Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Good Morning.
Speaker 1: This is Laura, Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
Speaker 1: episode is going to be a longer one part of
Speaker 1: my interview series where I talk with fascinating people about
Speaker 1: how they take their days from great to awesome.
Speaker 2: And any advice they might have for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: So today I am delighted to welcome Cal Newport to
Speaker 1: this show. Cal is a professor of computer science at
Speaker 1: Georgetown and he's also the author of several books on productivity,
Speaker 1: including the recent Slow Productivity and Deep Work, a very
Speaker 1: famous one. So Cal, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Well, Laura, it's always a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have a conversation and get to share
Speaker 1: it with our listeners. So Cal, I mean, something that's
Speaker 1: always interesting to me about you is that many of
Speaker 1: us who wind up, you know, creating content about productivity
Speaker 1: basically just do this and you still also have a
Speaker 1: normal job. So I wonder if you could talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how you structure your life in order
Speaker 1: to make space for both.
Speaker 3: Well, I carefully would probably be the short answer. When
Speaker 3: it comes to podcasting. That particular type of content creation.
Speaker 3: I was very wary about it, right because I knew
Speaker 3: there was a regular time schedule footprint that this would demand.
Speaker 3: I'm very wary about adding things into my life that
Speaker 3: can make a regular commitment on my time, and so
Speaker 3: I really put it off and kept putting it off
Speaker 3: until the pandemic came and suddenly I had so much
Speaker 3: time that it didn't seem like so much of an impact.
Speaker 3: But I worried then, hey, when things get back to
Speaker 3: a normal type of schedule, I don't want this to
Speaker 3: have too big of a footprint. And so the rule
Speaker 3: I came up with for podcasting was one half day
Speaker 3: once a week. I was willing to give up one
Speaker 3: half day once a week, but no more, and that
Speaker 3: I would have to figure out how to stay within that.
Speaker 3: So to grow the show, or to do more episodes,
Speaker 3: or to do more research, or to have more sophisticated
Speaker 3: things happening on the show, I would just have to
Speaker 3: find ways to fit that within the week. So I
Speaker 3: went slowly. It was me at my house, and then
Speaker 3: I brought on a producer, and the producer could do
Speaker 3: more things, and that gave me more time to try
Speaker 3: to do other things. And if we want to update
Speaker 3: something about the studio or the setup. This might take
Speaker 3: a very long time because again I have these half
Speaker 3: days once a week to work on it. But I
Speaker 3: was careful about it. When it comes to my writing,
Speaker 3: that's a little bit different because professor's write, so it's
Speaker 3: not so incongruent with the other things I'm doing as
Speaker 3: a professor. Professors write books, professors do interviews, and so
Speaker 3: that I was used to doing my whole life as
Speaker 3: an academic, from grad school through all the ranks of
Speaker 3: professors and full professor. Writing today has all been about
Speaker 3: making sure you're writing all the time, So that fit
Speaker 3: much more naturally that I try to write every day.
Speaker 3: I try to write first, first thing every day. Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's a computer science paper, sometimes it's a book, Sometimes
Speaker 3: it's a New Yorker art sometimes it's a digital ethics article.
Speaker 3: That felt more natural. That was a more natural fit
Speaker 3: for what I was doing, all right.
Speaker 1: But the idea of blocking off a certain amount of
Speaker 1: time for a project is a key part of your work.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're always teaching people about the idea of
Speaker 1: time blocking, and maybe you can explain a little bit
Speaker 1: to people what that actually means and how that's kind
Speaker 1: of what you're doing with the podcasting.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm a big believer in giving your time a job,
Speaker 3: at least during your workday, right. I think if you
Speaker 3: approach your workday from the mindset of just when I
Speaker 3: have time, let me think about what I want to
Speaker 3: work on next? Like what am I in the mood
Speaker 3: to work on? Or maybe I'm a David Allen afficionado,
Speaker 3: so I'm going to load up some context list and
Speaker 3: grab a next action off of it. I think this
Speaker 3: approach doesn't work well given the pacing and workloads of
Speaker 3: modern jobs. It's much better to actually directly confront what
Speaker 3: is the time I have available today? What do I
Speaker 3: want to do with it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe if those first thirty minutes of the day
Speaker 3: I have free, what do I want to do with
Speaker 3: those thirty minutes? Like? Am I going to work on
Speaker 3: this project? The flip side of time blocking is not
Speaker 3: only does it allow you to make more of the
Speaker 3: time you have from a productivity standpoint, it also lets
Speaker 3: you to better take time off. When you're controlling the
Speaker 3: time of your day. Now, you can say something, for example, like,
Speaker 3: in my time block plan, I'm going to take this
Speaker 3: two and a half hour block in the afternoon. You
Speaker 3: know what, I'm exhausted after this project that I just
Speaker 3: hit a deadline on. I'm going to go watch a movie.
