonys.

[00:41:31] We forget about it now 'cause of Hamilton,

[00:41:33] but it won a bunch of Tonys.

[00:41:34] It was a triumph.

[00:41:35] I think it ate Tonys at one.

[00:41:37] He took seven years to write that.

[00:41:39] And when I really broke down the story beat by beat

[00:41:43] of what he was doing, what he stopped doing,

[00:41:46] how he came back to it, a lot of it was,

[00:41:48] he had to just discover himself more.

[00:41:50] Like he wrote a version of that play in college.

[00:41:54] He was at Swarthmore and did a version of the play

[00:41:56] at Swarthmore and it wasn't good because he was 19.

[00:41:59] You know, he didn't have just the self-awareness

[00:42:02] and creative maturity to make a Tony award-winning

[00:42:06] caliber play.

[00:42:07] So he had to take a while and take breaks

[00:42:09] and work on other things because he just also wasn't ready

[00:42:12] to produce that, right?

[00:42:13] Discovering yourself is not just navel gazing.

[00:42:16] It ties back to what you do.

[00:42:18] You know, you see what's important in the world.

[00:42:20] You see what matters.

[00:42:21] You know, so I'm completely with you on that.

[00:42:24] (upbeat music)

[00:42:28] (upbeat music)

[00:42:31] - So it seems like there's three parts

[00:42:42] of this slow productivity.

[00:42:44] There's one is forgiving yourself

[00:42:46] because I cannot tell you how many times

[00:42:49] over the years, over the decades,

[00:42:52] I've either felt guilty or other people have tried

[00:42:54] to make me feel guilty for taking some time off.

[00:42:58] Like it's just part of society that if you're not

[00:43:00] working every hour, you're guilty.

[00:43:03] Then it's a matter of, you know, making your schedule

[00:43:08] fit who you are.

[00:43:09] Like again, I'll take Jenny Blake,

[00:43:11] but also your story of Paul Jarvis.

[00:43:13] They didn't want to, or Paul Jarvis in particular,

[00:43:15] doesn't want to make a billion dollars,

[00:43:16] wants to live a happy life.

[00:43:18] That's what he structured his income and his life

[00:43:20] so that he could, all his needs are taken care of,

[00:43:23] which is all you really want anyway.

[00:43:24] You want freedom and he's a happy guy.

[00:43:27] And doesn't work as hard as he could have.

[00:43:30] He could have made a lot more money scaling his business,

[00:43:35] charging more at the same time and so on.

[00:43:37] But instead, he figured out the schedule that worked

[00:43:40] for him to have downtime and be happy and so on.

[00:43:44] And then I guess the third part again is delegating

[00:43:48] and understanding the trade-offs.

[00:43:50] Benjamin Franklin reduces income, delegated.

[00:43:53] I will tell you a tipping point for me was

[00:43:57] the first time I ever hired somebody to do a job

[00:44:01] I could have done.

[00:44:02] That was such a freeing moment for me.

[00:44:04] Even it meant money coming out of my pocket

[00:44:06] to pay someone else.

[00:44:07] Like it resulted in me building a business

[00:44:09] 'cause I realized I didn't have to do everything myself.

[00:44:12] - Well, and I had a similar experience with my podcast,

[00:44:15] for example, because I have my rule half day,

[00:44:17] half day a week.

[00:44:19] And I was doing two episodes and I was doing all myself

[00:44:21] and I was like, I'm having a hard time

[00:44:22] fitting this or whatever.

[00:44:24] So that led me like, okay, I'm gonna hire someone.

[00:44:27] I'm gonna go down to the one show per week.

[00:44:28] So first of all, I'm gonna give up downloads

[00:44:31] and I'm gonna hire someone so that I don't have

[00:44:32] to touch a computer, you know?

[00:44:35] And that made such a big difference

[00:44:36] 'cause then I could just focus on the podcasting.

[00:44:39] But I want, the point you're making there more generally,

[00:44:42] I think is such a great one.

[00:44:43] It's like you have to, it's two things.

[00:44:46] Get over yourself and get into yourself.

[00:44:48] And they're like, what I mean by that?

