Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
Speaker 2: and speaker.
Speaker 3: And I'm Sarah hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
Speaker 3: and course creator. We are two working parents who love
Speaker 3: our careers and our families.
Speaker 2: Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
Speaker 2: how real women manage work, family, and time for fun,
Speaker 2: from figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
Speaker 2: We want you to get the most out of life.
Speaker 4: Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.
Speaker 2: This episode is airing in early April of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Sarah and I are going to be interviewing Cal Newport,
Speaker 2: who is the author of Slow Productivity, which is a
Speaker 2: new book, also the author of Deep Work and several
Speaker 2: other books. And you'll notice that Sarah and I are
Speaker 2: both interviewing him.
Speaker 4: What happened.
Speaker 2: We tend to do interviews solo these days, partly for
Speaker 2: efficiency purposes, so we can make it work with everyone's schedules.
Speaker 2: So I had set this up with his publicity person,
Speaker 2: but then Cal sent us a very nice email to
Speaker 2: both of us saying how excited he was to chat
Speaker 2: about productivity. So I could not deny him, Sarah, and
Speaker 2: so she fortunately was free and could make it so. Sarah,
Speaker 2: since we talk a lot about productivity in this, have
Speaker 2: you always been into productivity like you did planners and
Speaker 2: calendars and such in high school?
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I was the world's most effective user
Speaker 3: of productivity tools back then, but I certainly really enjoyed
Speaker 3: them from a very young age. I loved getting my
Speaker 3: little school spiral notebook planner every year. It was always
Speaker 3: these ugly red and gold because that was our school colors.
Speaker 3: And I also had these big, like full side, full side,
Speaker 3: like the size of like a full size piece of
Speaker 3: paper back blue cloth bound daily notebooks that had a
Speaker 3: page for every single day that I would inherit from
Speaker 3: my dad, and I think where he worked they actually
Speaker 3: gave them to every employee. Can you imagine being given
Speaker 3: this giant page per day planner as your workplace productivity tool.
Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of wish we still did that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, I think that has gone by the wayside, but
Speaker 2: that's kind of a cool office perk. I guess if
Speaker 2: you're into that sort of thing. Yeah, I guess a
Speaker 2: lot of schools do still do this, right that they
Speaker 2: distribute calendars or something, or at least they were. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe everyone's moved to electronic calendars now.
Speaker 3: Our school still hands out paper planners, and I do
Speaker 3: think there is a lot to be learned about executive
Speaker 3: function that can be learned from practicing writing and planners.
Speaker 3: So whether kids actually use them all year or not,
Speaker 3: I think at least experimenting with it and figuring out
Speaker 3: what works can be helpful. I also was conversing with
Speaker 3: my college friend yesterday trying to remember what we use
Speaker 3: in college, and she claims we were early bullet journalers.
Speaker 3: We just didn't call it that, so I'm going to
Speaker 3: go with that. We had these cute little multi colored
Speaker 3: notebooks and a lot of jelly roll pins and had
Speaker 3: fun writing out our task lists and things we were
Speaker 3: doing all day and things like that.
Speaker 4: So yeah, sounds good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was trying to think of this too, and
Speaker 2: I honestly just cannot remember. So I must not have
Speaker 2: been buying cool planners or anything like that, because I
Speaker 2: think I would have remembered making such a purchase. I
Speaker 2: know I've always had like a working notebook going, you know,
Speaker 2: I would I had a bunch of like journalism internships,
Speaker 2: and some of the places where I worked had like
Speaker 2: Steno notebooks that people could just like pick out of
Speaker 2: the supply closet for Back in the day, you know,
Speaker 2: people were taking their notes while going interviewing someone or.
Speaker 4: Something like that.
Speaker 2: And I imagine that in high school or middle school
Speaker 2: or whatever, we probably had those little calendars that they
Speaker 2: hand out to try to encourage people to write down
Speaker 2: their assignments. And clearly I must have been writing my
Speaker 2: assignments down somewhere because I got good grades and usually
Speaker 2: wasn't doing all nighters the night before, so I doubt
Speaker 2: I was just remembering all of this, but for the
Speaker 2: life of me, I cannot remember.
Speaker 4: So that is fascinating. I don't know it was.
Speaker 2: Productivity happens, whether we necessarily remember our systems or not.
Speaker 2: I know I did get into writing down weekly priorities
Speaker 2: after reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in my
Speaker 2: early twenties.
Speaker 4: Did you ever read that?
Speaker 3: No, my early twenties productivity guide was Getting Things Done
Speaker 3: by David Allen.
Speaker 2: Well, that's also a good one. I read that at
Speaker 2: some point too. I just remember reading it after Stephen Covey.