Speaker 3: And when you're time blocking, you can do that with
Speaker 3: complete comfort because you say, I know what i'm doing.
Speaker 3: This is what i'm doing before, that's what I'm doing
Speaker 3: after that, this is part of a bigger plan.
Speaker 2: This is fine.
Speaker 3: So I'm a big believer of give your time a job.
Speaker 3: Figure out when you're going to work on things, when
Speaker 3: you're not going to work on things, what confront the
Speaker 3: reality of your schedule, confront the reality of your workload,
Speaker 3: and then make the best decisions you can.
Speaker 1: And when do you do personally this confrontation? I mean,
Speaker 1: what does your planning process tend.
Speaker 2: To look like?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a believer in multi scale planning, right, because
Speaker 3: I think the key problem with any sort of organizational
Speaker 3: philosoph is that in the end, you're trying to do
Speaker 3: something very difficult, which is connect on one side of
Speaker 3: the spectrum of the scale spectrum, a big picture aspiration
Speaker 3: for you in your life, to the other end of
Speaker 3: the scale spectrum, which is what am I doing to
Speaker 3: the next minute, right, that's actually kind of hard to
Speaker 3: do because you can't minute by minute be continually rehashing
Speaker 3: what are my goals for my life? What am I
Speaker 3: trying to accomplish? So how do we get from big
Speaker 3: picture visions down to end the moment execution. I think
Speaker 3: you should have multiple scales of planning that essentially filters
Speaker 3: this intuition down. So what I mean by that is
Speaker 3: your biggest scale might be a plan that you do
Speaker 3: at the scale of like a season. Right, okay, for
Speaker 3: the fall, I'm making my plan. I get back in
Speaker 3: touch with my goals before my life. What's important to me.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take a whole day and do this.
Speaker 3: I'm going to reflect what do I want to accomplish
Speaker 3: this season? What changes am I trying to make? What
Speaker 3: major projects I want to make progress on. You make
Speaker 3: that plan. Now you look at this plan once a week.
Speaker 3: So now once a week you can create a weekly plan.
Speaker 3: This is when you review that big picture seasonal plan
Speaker 3: in your weekly plan. Now you're confronting your calendar. Hey,
Speaker 3: what days are more crowded than others? Where are there
Speaker 3: going to be good opportunities this week to make progress
Speaker 3: on things that are important? But not urgent. I often
Speaker 3: recommend during the weekly planning that you're putting priorities onto
Speaker 3: your calendar at this point where you can protect them,
Speaker 3: like meetings or appointments that you're used to. Right you say,
Speaker 3: you know what, I am grabbing Thursday afternoon, which is
Speaker 3: still free. I'm going to grab that for working on
Speaker 3: this big riding project. And now now that's protected and
Speaker 3: other meetings and calls can't take up that time. Weekly
Speaker 3: planning is also where you could see there might be
Speaker 3: obstacles that are punching above their weight class. So what
Speaker 3: I mean by this might be Tuesday morning is perfect
Speaker 3: for me to like really push through and finish this project,
Speaker 3: except I have this coffee with like a colleague that
Speaker 3: I agree to three weeks ago, and it's across town
Speaker 3: and it's at ten. That destroys the entire morning. And
Speaker 3: when you see the whole picture is when you can say,
Speaker 3: you know what, why don't I just call that friend
Speaker 3: or that colleague and say can we do this like
Speaker 3: Thursday afternoon instead? They don't care. But you've just cleared
Speaker 3: up a big chunk of time, all right, So now
Speaker 3: you have made your weekly plan. Each day you can
Speaker 3: time block the working hours of that day. All right,
Speaker 3: what's my plan for the day? Reference your weekly plan.