[00:44:50] I'm sorry, just invented that phrase now.

[00:44:51] So you have to bear with me what I'm thinking about.

[00:44:53] I know your next book.

[00:44:54] It should be, right?

[00:44:55] And I'm just thinking about this now,

[00:44:56] but so tell me if you buy this.

[00:44:58] The get over yourself part is you're not gonna be the best

[00:45:03] in whatever you're doing anyway.

[00:45:04] So like at some point you have to get over the fact

[00:45:06] that you're not gonna be the best

[00:45:07] and also no one is really tracking you

[00:45:09] and care as much as you think, right?

[00:45:11] This is a freeing thing for me.

[00:45:13] Again and again, I've had this experience in my life

[00:45:15] of being taught that lesson, right?

[00:45:16] So like, I'm a smart kid in college.

[00:45:19] I'm breezing through my computer science undergrad.

[00:45:22] I'm just like, this is easy.

[00:45:24] And I go to MIT and it's like,

[00:45:26] this is what smart looks like.

[00:45:28] And I'm like, oh, that's not me.

[00:45:29] All right, I get it.

[00:45:31] I'm not Richard Feynman.

[00:45:34] These people are, right?

[00:45:35] And you just knew like I'm never gonna be as good

[00:45:38] at doing mathematics and theory

[00:45:40] as the people who are here on this floor right now.

[00:45:43] I start writing books.

[00:45:44] I'm gonna make my way up the like writing hardcover books.

[00:45:47] And my first big hardcover books,

[00:45:49] so good they can't ignore you,

[00:45:50] did not do well out of the gate.

[00:45:52] And then I wrote Deep Work.

[00:45:53] And I remember Deep Work was just coming out

[00:45:56] or it just came out.

[00:45:57] And they had reduced my advance on Deep Work

[00:46:00] versus so good they can't ignore you

[00:46:01] because so good they can't ignore you,

[00:46:02] hadn't yet done much.

[00:46:04] And I talked to my age, I remember it was upset.

[00:46:06] I was like, they're not really promoting the book.

[00:46:07] And my friend went into a Barnes & Noble

[00:46:10] with his family to get a copy.

[00:46:11] They didn't even have it, you know?

[00:46:14] And she was like, you know,

[00:46:15] you gotta move numbers, right?

[00:46:17] No one cares about your idea or your promise.

[00:46:20] Like your last book has only sold this much.

[00:46:22] So they're not gonna put much work into it.

[00:46:24] I was like, oh my God, I see.

[00:46:25] So like these other books are just doing much better.

[00:46:28] Great, I get that.

[00:46:29] And then I started writing for the New Yorker more recently.

[00:46:31] And I was like, oh, I see.

[00:46:32] Like I'm never gonna be as good of a writer.

[00:46:34] So again and again, right?

[00:46:35] It's just like, you're not gonna be the best

[00:46:38] and people don't care.

[00:46:39] Like they're not tracking it.

[00:46:41] So instead like do something really well,

[00:46:43] but do it in like a very sustainable way

[00:46:45] and get into yourself.

[00:46:46] Like really understand yourself,

[00:46:48] have gratitude for what's going well,

[00:46:50] build a life that's interesting

[00:46:52] and intellectually fulfilling as options.

[00:46:54] Get into what you care about,

[00:46:56] get over the fact that you're not gonna be the best.

[00:46:58] Get over this idea that everyone's tracking you

[00:47:00] and are laughing behind your back

[00:47:01] because your book didn't sell as much

[00:47:03] as this other person's book.

[00:47:05] I don't know, that's been really good for me.

[00:47:07] It's hard in the moment, but getting over my fart.

[00:47:09] It's really hard.

[00:47:10] Yeah, it's really hard.

[00:47:11] I feel like I'm still going through that

[00:47:13] and I don't know if I'll ever get over that.

[00:47:16] Like it's a hard thing.

[00:47:18] You can feel it.

[00:47:19] Like let's do like third wave psychotherapy here.