Speaker 2: So yeah, long list of productivity people we got, you know,
Speaker 2: Stephen Covey with the Seven Habits, David Allen getting things done,
Speaker 2: and now here we're going to be talking with Cal
Speaker 2: Newport about slow productivity and other topics, so listen to that. Well,
Speaker 2: Sarah and I are delighted to welcome Cal Newport to
Speaker 2: the program. Any of our listeners are no doubt familiar
Speaker 2: with him, So Cal, why don't you go ahead and
Speaker 2: introduce your stuff to our listeners.
Speaker 1: Well, it's good to talk to you, both, both of
Speaker 1: you being of course past guests on my podcast, so
Speaker 1: we have a great circularity going on here. So for
Speaker 1: those who don't know me, I'm a computer science professor
Speaker 1: at Georgetown University. I also write books for general audiences
Speaker 1: and for the past i don't know what it's been
Speaker 1: now eight years. My writing has focused a lot on
Speaker 1: the different ways technology impacts us and how we cope
Speaker 1: with it. So I work a lot on, for example,
Speaker 1: how technology really destabilize the workplace, especially knowledge work, when
Speaker 1: things like email and chat and laptops and smartphones arose.
Speaker 1: I also talk about how it's destabilized our life outside
Speaker 1: of work, social media, the rise of screen addiction, screens
Speaker 1: and kids. So this is sort of my interest area
Speaker 1: is how do we construct something like a meaningful or
Speaker 1: intentional life at work and at home in this world
Speaker 1: of these fast moving technologies that have just as many
Speaker 1: negative side effects as positive.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: And since this is of both worlds, and you know,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned, we talked about work and home. You
Speaker 2: have three kids, right, yes, they are how old?
Speaker 1: I'm an eleven year old, a nine year old, and
Speaker 1: a five year old, all boys?
Speaker 4: All boys?
Speaker 2: Well, they match out well with Sarah's kids ages that's
Speaker 2: almost exactly the same as hers.
Speaker 1: That's why Sarah and I look so well rested? Is
Speaker 1: that what?
Speaker 4: You exactly?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: You both look great to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know it. Your most newest book is called
Speaker 2: Slow Productivity, So maybe you can give us a little
Speaker 2: overview of what do you mean by slow productivity and
Speaker 2: contrast this with kind of the pseudo productivity as you
Speaker 2: set up as the punching bag against this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean I'm going to give the motivation
Speaker 1: for it too, because it's a it's a classic, like
Speaker 1: Best to Boast World's motivation. So where this book came from?
Speaker 1: And I'll sort of get to the meat of it
Speaker 1: here in a second was a mix of personal and
Speaker 1: professional motivations, which is rare for me. Usually it's one
Speaker 1: or the other, right, but in this case it was both.
Speaker 1: So on the personal side, what was going on is,
Speaker 1: you know, I have these three boys, like we mentioned,
Speaker 1: and Sarah, I don't know if you had the same
Speaker 1: experience with your three or lad with your four. And
Speaker 1: this might because they're all boys. But when they all
Speaker 1: hit elementary school age more or less like they were.
Speaker 1: My youngest was just come to kindergarten, they're all in
Speaker 1: elementary school age, there is this switch where basically they
Speaker 1: seem to need as much dad time as humanly possible.
Speaker 1: And it was different than it was before. It was
Speaker 1: different than toddler phase, where it was much much more
Speaker 1: of a survival game and making sure that no parent
Speaker 1: goes too crazy. It switched they want as much dad
Speaker 1: time as possible. These boys needed as much dad time
Speaker 1: as possible. So as in this situation where wait, I'm
Speaker 1: reaching my professional peak, right, I mean, I am at
Speaker 1: the peak of my powers. I can write best selling books.
Speaker 1: I'm a professor, tenured at professor writing for the New Yorker.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm really my professional powers throughout their peak
Speaker 1: and simultanously my kids see as much time as possible.
Speaker 1: So suddenly it became very urgent for me to look
Speaker 1: at this question of, Okay, how can I still produce
Speaker 1: stuff that I'm proud of professionally and also you know,
Speaker 1: is a means of support and yet not have work
Speaker 1: take over everything and yet leave sort of indulgently large
Speaker 1: amounts of time for my family. So I was grappling
Speaker 1: with that personally. Then the pandemic hit and all of
Speaker 1: my readers and podcast listeners begin to have sort of
Speaker 1: similar crisises with work, especially those knowledge workers that were
Speaker 1: sent home to work remotely on their laptops that it
Speaker 1: really the disruption gave them this distance where they were
Speaker 1: looking at their work and be like, what am I
Speaker 1: doing here? I'm on zoom all day, I'm sending emails
Speaker 1: all day like this is this what I want to
Speaker 1: do with my life? So there's this whole sort of
Speaker 1: existential crisis happening in my readership and my listenership as well.
Speaker 1: And they said, something has broken about the way we're
Speaker 1: thinking about work and productivity. We got to fix this.
Speaker 1: So professional personal all looking at this same issue work
Speaker 1: and how to tame it or what's not working with work?