Speaker 3: So if there's anything you wrote down put on your calendar,
Speaker 3: wrote down to your weekly plan, just reference that you're
Speaker 3: only looking one scale up into multi scale planning, and
Speaker 3: then you make your plan for the day. But those
Speaker 3: seasonal aspirations are filtering down through your weekly plan down
Speaker 3: to your daily plan. And then when you get to
Speaker 3: the moment, you're just doing what your time block plan
Speaker 3: says for you to be doing that moment. So your
Speaker 3: action in that moment is connected through these four links
Speaker 3: back to your bigger aspirations and dreams without you having
Speaker 3: to confront them continually throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think I do something very similar. I tend
Speaker 1: to plan my weeks sort of later in the previous week,
Speaker 1: either Thursday or Friday, looking forward to the next week.
Speaker 1: I'm curious when you.
Speaker 3: Do this, I want to do what you do. I
Speaker 3: actually think Friday end of day would be optimal because
Speaker 3: then you go into the weekend with the psychological suker
Speaker 3: of knowing I've looked at the week ahead, I have
Speaker 3: a plan for the week ahead. Otherwise you kind of
Speaker 3: have this in the back of your head, sort of
Speaker 3: anxiety of like I don't know what's happening next week.
Speaker 3: I often don't get to it Friday afternoon because I
Speaker 3: like to shut down early on Fridays, and I often
Speaker 3: don't quite get to it. So Monday morning is almost
Speaker 3: always when I'm doing this. I accommodate that reality, however,
Speaker 3: by going pretty light on Monday meeting. So what I
Speaker 3: try to do is keep Monday relatively open so that
Speaker 3: I can spend non trivial time, first thing, for example,
Speaker 3: making my weekly plan, and not have that run right
Speaker 3: up against some sort of meeting or call or recording session.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean I find a really maybe psychologically need
Speaker 1: to know what's happening, because otherwise I do think about
Speaker 1: it over the weekend a lot and get worried about like, well,
Speaker 1: something's not going to happen Monday, that had to happen Monday.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I've learned to do it earlier in
Speaker 1: the day on Friday so it doesn't get bumped.
Speaker 2: I guess is how I do it.
Speaker 1: But I know people do it a lot of different times.
Speaker 1: Some people will swear by Sunday sessions, for instance.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably another common time.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take one quick ad break and
Speaker 1: then we will be back talking more with Cal Newport.
Speaker 1: So I am back talking with Cal Newport, who is
Speaker 1: a productivity expert, the author of several books on the
Speaker 1: topic in addition to being a computer science professor at Georgetown.
Speaker 1: But Cal, one of the books people know you best
Speaker 1: for is Deep Work, which came out several years ago now,
Speaker 1: and you know, you talk about all the things that
Speaker 1: people have sort of historically done to limit their distractions
Speaker 1: as they produce their their masterpieces. And you know, so
Speaker 1: I know a lot of us are trying to get
Speaker 1: more in the deep habit, deep work habit, in this
Speaker 1: very distracted world. What are some steps we can take
Speaker 1: to limit the interruptions, limit the distractions, create more of
Speaker 1: a deep work habit. Given that you know neither you
Speaker 1: are I are going to wind up in a tower
Speaker 1: for three months.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the key idea in deep work is
Speaker 3: that cognitive context switches have for real cost. So, just
Speaker 3: from a very practical neuroscience perspective, if I'm trying to
Speaker 3: do something cognitively demanding, let's say I'm trying to come
Speaker 3: up with a complicated business strategy, right something, and I
Speaker 3: switch my cognitive context. So I look at an email inbox,
Speaker 3: for example, Even if that check is brief, I have
Speaker 3: initiated a cascade of neurological changes in my brain to
Speaker 3: try to switch the target to my attention away from
Speaker 3: what I'm doing into that inbox. And when I wrench
Speaker 3: my attention back, I'm now in a confused state, and
Speaker 3: my ability to produce work with my brain reduces, exhaustion
Speaker 3: goes up. So the main neurological idea behind deep work