[00:47:21] You know, it's like you're always gonna feel,

[00:47:23] especially if you're an achiever,

[00:47:25] you're gonna feel the bad feelings

[00:47:27] when it's like, man,

[00:47:28] that thing is doing really well and my thing isn't.

[00:47:30] You know, or I was rejected from this.

[00:47:33] But we can get better at not letting those feelings

[00:47:35] be so important.

[00:47:37] You know, it's like, yeah, of course,

[00:47:38] that's how I feel around book launches.

[00:47:39] I always get upset and weird

[00:47:41] and I always see other people's books.

[00:47:42] Like why are they doing so much better?

[00:47:43] And I get nihilistic,

[00:47:45] but just separating from that a little bit

[00:47:46] and be like, this is awesome.

[00:47:47] I get to write books for a living.

[00:47:49] You know, I'm trying to get better at that.

[00:47:51] That, but I think we are driven.

[00:47:53] This is all everything I just said was driven

[00:47:55] by one thing you said,

[00:47:56] which is you feel really guilty

[00:47:59] to ever take your foot off the pedal.

[00:48:01] And it's from this idea of like,

[00:48:03] everyone is watching me and monitoring me

[00:48:06] and they're gonna be really upset if they see I slow down.

[00:48:08] And at some point you realize no one's following you.

[00:48:11] They care about themselves.

[00:48:13] They're not tracking your every move.

[00:48:15] took time off. No one noticed that this booked into it. They're like, Oh, you're whatever it is. People aren't in as into you as you think. I don't know if that's true. It sounds ridiculous. It is true. It is true. No one knows what no one knows. Like when's the last time I wrote a book? No one knows how well like my books did. There's like seven people who know they're like, Oh, you write books. I read deep work. That's fun. And that's it. Like that's as much as anyone. And I think about all of the sweat I've had about like, Oh my God. If I

[00:48:45] built my platform properly and what's happening with this or that, it's those people are like, Oh, I read deep work. That's cool. You write books. Hey, let me tell you about something else I do. You know, that's it. Right? That's where most people are.

[00:48:55] Let me ask you, like you've been writing about work for. That's like all your books and in a very broad sense. So, you know, whether it's, you know, how, you know, so good they can ignore you deep work all the way up to this work book, slow productivity.

[00:49:12] What do you think? And obviously you're very talented, skilled as a writer. What do you think could be another challenge for you? Like, are you going to write out of 10 books about work?

[00:49:22] Well, no, no, I'm not. And also, I don't even think about those books entirely as being about work. No, I get it because they are they are there are different aspects of life. Well, honestly, I see a techno thread, right? Because think about the book you left out there. Digital minimalism is not about work, right? Yeah. And so actually why I left that out.

[00:49:42] Exactly. Well, so it didn't improve my example. I see it more as a text impact on our life, right? So computer scientists who has turned to try to understand how these tools actually impact us, right? Deep work. What's it about?

[00:49:55] It's about the rise of these distractions in the office have made uninterrupted focus more difficult, unexpected side effect of technological innovations like email.

[00:50:05] So we have to now prioritize that in a way we didn't have to before, digital minimalism. We're on our phones all the time, more than we want to be. What do we do about it? A world without email, returning to the deep work question. How did we get to this place?

[00:50:18] Like, why are we checking email once every five minutes? It doesn't take much digging to find out that this is a very unproductive way to leverage human brains. So how do we get here? And what would a real solution look like and slow productivity?

[00:50:30] Like, I'm stretching a little bit here, but I'm just trying this out. The whole motivating event that kicks off the need for slow productivity is the mix of pseudo productivity with the high tech office and those two things don't play together.

[00:50:43] So I think about it more that way, but what do I want to do next? I want to become a better writer, right? And like this is a lot of my program over at the New Yorker.

[00:50:51] There's a ladder there to climb. I want to become better, right? Like that's a place where they care a lot about craft. I'm a pretty good writer. I would like to be a really good writer.

[00:51:00] And that there's a such way to do that. You got trained. You know, you got to stretch yourself. You got to work with these world class editors. So I want to become a better writer. That's one thing I'm working on.