Speaker 1: And so slow productivity was the answer I came up with,
Speaker 1: and it was a completely alternative way of thinking about
Speaker 1: productivity that is not based on activity but instead based
Speaker 1: on quality results over time. So instead of fastness, it
Speaker 1: focused instead on the result of slowness. And my argument
Speaker 1: is this is more sustainable. This is something you can
Speaker 1: do for a whole lifetime. It's something you can do
Speaker 1: and be incredibly proud of what you've produced, and yet
Speaker 1: also be there at four point thirty for your kids
Speaker 1: baseball practice, be there for the trips, not have your
Speaker 1: whole life get taken up for work. And so it's
Speaker 1: a personal professional quest that led to this.
Speaker 3: I think that's such a great point that you notice
Speaker 3: this more as the kids got older. And this does
Speaker 3: go against a little bit of rhetoric that I hear
Speaker 3: sometimes where it's like I have to be home for
Speaker 3: the babies. But I think Laura and I feel similarly
Speaker 3: that in many ways, as the kids have gotten older,
Speaker 3: a the specificity of us feels like it matters more
Speaker 3: like my kid wants me, not a provider, so to speak,
Speaker 3: and the time with the kids is actually more enjoyable
Speaker 3: and not something that I or Laura want to be
Speaker 3: missing out on. So I think the timing actually makes
Speaker 3: so much sense, And even though it might go against
Speaker 3: what people might think, like oh, it's baby time, when
Speaker 3: you kind of need that time with the kids. So
Speaker 3: that's great. I love that that was true for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we wanted to talk through some of the three
Speaker 2: penciples you talk about in slow Productivity, and particularly thinking
Speaker 2: of it in terms of how these might apply to
Speaker 2: someone with maybe a bit more of traditional job. I mean, cal,
Speaker 2: you and I are writing books, hopefully Sarah will soon
Speaker 2: but we'll get to that.
Speaker 4: But we're producing podcasts too.
Speaker 2: But you know, she obviously is seeing patients several days
Speaker 2: a week as well, So like a more traditional job
Speaker 2: like that, and how some of these principles would work
Speaker 2: for that. So maybe you could first say what those
Speaker 2: three principles are and then maybe talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about how that works for someone in a traditional job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the three ideas that seemed to matter was first,
Speaker 1: doing fewer things, by which what I really mean is
Speaker 1: doing fewer things at the same time. I have a
Speaker 1: core argument here that having too many committed projects on
Speaker 1: your plate at the same time becomes this massive roadblock
Speaker 1: to be able to actually do work, but also this
Speaker 1: massive source of anxiety and stress, and so smaller workloads
Speaker 1: in the moment I think really is key to slowing
Speaker 1: down productivity. It also produces more so it's not the
Speaker 1: zero sum trade off of I'm going to make my
Speaker 1: boss's life worse to make my life more sustainable. I
Speaker 1: think it's good for everybody. My second idea was work
Speaker 1: at a natural pace. We've forgotten the degree to which
Speaker 1: the factory model that we have poured over to knowledge
Speaker 1: work of you'd clock in for an eight hour shift
Speaker 1: and you work as hard as you can those full
Speaker 1: eight hours, and you do this all year round. We've
Speaker 1: forgotten how unnatural that is in a literal sense. We're
Speaker 1: not wired to do that. It's a very recent innovation
Speaker 1: in the history of our species, one that we realized
Speaker 1: right away when we first tried it, with the innovation
Speaker 1: of mills and factories, that is really sort of difficult
Speaker 1: and hard on people, and yet we just blithely think
Speaker 1: that's the model we should follow. If I'm not all in,
Speaker 1: all laws in during the work hour, no matter what
Speaker 1: hour of the day it is or what week of
Speaker 1: the year it is, and I'm somehow being unproductive. I
Speaker 1: really tried to stabilize that and say, actually, it's much
Speaker 1: more sustainable and you produce much better results over time
Speaker 1: with more variation in that on different time scales. And
Speaker 1: then the final principle is obsess over quality. That, like
Speaker 1: carying about your craft and what you produce, becomes to
Speaker 1: glue for these other principles. It's what makes slow productivity
Speaker 1: not just about an antagonistic pose towards your work, but
Speaker 1: about a more positive or self fulfilling sense of trying
Speaker 1: to produce stuff that matters. Also, obsessing over quality, caring
Speaker 1: a lot about quality ultimately is what's going to give
Speaker 1: you the leverage you need to really reshape these other
Speaker 1: parts of your work to be slower and slower. So
Speaker 1: there's a sort of virtuous cycle that happens there. So
Speaker 1: those are the three ideas that.
Speaker 2: Says we're going to take a quick ad break and
Speaker 2: then we're going to come back and talk about how
Speaker 2: someone in like Sarah's job might do things like this.