Speaker 3: is when you're working on something hard, try to give
Speaker 3: it your full attention. Right, These back and forth checks
Speaker 3: will really drag you down, all right, So now the
Speaker 3: question is in the work context at least, why are
Speaker 3: we doing these checks? And here's a place where I
Speaker 3: think we get it wrong. We often abstract behavior like
Speaker 3: checking email or slack as an entirely optional behavioral quirk. Right,
Speaker 3: We say, look, just batch your email, don't check it, right,
Speaker 3: check your email less often while you're working on your project,
Speaker 3: like it's just a willpower issue. That's the issue. It's
Speaker 3: the user error. But one of the big things I
Speaker 3: uncovered is I worked on this topic and as I
Speaker 3: wrote the follow up the deep work, which was called
Speaker 3: the World Without Email. One of the ideas I uncovered
Speaker 3: is the reason why we're checking these inboxes and these
Speaker 3: chat channels all the time, completely destabilizing our ability to
Speaker 3: deep work is our underlying collaboration strategies that we're too
Speaker 3: willing in the moment to collaborate by just sending ad
Speaker 3: hoc messages back and forth. In the moment, it's easier
Speaker 3: if something comes up I need to figure out with you.
Speaker 3: In the moment, it's easier to dash off a message, Hey,
Speaker 3: what's going on with this question mark sind But what
Speaker 3: we don't realize is over time, what happens with these
Speaker 3: ad hoc back and forth exchanges is that we have
Speaker 3: to keep checking communication channels because we need to bounce
Speaker 3: these messages back and forth enough times to get to
Speaker 3: a conclusion within whatever deadline is relevant. So when I
Speaker 3: send you that message this morning that says, hey, what's
Speaker 3: going up with this right, and it's something we need
Speaker 3: to really figure out today, I have actually probably just
Speaker 3: have locked myself in to the need to have a
Speaker 3: ten message back and forth interaction that's happening unscheduled, which
Speaker 3: means I'm going to have to keep checking my inbox
Speaker 3: to find your next message in time to reply and
Speaker 3: time for you to reply, which means I might have
Speaker 3: accidentally just generated fifty extra inbox checks just by in
Speaker 3: the moment saying hey, what's going on with this question mark? So,
Speaker 3: I think the deeper cures, at least in the office,
Speaker 3: the deeper cures for getting towards more deep work is
Speaker 3: moving more collaboration out of ad hoc on schedule back
Speaker 3: and forth messaging, consolidating it, having process around it, or
Speaker 3: using consolidated synchronous times like office hours or group office hours.
Speaker 3: That is like the most important thing I think for
Speaker 3: getting people some mental energy back and the ability to
Speaker 3: do more deeper work.
Speaker 1: So maybe like scheduling a regular one on one with
Speaker 1: somebody that you work with closely, and then you save
Speaker 1: most of the questions you have for that regular meeting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think everyone should have daily office hours. It
Speaker 3: should last for forty five minutes, It should be in
Speaker 3: a well publicized time. Your door should be open, you
Speaker 3: should have a zoom room open, and your phone is
Speaker 3: sitting right next to you. Anything that requires more than
Speaker 3: a single response, so any message that requires a little
Speaker 3: bit of back and forth. The default should be this
Speaker 3: is we should get into this when grab me at
Speaker 3: the next office hours you're available, and we'll get it done.
Speaker 3: Like I think that should absolutely happen. I think teams
Speaker 3: should have at least twice a week a dock at
Speaker 3: clearing meeting or any issue that comes up that needs
Speaker 3: to be discussed as a group, you put it in
Speaker 3: a shared document for the team. When you get to
Speaker 3: that next meeting, you go through that document line by
Speaker 3: line by line, just nailing things one after another, everyone together.
Speaker 3: It's not about saving overall amounts of time, right because
Speaker 3: you might say it takes me no time to reply
Speaker 3: to email messages. What it's reducing as context shifts. If
Speaker 3: I can take fifty inbox checks and can selllidate that
Speaker 3: in the fifty minutes of real time office hours, it's
Speaker 3: a massive win for me.