[00:51:08] Two, I helped found this new center at Georgetown called the Center for Digital Ethics. So, you know, I'm really interested in being more formal in these ideas I've investigated in my books about technology and how do we cope with it? Like from a humanistic perspective, like how do we prevent new technology from making our lives worse? How do we leverage new technology and make our lives better?

[00:51:29] I think that there's a life's work maybe built into that, right? So that's a big thing that's going on as well. And so I am changing, right?

[00:51:37] I can't just write, I don't know how many books I can write that are just going to be, here's an idea and here's advice. You know, I have other things that I'm percolating as well. I have to grow.

[00:51:49] Well, and I guess I could see those threads, right, in your writing because I would say the concept of so good they can't ignore you is a very, is a very great concept.

[00:52:02] Like it makes me think of like Seth Godin style concepts that, you know, that's really the key. That's that's that's the threat of quality over quantity.

[00:52:15] And if they if if your work is so good, they can't ignore you. Now you have a career. Like that's really the essence of making a successful career.

[00:52:22] And but that evolves into like this latest book where it's a book about productivity and work. But now you're weaving in all these different stories, you have stories in that book as well.

[00:52:32] But here now it's it's much more this this this writing style that that that you've been evolving. And so I see that that direction.

[00:52:43] And it's interesting with the digital ethics. The one thing that makes me think is that both of these concerns and it's almost cliche for me to bring this up. But it both these concerns are related to artificial intelligence.

[00:52:54] Because with artificial intelligence, someone can be a bad writer and write 20 books a year.

[00:53:00] And of course with digital ethics, AI is going to be written all over that. And like right now your PhD thesis, let's say I'm let's say someone's not a good writer and and they're also have writers block.

[00:53:12] But they have to write a PhD thesis. This is why some PhDs take like eight years, nine years to finish. Because people just don't write sit down and write their PhD. But now they could put in all their formulas and say write a thesis around this and they can write their PhD thesis in like five days.

[00:53:26] And you have to be a good writer now to really stand out from. I see it now every day in the news. I can tell which articles are written by AI. It's too many adjectives too many adverbs.

[00:53:39] Yeah, it's a little too glowing without being analytical. But no, maybe other people don't realize that because it's got all the facts. So it's it's written.

[00:53:48] And obviously AI has a big role in ethics. But I think both these directions are going are somehow related to AI. Plus the idea of productivity. Again, I can write my PhD now in one-tenth of time if I want to.

[00:54:01] Well, I mean, AI is definitely something I've been thinking about. You know, I did a big New Yorker piece last year that was just trying. I think it was like one of the first big pieces to get in the guts of just how a large language model works without using one to read that.

[00:54:14] Yeah, no technical terminology. The New Yorker does not do technical terminology. All analogies. Let's really explain how these things work. And that that was interesting because that article then sparked off a lot of one-on-one and group meetings.

[00:54:27] I did multiple Senate briefings after that, for example, a bunch of board of directors meetings. It was really interesting to see how people were thinking about this and I have another big article.

[00:54:37] I'm working on it now when this interview comes out. It probably already be out in the New Yorker looking at the shortcomings of language models and what the next generation. I think a lot about it.

[00:54:48] But it comes to writing, though. So I'll give an optimistic skeptical take, which is it's true, for example, like when it comes to writing books, that AI will soon be able to write pretty good books. But here's the thing.

[00:55:01] There's already a ton of people that could write a pretty good book, but they don't because there's not a big market for pretty good books. In other words, you already have to stand out just to sell a book.

[00:55:14] So AI is catching up to what an average college educated person could write if they spent a lot of time. Maybe what it's automating more is the time, not the output.

[00:55:24] But there's not a big market for that because there's a lot of people who could do that and they don't because what do you do with a perfectly reasonable book?

[00:55:33] Perfectly reasonable books don't sell. That's a really good point. That's why I was more interested or focusing on a short articles.

[00:55:43] So if you read a gossip article on the web, like, "Oh, Kim Kardashian's now dating so-and-so," I bet there's like an 80% or 90% chance written by AI.