Speaker 3: We're back, and I wanted to take kind of a
Speaker 3: little bit of a focus on the obsess over quality piece,
Speaker 3: especially because We've spoken before on the podcast with women
Speaker 3: who struggle with perfectionism, and we're often kind of giving
Speaker 3: the opposite advice, like just do B plus job, like
Speaker 3: it's better to just do it. And sometimes people had
Speaker 3: this vision of how amazing something needs to be, and
Speaker 3: in reality something almost as good would be, like that
Speaker 3: eighty twenty principle kind of thing would get the most
Speaker 3: of the way there. So where does that dividing line
Speaker 3: fall or do you look for different levels of quality
Speaker 3: depend on which project you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, perfectionism, it's a big issue, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the themes I really try to get into in the book.
Speaker 1: I use it as an excuse to go back and
Speaker 1: talk about the Beatles recording Sergeant Pepper's, which it's this
Speaker 1: interesting turning point in the history of music where right
Speaker 1: before that album, the Beatles to say I did no
Speaker 1: more touring. They were done with touring. But this opened
Speaker 1: up this sort of terrifying freedom because if you don't
Speaker 1: have to replicate the album you're recording on stage, you
Speaker 1: could basically do anything in the album. And so they
Speaker 1: went to the studio after this nineteen sixty eight sort
Speaker 1: of disastrous tour, I mean, it's a popular tour, but
Speaker 1: all these bad things happened to him on the tour.
Speaker 1: This was the We're Bigger than Jesus tour where all
Speaker 1: this controversy unfolded. They had complete freedom now because they
Speaker 1: could bring in any instruments they wanted, they could bring
Speaker 1: in brass, they could bring in Indian sitars, they could
Speaker 1: work with tape, speed manipulation, and so there's this perfectionism
Speaker 1: issue of how do you know when you're done? And
Speaker 1: the balance they made is, Okay, our goal is to
Speaker 1: do this really well, to advance the level of quality
Speaker 1: beyond what we've done before. But they also put stakes
Speaker 1: in the ground. So as soon as they had a
Speaker 1: releasable single, they released that single, and now there is
Speaker 1: a stake in the ground, like, okay, the rest of
Speaker 1: this album, we don't have that much more time. So
Speaker 1: they added constraints to a general quest to do something
Speaker 1: better than they have before. So trying to do something
Speaker 1: better than before with constraints, that's tractable in a way
Speaker 1: of the best thing possible. It can be impossible, and
Speaker 1: you could keep working on it forever. I give another
Speaker 1: example of that of lin Manuel Miranda working on his
Speaker 1: first play in the Heights, which actually took him seven years.
Speaker 1: It took him a long time. And the way he
Speaker 1: navigated perfectionism is they had these regular stakes in the
Speaker 1: ground where he was working with a performance troop in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: and every few months or so they would get some
Speaker 1: actors together and do a reading. Right, we're gonna do
Speaker 1: a reading of the newest version of the book. So
Speaker 1: he had to keep working on it because he needed
Speaker 1: something new, but he wasn't working on it all the time.
Speaker 1: He was doing lots of other things. He would come
Speaker 1: back to it, wait to get inspiration, make meaningful updates,
Speaker 1: and then they would do another reading. So we had
Speaker 1: these stakes in the ground that were pushing him to deliver,
Speaker 1: and he was trying to make things better, but not
Speaker 1: this pressure of make the best possible thing. And so
Speaker 1: I think we can translate that into sort of everyday
Speaker 1: knowledge work jobs that you have this mindset of I
Speaker 1: want to get better at what I'm doing. So this
Speaker 1: current project i'm doing, I want to do well and
Speaker 1: maybe there's some way I can do this better than
Speaker 1: the last time I did it. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: I want to put stakes in the ground. I'm going
Speaker 1: to guarantee this on a reasonable timeframe. But I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell my boss I'll have this to you in
Speaker 1: two months. You know, you put some stakes in the ground.
Speaker 1: I got a ship, So this can't be the best
Speaker 1: thing I've ever produced. But if I give it attention
Speaker 1: and maybe do something better than I've done before, I'm
Speaker 1: making progress and I'm happy with it. So it's really
Speaker 1: that navigating perfectionism versus non caring is really key to
Speaker 1: a quality obsession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we always say that done is better than perfect, Yes,
Speaker 2: because something can't be perfect if it's not done.
Speaker 4: You know, the most.
Speaker 2: Perfect in play in the world that no one ever
Speaker 2: sees is not perfect because it hasn't been seen, which
Speaker 2: is a necessary component of it being perfect in the
Speaker 2: first place. But yeah, if we can sort of shift
Speaker 2: back to the previous two elements of this slow productivity,
Speaker 2: I mean, how does someone who has a pretty structured job,
Speaker 2: who works for someone else decide to do fewer things
Speaker 2: or work at a natural pace. I mean, I know
Speaker 2: Sarah has patients scheduled at a certain time at a
Speaker 2: certain pace. That is what is expected for her hospital system.