Speaker 1: And I imagine people can do this in their personal
Speaker 1: lives too. I mean I could see that. You know,
Speaker 1: my husband and I go back and forth a lot
Speaker 1: on the details of planning our lives, and it's probably
Speaker 1: worse than any slack channel out there. But consolidating that
Speaker 1: into one particular meeting every you know, it could be
Speaker 1: in the evening, or it could be every couple days
Speaker 1: or once a week or whatever people need to do.
Speaker 1: But then you would hash through all the major issues
Speaker 1: at that point and then ideally not have to hash
Speaker 1: through them at other points.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I think definitely. You know, if you're in
Speaker 3: a partnership, you're married, or whatever's going on, you probably
Speaker 3: need especially if you have kids, you probably need a
Speaker 3: morning check in like, hey, are we on board with
Speaker 3: the game plan for today? And then you need a
Speaker 3: more like substantial This is when we do it. We
Speaker 3: do it right before dinner. We do it o we're
Speaker 3: doing the dishes. We also we're big believers in having
Speaker 3: a physical inbox, right because you generate a lot of paper.
Speaker 3: It's oh, here's the thing from the car dealership. Here's
Speaker 3: like a form that we have to fill out for
Speaker 3: the kids camp. So we have a physical inbox so
Speaker 3: that when we have this meeting, we can actually go
Speaker 3: through the physical artifacts that have to be discussed. I'm
Speaker 3: also a big believer with friends, because it's a big
Speaker 3: issue people have. It's like a double edged sword. It's
Speaker 3: fantastic to be social, but in an age of text messaging,
Speaker 3: it can put you into this continual, partial attention of
Speaker 3: where I'm constantly dealing with, you know, what's going on
Speaker 3: with different friends or this or that. The commute office
Speaker 3: hours is a fantastic hack where you just tell all
Speaker 3: your friends this is when I'm driving home, call me whenever, right,
Speaker 3: and you actually end up being more socially because it
Speaker 3: moves more of these like ad hoc back and forth
Speaker 3: text conversations to like people call you when you're driving
Speaker 3: home and you can catch up with people and answer questions,
Speaker 3: and yeah, I think you're right. In your personal life,
Speaker 3: these same ideas can help.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the group text can in fact consume a ton
Speaker 1: of time, a ton of attention. Although you know, as
Speaker 1: I think about what, you know, how I get distracted.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes it's email, but I can't fool myself
Speaker 1: that somebody's that's really trying to reach me. It's just
Speaker 1: you know that I kind of want to check email
Speaker 1: or whatever. Because sometimes wrestling with complicated, concentrated work is challenging, right,
Speaker 1: I mean it can feel kind of unpleasant almost sometimes
Speaker 1: in the moment as we're struggling with it.
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, do you sense this too?
Speaker 3: Deep? Work is not natural? Right, in a sense, that
Speaker 3: the human brain, it's evolved to give sharp attention temporarily
Speaker 3: to things that are highly salient in our environment. So
Speaker 3: we can focus really hard if we hear a rustling
Speaker 3: and we're like, okay, is that a bear or whatever.
Speaker 3: Focusing for a sustained amount of times on symbolic abstract
Speaker 3: concepts in our brain is something we're just hijacking our
Speaker 3: brain apparatus to do that, just like reading is something
Speaker 3: we're not evolved to do. We have to hijack parts
Speaker 3: of the visual and audio apparatus in the brain and
Speaker 3: rewire it, brute force rewire it to do this artificial thing.
Speaker 3: So deep work is hard, right, And so that means,
Speaker 3: for example, there's a limit on how much you can do.
Speaker 3: It's practiced right. And I often have to remember this
Speaker 3: when I'm giving talks about this is I've spent my
Speaker 3: entire adult life training at the highest levels to be
Speaker 3: a theoretical computer scientist. That is not most people's situation, right.