[00:55:53] And PhD Thesesies, I don't think are written yet by AI, but actually should be. Because the biologist with the thesis is not a writer and the writing is slowing him down from getting to his career or her career, they should use AI to write a poorly written PhD Thesesies, which is what most PhD Thesesies are.

[00:56:12] Yeah, well, I mean, more importantly, probably also is non-English-speaking scientist allows you to actually much more effectively get your work out there because English is the language, the fact of science.

[00:56:26] Thesesies, again, I have a little bit of skeptical optimism. The hard part about Thesesiesies and Most Field is not the writing.

[00:56:32] I used to have this argument a lot. When I was early in my career, I did a lot of appearances at what are called PhD or doctoral or dissertation boot camp.

[00:56:41] So, like, Georgetown or nearby universities, you have a bunch of doctoral students who are writing their dissertations.

[00:56:47] Like, we're all going to get together for a week and encourage each other. And they would often have me come by because back then I was seen as the student productivity guy.

[00:56:54] And they would only ever use this verb, writing. Like, "Yeah, you're going to get your writing in. That's the problem. You're not doing your writing. We need more time for writing."

[00:57:03] And I would always push back. And I was like writing is the easy part. It's like having the idea to write about the hard part.

[00:57:09] Like, I'm a mathematician. It's incredibly difficult to solve a proof. That's like what I spend 90% of my time doing.

[00:57:15] Oh, and then I have to write it up afterwards. That's not the hard part. My problem is not, don't just tell me, "Hey, write every day. It's how do I solve really hard math proof so I don't know how to solve it."

[00:57:24] And it's actually the case for a lot of fields, even humanity fields. It's like, I need an original theoretical framework for understanding this.

[00:57:31] It's like literate and interesting and smart. And they get stuck not because writing's hard, but because their idea is not quite there and if it's not quite there, people will know.

[00:57:39] So I always think there too, like the writing's not the problem. It's the ideas. But I will say this is where I'm excited about AI intersecting with academia is mathematics.

[00:57:50] Now, language models can't do mathematics in any sort of interesting way. When you combine language models with planning engines, which is a big push going on, and that's what my new article is about.

[00:57:59] When you combine AI models with planning engines, which can simulate into the future, this makes it possible for them to tackle a lot of more non-trivial mathematics,

[00:58:07] in particular like simplifying equations. You can set up a probability function and it can try to simplify a concentration bound.

[00:58:15] A lot of stuff, I don't think the average person doesn't necessarily understand, that a lot of science has a lot of applied mathematics where it's just a pain and it's really hard.

[00:58:25] It's hard not because it's interesting, but it's just hard to manipulate equations. That's like most of theoretical physics.

[00:58:31] 20% having the big idea, 80% trying to make these equations simplify and find the qualities. It's algebra. It's very difficult algebra. It's what slowed down Einstein.

[00:58:42] He's very good at math compared to you or me, but was not very good at math as compared to theoretical physicists.

[00:58:47] And it really slowed him down on general relativity because his math chops aren't there. AI might be able to help with that. Mechanistic applied mathematics.

[00:58:54] And I just know from my own work as a theoretical computer scientist, that could have doubled my productivity.

[00:59:00] That's interesting. I believe that. Ai is going to have all the techniques for theorem proving at its disposal, whereas the average mathematician might not have those techniques.

[00:59:13] It's not even going to be theorem proving. It's going to be more like, "Okay, I want to show this probability that I'm expressing as this equation is bounded by something like this."

[00:59:23] So can you simplify this equation? Simplifying equations is like 50% of applied mathematics. And it's just really hard algebra for whatever reason that the researchers I was talking to, mainly at meta because they'll actually talk to reporters still.

[00:59:38] They're saying these planning engines combined with language models, they're really good at that. Simplifying algebraic equations, it's one of these sweet spots where these new technologies are going to be good at.

[00:59:50] So it would be like Einstein could have got general relativity three years earlier if he didn't have to teach himself, you know, Rheinman spaces and non-Euclidean geometry.

[01:00:00] If he could have just had help with that hard math so that his brilliant ideas could be out. So yes, I'm optimistic about that.

[01:00:05] Applied mathematics is going to be much more accessible, which means we can select more for people with brilliant ideas.