Speaker 2: You know, there are certain things she does with that,
Speaker 2: but obviously there's probably ways that she could do fewer
Speaker 2: other things. So I wonder if you can sort of
Speaker 2: talk about how people could could navigate that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, so I think the target audiences useful to
Speaker 1: set our constraints. I call it loosely knowledge workers in
Speaker 1: the book. But there's actually a key attribute of the
Speaker 1: jobs I'm talking about that makes the advice pretty applicable,
Speaker 1: and that is a flexibility or unspoken autonomy in workload management.
Speaker 1: So actually, most knowledge work jobs, most jobs for people
Speaker 1: do they're on a computer screen most of the day.
Speaker 1: There is no explicit system of workload management. There is
Speaker 1: no explicit system of here's what you're working on, here's
Speaker 1: when you do do it. Here is the system with
Speaker 1: which we assign you your work. Most knowledge work jobs
Speaker 1: don't have that. Work flows informally through email and Slack
Speaker 1: and conversations. People ask you to do things, You agree
Speaker 1: to things, meetings show up on your calendar. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of issues with that flexibility, but we can turn
Speaker 1: it around like a little Judo throw and say okay,
Speaker 1: But that also gives you opportunity. If it's going to
Speaker 1: be so flexible, that can cause a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: You can get really overloaded, you can really get to
Speaker 1: unsustainable situations. But also you can leverage that same implicit
Speaker 1: autonomy to build some much smarter approaches. So these are
Speaker 1: the jobs I'm thinking of. So then we have to
Speaker 1: be more careful. If we're talking about jobs where there
Speaker 1: is a structured workload management, then things get more difficult. So, Sarah,
Speaker 1: I think doctors are they're kind of on that line
Speaker 1: because because often doctors are in a clinical structure where
Speaker 1: it's this is your schedule all day long, this is
Speaker 1: what you're doing. We have a very structured way of
Speaker 1: actually filling out your schedule. You do, here's what you
Speaker 1: do this patient, then that. But as we shift over
Speaker 1: to more hey I'm out a computer screen and send
Speaker 1: a lot of emails. Now we start to get some flexibility,
Speaker 1: so we talk about doing fewer things. For example, Well,
Speaker 1: if you have control over your workload, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas or systems I talk about for how you
Speaker 1: can manage what's on your plate even without having to
Speaker 1: say no all the time. So, for example, one of
Speaker 1: the things I talk about in the book is starting
Speaker 1: to make a distinction between actively working on and committed
Speaker 1: to do but not actively working on yet. Right, So
Speaker 1: here's what I'm actively working on. Here's my queue of
Speaker 1: projects I've committed to but I'm not actively working on yet.
Speaker 1: And as I finish something i'm actively working on, I
Speaker 1: pull something new from that queue into this list of
Speaker 1: things I'm actively working on. If you do that and
Speaker 1: make it transparent, it can really change some of the
Speaker 1: negative externalities of overload because now when someone says, okay,
Speaker 1: I need you to really do this, you could say, great,
Speaker 1: here's my list. You can see here's the three things
Speaker 1: I'm working on now, and here's the six things queued up.
Speaker 1: We'll just put that on the end there and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can watch this list. It's transparent, and when this
Speaker 1: hits my active list, then you know I'm actively working
Speaker 1: on it. Now. Why does that matter? Because now you
Speaker 1: can restrict administrative overhead to just the projects you're actively
Speaker 1: working on. Now, we're not going to have standing meetings
Speaker 1: and we're not going to send emails about this project
Speaker 1: and tell I'm actively working on it, and you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry that I'm going to forget it because
Speaker 1: you can watch it march up that queue. Right and
Speaker 1: now you've reduced the number of projects on which you
Speaker 1: have active administrative overhead from ten down to just the
Speaker 1: three active ones, which is a substantial improvement on your
Speaker 1: day to day ability to just focus and get things done,
Speaker 1: not feel overwhelmed, and move things through the system quicker.
Speaker 1: So it's an example of what happens once you have
Speaker 1: some of this implicit autonomy and workload management, you can
Speaker 1: start trying out some pretty interesting ways of actually making
Speaker 1: that play to your advantage.
Speaker 3: I will say there are a couple of ways that,
Speaker 3: in my very structured job, some of your principles do
Speaker 3: kind of make sense. One is being extremely intentional about
Speaker 3: what is a sustainable workload, in communicating that to who
Speaker 3: you work with, and ensuring that you are not doing
Speaker 3: work that is not necessarily yours to do. So, if
Speaker 3: you have an x number of patients to see and
Speaker 3: they want you making xyz rvus, what is the actual
Speaker 3: physician essential work and what can you not do like
Speaker 3: printing out pieces of paper and like faxing stuff and
Speaker 3: things like that. And so I think there's actually more
Speaker 3: new Portean application to a very structured job. And the
Speaker 3: other piece would be when you are asked to do
Speaker 3: extras which you will do. Even if you are in
Speaker 3: a primarily clinical role, you always have to think about
Speaker 3: is this worth having to have multiple things on my
Speaker 3: plate on a given clinical day where you want your
Speaker 3: focus to be on the patient. So Laura knows, I've
Speaker 3: quite a lot of things in the last couple of
Speaker 3: years so that I can focus on the things that
Speaker 3: I really care about.