Speaker 3: I Mean, it's like someone who was training to be
Speaker 3: a professional athlete saying, hey, you should be in the
Speaker 3: gym six hours a day. So it's something you get
Speaker 3: better with that practice, And most people aren't super practiced
Speaker 3: at it, and sometimes you just can't do it. I
Speaker 3: told you offline, I was sick for most of the
Speaker 3: last week. You know, I couldn't do deep work. You know,
Speaker 3: it's so hard that there's no way you can take
Speaker 3: a compromised mind. And the thing is our minds are
Speaker 3: compromised by a lot of things. I think it's a
Speaker 3: really good point. We should respect the difficulty of deep
Speaker 3: work and use that to let ourselves off the hook
Speaker 3: a little bit when we're not doing and jew Wiles
Speaker 3: in his attic in Princeton solving Fermat's last theorem over
Speaker 3: seven years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think I use all my brain much,
Speaker 1: not that I would ever be able to do that,
Speaker 1: but it's true. We you know, thinking of it as
Speaker 1: an athletic sort of thing that you are be in training,
Speaker 1: and probably most of us are just sort of in
Speaker 1: the walk around the block kind of level of fitness,
Speaker 1: and with some concerted effort, money of us could do more.
Speaker 1: You know, you could run a five k, you could
Speaker 1: you know, lift a reasonable amount of weight. Then there's
Speaker 1: some people who are going to be, you know, running
Speaker 1: two hour and ten minute marathons, and they're a whole
Speaker 1: different class, but most of us could be better than
Speaker 1: we currently are if we if we work at it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're going to take one more quick
Speaker 1: ad break and then we'll be back with a little
Speaker 1: bit more from Cal Newport. We're here after the ad
Speaker 1: break talking with Cal Newport, who is a computer science
Speaker 1: professor at Georgetown, the author of several productivity books, also
Speaker 1: a podcaster. You should go check him out. But we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about routines on this show. You talked
Speaker 1: recently in this interview about doing a shutdown richeal.
Speaker 2: You said you did this relatively early on Fridays.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what your shut down ritual looks like and then why
Speaker 1: you do it.
Speaker 3: Well, it's inspired by goes back to David Allen. David
Speaker 3: Allen was inspired himself by Dean Atchison, who was a
Speaker 3: consultant who a business consultant who is Alan's mentor. And
Speaker 3: Atchinson had this idea, which I think is correct, that
Speaker 3: open loops, so things that you are involved with are
Speaker 3: obligated to do or committed to do, that are not
Speaker 3: captured somewhere that exists just in your head. Are a
Speaker 3: source of anxiety and stress. And it's a very naturalistic
Speaker 3: and kind of common sense theory because your mind, if
Speaker 3: it deems something is important and doesn't trust that it's
Speaker 3: taking care of or will be taken care of, it
Speaker 3: has to keep remembering it refreshing itself so you don't
Speaker 3: forget it, and this takes up mental resources and ultimately
Speaker 3: becomes a source of stress or anxiety. So Alan channeling
Speaker 3: Atchison said, oh, full capture with this terminology is important.
Speaker 3: Everything should be written down in a trusted system. And
Speaker 3: I really have found that to be successful in my
Speaker 3: own own sort of mental life is trusting I have
Speaker 3: a plan for what needs to be done, and there's
Speaker 3: nothing I need to remember in my head. Gives me peace.
Speaker 3: And so I realized a big missing piece of all
Speaker 3: of this for me was that at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, if I just said, okay, I'm done working now,
Speaker 3: now I'm doing my personal life, it was very difficult
Speaker 3: to move past the open loops because even if I
Speaker 3: had done the David Allen thing and captured tasks in
Speaker 3: lists that I was going to review, there was other
Speaker 3: things going on, like what's my plan for getting this done?
Speaker 3: Do I need to keep working on this. Maybe this
Speaker 3: isn't working at all. Like I actually developed my shutdown
Speaker 3: routines while working on my doctoral dissertation. I'd be very
Speaker 3: stressed at the end of the workday about like a
Speaker 3: proof that wasn't working, and like maybe I should keep
Speaker 3: thinking about this. What if everything falls apart? So what
Speaker 3: I started doing was a simple routine where at the
Speaker 3: end of the day I closed down all open loops.