[01:00:12] I mean, not the harp on this, but this was my problem as a theoretical computer scientist. I was pretty good, but I'm not a great mathematician, and that slows me to hell down.

[01:00:19] If I could have help on simplifying probability expressions, I really do think I could publish twice as much. I have some awards, but I probably have twice as many awards.

[01:00:30] It really would make a difference.

[01:00:33] Now, I'm just curious, like this is like a side thing, but while you're doing all this computer science, and while you've been a professor at Georgetown, has writing these other books and writing for the New York, all this kind of stuff, this outside activity, did that help or hurt you getting tenure?

[01:00:48] No, it was a no op. It was essentially not mentioned in my tenure case, right?

[01:00:54] Oh, okay.

[01:00:55] Because, I mean, there's a lot about academia people mix up, but like when it comes to tenure, it's simpler and both, simpler and harder than people realize.

[01:01:04] The vast majority of a tenure decision is based on a collection of confidential letters that are solicited from top scholars in your particular academic niche.

[01:01:13] And these letters focus on one thing. How good is their research?

[01:01:17] Like, how impactful is it on the field? How interesting and hard is it?

[01:01:22] Who would you compare them to in the field of people who like recently got tenured or at their same rank?

[01:01:28] Who is better than them? Who is worse than them? Where do they line up?

[01:01:31] It's like recruiting for a basketball team. It's incredibly myopic.

[01:01:36] And that's everything for a tenure decision.

[01:01:38] There's some things you can do that can disqualify you.

[01:01:40] So, like, if you have abysmal teacher ratings, they might say, there's a problem here, even though he's a great researcher, they'll overlook it, but you could hurt yourself with that.

[01:01:51] But you can't get tenure on anything but confidential letters from top scholars looking at it.

[01:01:57] So, when I went up for tenure, I had written my fifth book, I think had just come out.

[01:02:03] There was a little paragraph somewhere like on my service statement, where I was like, oh, also, I impact a broader community by doing writing, and there's a lot.

[01:02:13] And that was like a paragraph. So, it's a complete no op from a positive perspective.

[01:02:18] And if anything, the negative is it takes up a lot of time.

[01:02:21] But, yeah, you do not. And I just went out for full professor.

[01:02:24] I emphasize this stuff more because now I have the Center for Digital Ethics.

[01:02:27] I'm trying to argue that this is part of that.

[01:02:29] And so, I feel that case is, here's what I wrote, here's where it was published, here's the awards at one, and they go out and they get letters.

[01:02:36] How important is the scholar? That's everything in research universities. It's your research.

[01:02:41] Okay, I didn't know how to tell the tenure process worked.

[01:02:44] But, listen, it's all part of the same thing, that it's like slow and steady wins the race.

[01:02:51] And it's part of this concept of slow productivity.

[01:02:54] I have to say, I really enjoyed not only the concepts in the book, but all the stories.

[01:02:59] You have everybody from Benjamin Franklin to Jewell, who's been, I guess, on this podcast as well,

[01:03:04] to friends of mine like Jenny Blake or Paul Jarvis or, you know, so many stories about writers too, John Grisham, Jane Austen, you know, Clive Costler.

[01:03:13] It's just great stories, great concepts, really important for me as I've been going through

[01:03:20] what I feel is slow productivity, but again, combined with this guilt that either I impose on myself or others impose on me,

[01:03:27] and I feel like I've taken too long a break from writing another book.

[01:03:32] And so I've been, I was thinking about that while I was reading this book.

[01:03:35] I encourage people to read it just to have this sort of self-reflection about how their own work is satisfying their needs.

[01:03:41] But Cal, once again, if you've been on for every book except the books that appeared before this podcast started,

[01:03:48] so that was over 10 years ago, this is like your fifth time on the podcast.

[01:03:52] Thank you so much for coming on. Once again, I really appreciate it.

[01:03:55] Oh, thanks, James. It doesn't feel real yet when I write a book until we've talked.

[01:04:00] So now I can actually feel like, OK, this is a thing. I have a new book out.

[01:04:04] Yeah, exactly. That's important.

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