Speaker 1: Sarah, can I ask you? I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a doctor follow up question because it instructs me. So
Speaker 1: it seems like in all the different disciplines in medicine,
Speaker 1: the one clinical discipline that seems to have way more
Speaker 1: of a culture of why don't you ty trate what
Speaker 1: you want your work to be more so than almost
Speaker 1: any other, seems to be eered doctors, right, emergency department doctors.
Speaker 1: That there's like a whole culture there of if you
Speaker 1: want to say, I'm an emergency department doctor, there's a
Speaker 1: huge demand for me. I also love surfing. So here's
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do. I'm going to do two
Speaker 1: shifts a week and that's it. And I'm that's fine,
Speaker 1: that's good money for two shifts a week, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to surf five days a week. Or whatever. I'm
Speaker 1: going to spend half the year doing a bunch of
Speaker 1: shifts here and then half the year doing nothing. And
Speaker 1: do I have this right? Like what's going on here
Speaker 1: that that particular subspecialty seems to really embrace experimentation when
Speaker 1: it work fits into life. Whereas if you're a whatever,
Speaker 1: a gas internolo, what do you? I forgot exactly your specialty.
Speaker 3: I'm a pediatric endocrinologist, and I can explain this pretty easily.
Speaker 3: So with my work, there's a ton of continuity. When
Speaker 3: I go to work on a given outpatient day, one
Speaker 3: of the things I have to do is follow up
Speaker 3: all the labs that I sent for my patient from
Speaker 3: the week before. That's like a good chunk of my day.
Speaker 3: In addition, er has none of that. They start every
Speaker 3: single day with a completely blank slate. It doesn't matter
Speaker 3: if they work a Monday at Thursday or whatever. There
Speaker 3: are other medical feels like that critical care is one
Speaker 3: of them. That's essentially shift work at this point, some
Speaker 3: types of hospital medicine. But my husband is a surgeon,
Speaker 3: and they're like me, like, if you operate on someone,
Speaker 3: you're not going to be like bye, peace out. That
Speaker 3: guy's not my problem, Like, there's much more continuity. I
Speaker 3: have figured out ways to make a sixty percent kind
Speaker 3: of situation work, but it does take a lot more
Speaker 3: conscious attention than it would for like an er physician.
Speaker 1: You're right now, fascinating, fascinating. Yeah, but but anyways, I
Speaker 1: love hearing what you said though, right that even when
Speaker 1: you're your schedule is fixed, the load of patients is
Speaker 1: something you can work on and the other activities which
Speaker 1: comes up a lot, Like one of the ideas in
Speaker 1: the book is for these other activities, like whatever it
Speaker 1: is when someone asks you to do something, and one
Speaker 1: of the ideas is never give a yes or no
Speaker 1: into room, right, So I always say, oh, fantastic, that
Speaker 1: sounds really interesting. Well, hey, look I do a very
Speaker 1: careful time tracking, so let me just I'll check out
Speaker 1: my calendar. I'll get back to you. So you never
Speaker 1: give the yes or no in the room when the
Speaker 1: social pressure is highest, and then you can go back.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that some people do that
Speaker 1: I write about is I say, well, if I'm going
Speaker 1: to agree to this, I'm first going to go find
Speaker 1: the time when I'm going to do this and put
Speaker 1: it on my calendar. So now you're actually confronting, like,
Speaker 1: what is the footprint of this thing? How much time
Speaker 1: is it going to take up? Where is that time
Speaker 1: actually coming from? And often it's in that confrontation of
Speaker 1: the reality of the time footprint of one of these
Speaker 1: small asks that you realize I don't have time for this,
Speaker 1: or I'll have time for this in like six weeks
Speaker 1: at the soonest, and this needs to be done sooner.
Speaker 1: Now there's more confidence when you give the follow up, No, hey,
Speaker 1: I looked into this. I was looking for the time
Speaker 1: for it on my calendar. I really have nowhere to
Speaker 1: squeeze this for at least four weeks, which is too
Speaker 1: far in the future. Sorry, I can't do it. And
Speaker 1: it's this like nice way of workload management without having
Speaker 1: it just in the room be like no, you know,
Speaker 1: like I don't do things. You know. It's not a
Speaker 1: yes in a room. It's very reality based. It's based
Speaker 1: on your real schedule and a confrontation of your time.
Speaker 1: People are more likely to respect that, know as well,
Speaker 1: if you have the reputation of someone who's like very
Speaker 1: careful about your time, Like I don't think Sarah's just
Speaker 1: making this up. She'd looked at her calendar and she
Speaker 1: must be really full, you know. So I like that
Speaker 1: idea that you have to care about not just the
Speaker 1: big rocks. It's the little things sometimes that are easy
Speaker 1: to say yes to in the moment that become killer.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, thinking about schedule, Hopefully Sarah will let me move
Speaker 2: forward a little bit.