Speaker 3: So partially that's capturing open obligations and systems. Partially it's
Speaker 3: looking at my calendar and seeing what's coming up ahead,
Speaker 3: making sure that I'm not forgetting something that's going to happen.
Speaker 3: And partially it's looking at my inboxes to make sure
Speaker 3: there's not something urgent I missed or just arrived. And
Speaker 3: partially it was looking at my plan, what's my plan
Speaker 3: for the rest of this week in convincing myself I
Speaker 3: have a good plan for making progress on the things
Speaker 3: that matter, and then I would do a really demonstrable
Speaker 3: ritual to indicate to myself i'd shut down. I used
Speaker 3: to actually say the phrase schedule shutdown complete because it
Speaker 3: was an unusual phrase. It's a weird phrase, and so
Speaker 3: I could then use it as a hook to tell
Speaker 3: my brain when an hour later it was like we
Speaker 3: gotta worry about our thesis or where everything is following apart,
Speaker 3: I would say I said that weird phrase, And there
Speaker 3: is no way I would have said that phrase unless
Speaker 3: I'd actually checked everything was comfortable. We're done shutting down,
Speaker 3: And so the shutdown routine became like a key way
Speaker 3: for me to actually resist rumination. And what happens with
Speaker 3: shutdown routines is that you have to deploy the conversation
Speaker 3: a lot at first. At first you have to say
Speaker 3: to yourself a lot, no, no, no, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to get into this. I did the shutdown routine. But
Speaker 3: over time it trains your brain just not try the
Speaker 3: ruminations in the first place, and the level of professional
Speaker 3: rumination post work really reduces.
Speaker 1: And so then you can just kind of relax on
Speaker 1: the commute home. Then if you know that the shutdown.
Speaker 3: Is, it's so fantastic and you can put on like
Speaker 3: a podcast and just yeah, Like, I had a very
Speaker 3: hard day yesterday with concrete right because I'm still recovering
Speaker 3: from the sickness, and I had five I consolidate a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff when I'm on campus into the same
Speaker 3: day five meetings. Boom boom boom. This is not my hat,
Speaker 3: you know me, Laura, My happy place is not five meetings.
Speaker 3: My happy place meet yeah, right right, So this just
Speaker 3: exhausts me. Right, my voice is going, I'm just really tired.
Speaker 3: I do my shutdown routine and then I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I had saved for my drive home. I was like,
Speaker 3: the Rewatchables podcast is doing the Blair Witch Progress project
Speaker 3: and my movie Guy and it's October first, I'm a
Speaker 3: Halloween guy, and I could just give into that, and
Speaker 3: thirty minutes of just enjoying my drive home, the shutdown
Speaker 3: routine made all the difference.
Speaker 2: Made all the difference.
Speaker 1: And you have to think about movies and something else.
Speaker 1: So Cal, I wonder if you could tell us, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the tagline of this show is taking our
Speaker 1: days from great to awesome? So what is something that
Speaker 1: you have done lately to take a day from great
Speaker 1: to awesome? Obviously, listening to that podcast on the commute
Speaker 1: home was probably a good thing. I wonder if you've
Speaker 1: got anything else fun you've done lately.
Speaker 3: I've been more willing this fall to take things off
Speaker 3: my plan for the day, and I, you know, I
Speaker 3: get I get into this mode sometimes more than others.
Speaker 3: Where I've been I've been more willing to say, you
Speaker 3: know what, what if we just stopped today at two?
Speaker 3: You know what if we watched the movie this morning?
Speaker 3: And I've been doing a little bit more of that.
Speaker 3: I think I was inspired by thinking about these ideas.
Speaker 3: In my last book, Slow Productivity. I had this whole
Speaker 3: part about working at a natural pace. I've been doing
Speaker 3: that a lot this fall. It's just it's it's been
Speaker 3: a busy fall. It's been a hard fall, and I've
Speaker 3: been reacting to the hardness by going easier on myself.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, a random Wednesday just saying I'm
Speaker 3: gonna call it. I'm going to call here and not
Speaker 3: in a haphazard way. I'm going to do a shutdown routine.