Speaker 4: In the questions, we.
Speaker 2: Were hoping that you could talk Cal a little bit
Speaker 2: about a day in the life of Cal. Right, our
Speaker 2: listeners always love hearing how people are managing their lives
Speaker 2: and their schedules, and so I imagine things are somewhat different
Speaker 2: day to day, given that you're wearing a lot of hats.
Speaker 2: But if there's a broad structure that you have found
Speaker 2: works for you, maybe you could talk us through what
Speaker 2: it looks like and we can look at some of
Speaker 2: the principles that you are implementing as you are setting
Speaker 2: your daily schedule.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very seasonal, which is one of the ideas
Speaker 1: from principle too, So what my schedule looks like in
Speaker 1: part depends on what time of the year it is.
Speaker 1: So my summer schedule, for example, is very different than
Speaker 1: a fall teaching schedule. One thing I always keep as
Speaker 1: a standard and This is something I began doing in
Speaker 1: my early twenties. It's called fixed schedule productivity. I start
Speaker 1: with my working hours. Here's when I work, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it's like roughly nine ish to
Speaker 1: five ish, and I don't go past that, So everything
Speaker 1: else has to work backwards from that. Rights So I
Speaker 1: call it a metaproductivity commitment because is a general commitment
Speaker 1: that forces you to invent lots of smaller tactics and
Speaker 1: rules and thresholds to try to actually follow it. So
Speaker 1: first of all, I stick with that. If it can't
Speaker 1: fit in nine to five, then I can't do it.
Speaker 1: So I'll start with that. Then my day will be
Speaker 1: different depending if I'm teaching or not. So a teaching day,
Speaker 1: I'll be on campus and I'll be doing I'll try
Speaker 1: to consolidate most of my meetings and administrative work relating
Speaker 1: to being a professor and working with students and everything
Speaker 1: that'll happen on a teaching day. On a non teaching day,
Speaker 1: I'll be doing deep work first thing, in the beginning
Speaker 1: of my workday as far forward as I can push it,
Speaker 1: and then whatever else will happen in the afternoon, I'll
Speaker 1: still do deep work on the morning of a teaching
Speaker 1: day if I can, but it's just going to be
Speaker 1: a much smaller window. You know, I might get an
Speaker 1: hour in there. This summer looks different. What I try
Speaker 1: to do in the summer is Mondays and Fridays. Nothing
Speaker 1: on my calendar, keep those consolidated to Tuesday, Wednesday and
Speaker 1: Thursday afternoons. As a professor, I can kind of get
Speaker 1: away with this for a couple months. Maybe not longer,
Speaker 1: but for a couple months I can kind of get
Speaker 1: away from this. So I like this idea of having
Speaker 1: Mondays and Fridays where you're just you're working. I'm usually
Speaker 1: writing books in the summer, You're kind of writing till
Speaker 1: you're done in the early afternoon, thirty minutes of task
Speaker 1: and you're done. Only have meetings and calendar things in
Speaker 1: the middle of the week, and so the summer is
Speaker 1: going to look different than what's going to happen here.
Speaker 1: The other rule I have is with podcasting. You know,
Speaker 1: I introduced podcasting in twenty twenty very worried about as
Speaker 1: time footprint, and so the rule I made, which I
Speaker 1: followed ever since it gets one half day a week,
Speaker 1: it never gets more time. My podcast gets one half
Speaker 1: day a week, and so anything new I want to
Speaker 1: do with it, anything that's going to take more time,
Speaker 1: I have to figure out how to fit it to
Speaker 1: a half day this week. So I'm going to have
Speaker 1: to wait till I make enough money on ads to
Speaker 1: hire someone to take this off my plate so I
Speaker 1: can spend more time on this. It's not allowed to grow.
Speaker 1: So you see throughout my schedules, its constraints are a
Speaker 1: big deal for me. Work backwards from constraints and do
Speaker 1: what you need to do. It's partially why I'm known
Speaker 1: for a lot of these organizational time management style strategies
Speaker 1: is because I had to work in this nine to
Speaker 1: five type of constraint, and so I had to get
Speaker 1: pretty serious about my time within there if I was
Speaker 1: going to actually satisfy that constraint with the various things
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. So I do like placing constraints,
Speaker 1: and I do like variation within the week, within the months,
Speaker 1: and within the years.
Speaker 2: Well, we're going to take one more quick AD break
Speaker 2: and then we're going to be back talking a little
Speaker 2: bit about that time outside nine to five.
Speaker 3: We're back, and yeah, so Laura brought up a great point.