Speaker 3: I've covered my bases. I'm not being negligent here. But
Speaker 3: instead of making progress on this, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 3: for a walk. I'm going to watch a movie I've
Speaker 3: that has been useful to me. Counterbalancing the hard, the
Speaker 3: unusually hard with the unusually easy balances everything out in
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 1: I am a big fan of taking a longer break
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day. I mean, especially if
Speaker 1: people do wind up doing some work outside of normal
Speaker 1: working hours for whatever reason, moving those tiles around is
Speaker 1: just really helpful. I mean, like I've been sometimes taking
Speaker 1: a long lunch break and going and having a picnic somewhere,
Speaker 1: like in a botanical garden near my house, and it's
Speaker 1: a great, like just way to celebrate the middle of
Speaker 1: the day. I mean, there's a real reason for it,
Speaker 1: but it definitely makes me return feeling a little bit
Speaker 1: more refreshed.
Speaker 3: Well, I always say it's it is arbitrary. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you're working, for whatever, an eight hour day or
Speaker 3: something like that, like you can get a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff done, But the idea that that duration is exactly
Speaker 3: the right amount of time to get done exactly what
Speaker 3: you need to get done, is preposterous. Right, Clearly, there's
Speaker 3: way more than you can do than you're ever going
Speaker 3: to have time to do. Right, you could work twelve
Speaker 3: hours a day I still want to get done. You
Speaker 3: could work five hours day, it's not going to get done.
Speaker 3: So this idea that if I don't fill these arbitrary
Speaker 3: hours completely with effort, then I'm going to fall short
Speaker 3: of some sort of goal is just preposterous. That's not
Speaker 3: how these things work. What you're trying to do is
Speaker 3: make progress on the things that are important consistently while
Speaker 3: trying to make sure that the non like the urgent,
Speaker 3: annoying things don't drown you. Right, that's the game, and
Speaker 3: that game doesn't have to require a very consistent pace,
Speaker 3: a very consistent number of hours. I write about it
Speaker 3: in the book, write the new book. I have the
Speaker 3: whole thing about having much more variation and intensity over
Speaker 3: different time scales is what we're wired to do. So
Speaker 3: I'm been a big fan of actually implementing that.
Speaker 2: Sounds good.
Speaker 1: Well, is there any thing that you are particularly looking
Speaker 1: forward to? It sounds like Halloween might might be a
Speaker 1: big thing in your household.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, big, big Halloween, big Halloween guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's it's we're recording this on the second this
Speaker 3: next few days. I'll start. I start by putting out
Speaker 3: the base lights, right, so it requires twenty five different
Speaker 3: like wiring electronics elements. I have it all sort of inventory.
Speaker 3: I have two sets of lights that are computer controlled.
Speaker 3: I built my own computer controllers for those lights. And
Speaker 3: then there's a bunch of spot lights and motivated lighting effects.
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna start getting that out and then we
Speaker 3: bring out our figures. We're doing a ghost town theme
Speaker 3: this year, so I'm excited.
Speaker 1: My goodness, like six foot tall ghosts in the yard.
Speaker 2: I mean, what are we talking here?
Speaker 1: Are?
Speaker 3: So? I usually use skeletons as my base for all
Speaker 3: of the different scenes. This year, the new thing I
Speaker 3: tried is working with pink foam to actually do carvings,
Speaker 3: and so I made a multi level water sluice so
Speaker 3: that the prospectors can be have like a water sluice
Speaker 3: that they're at the skeleton prospectors.
Speaker 2: That sounds awesome. I want to trigger trade at your house.
Speaker 1: Well, Cal, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Where where can our listeners find you?
Speaker 3: So you can My podcast is called Deep Questions. You
Speaker 3: can find that wherever you do podcast. You can find
Speaker 3: out more about me and my books at Calmnewport dot com.
Speaker 3: I don't do social media, however, so you're not going
Speaker 3: to find much of me on there.
Speaker 1: Sounds good. Well, Cal, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out his books and if you
Speaker 1: have feedback on this or any other episodes before Breakfast.
Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me at Laura at
Speaker 1: Laura vandercam dot com and in the meantime, this is Laura.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and here's to.
Speaker 2: Making the most of our time.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
Speaker 1: or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
Speaker 1: vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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