Speaker 3: When we were just speaking, we were talking about the
Speaker 3: day in the life, and I love the constraints on
Speaker 3: your day. I think that especially women, that's really common
Speaker 3: to have because on average, probably more women are doing
Speaker 3: dropping off, picking up, et cetera. Are you able to
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't need specifics. Don't worry, no one's
Speaker 3: going to like come stock you or anything. But we
Speaker 3: do have most of our guests share like do you
Speaker 3: tend to be the drop off parent the pick up parent?
Speaker 3: What does your activity with your kids look like in
Speaker 3: the stage of life? How are you enjoying those hours
Speaker 3: outside of the work.
Speaker 1: Well, so I can't stake the bus, but it's a
Speaker 1: good fifteen minute walk. I don't know the exact distance,
Speaker 1: which I like actually, so it's like a half mile
Speaker 1: or so away from our house. My wife and I
Speaker 1: both like the walk for the drop off, walk to
Speaker 1: kids for the drop off, because then we get the
Speaker 1: walk back, which is a nice way to start the morning.
Speaker 1: And then the afternoon it's who's around, right, so who's
Speaker 1: around for the pickup? I like the afternoon pickups when
Speaker 1: I can do it, because it's an excuse the walk,
Speaker 1: especially when the weather's nice. It's an excuse to take
Speaker 1: a walk and then you get it. You wait for
Speaker 1: the bus and you have to get there early because
Speaker 1: you know it's hard to predict, and that could be
Speaker 1: a pretty nice break. Another thing I'm really big on
Speaker 1: and I started this god back in grad school. It's
Speaker 1: just like a long habit is having a very rigorous
Speaker 1: work shut down routine. Right, So, when I'm done with
Speaker 1: work for the day, I have this routine I go
Speaker 1: through where I'm really trying to make sure that there
Speaker 1: are no open loops left in my head. Right, what
Speaker 1: am I doing tomorrow? Did I forget anything today? Is
Speaker 1: there any emergency emails I'm missing? No, that's good. Have
Speaker 1: I written everything down? There's nothing I'm just keeping track
Speaker 1: of in my head. Right, Okay, good, we're all set.
Speaker 1: We know what we're doing tomorrow. All right, shut down
Speaker 1: work for the day. And then it's a sort of
Speaker 1: a cognitive behavioral therapy trick. After you shut down for work,
Speaker 1: if there's some sort of intrusive rumination this professional hey,
Speaker 1: are we doing the right thing for this or that,
Speaker 1: I'm like no, no, no. I went through the shutdown routine,
Speaker 1: and I would not have concluded that routine. If I
Speaker 1: didn't actually address all the open loops, We'll deal with
Speaker 1: that tomorrow. And that's been really helpful because it allows
Speaker 1: me to be a lot more present when I'm actually
Speaker 1: done with work, and especially like the line of work
Speaker 1: I'm in, because as a semi public figure, there's always
Speaker 1: stuff going on. There's people saying things about me, there's
Speaker 1: like big moves that we're doing, there's deals being made.
Speaker 1: I could, if not careful, be thinking about this and
Speaker 1: checking in on this and sort of doing emails here
Speaker 1: and there every waking hour, and that would just make
Speaker 1: me miserable. So I rely incredibly heavily on I've shut
Speaker 1: down work so that I could be one hundred percent
Speaker 1: president at least to the best of my ability when
Speaker 1: I'm not working.
Speaker 2: And one of the things you do, we learned in
Speaker 2: slow Productivity is watching movies with a very critical eye.
Speaker 4: Maybe you could tell us about.
Speaker 2: How you've landed on that as a way to kind
Speaker 2: of boost your creative abilities while it not being strictly work.
Speaker 1: Well, I realized at some point, sort of three kids
Speaker 1: in oh, I don't have any hobbies anymore, which is
Speaker 1: pretty common, right. I Mean, I read a lot, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of professional because I need to read a
Speaker 1: lot for you know, I work as well. And so
Speaker 1: I very systematically said, well, I always used to love movies.
Speaker 1: My wife and I used to see literally everything, right,
Speaker 1: We would just we lived in Boston near multiple theaters,
Speaker 1: would just see everything. So I said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get more formal about that. So I'm going to study film.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read about film. I'm going to sort
Speaker 1: of run myself through some self education projects on film
Speaker 1: because I like film and I want to have something
Speaker 1: like this that I can focus on. This nothing to
Speaker 1: do with work. And then there was another thing I
Speaker 1: introduced in my life was working with microelectronics, programming micro controllers.
Speaker 1: And this wasn't part because I could do it with
Speaker 1: my kids and expose them. So my studios here we
Speaker 1: have of a maker lab with a bunch of circuits
Speaker 1: and printers and micro controllers and stuff like that. These
Speaker 1: are both important for two reasons. One, it gives me
Speaker 1: something like focus on and really get thinking about that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with work, right, because, like a
Speaker 1: lot of people, especially high achieving people, the dream is
Speaker 1: not to be in a state where you have nothing
Speaker 1: to do because you go insane. Your brain goes insane
Speaker 1: when it's like, what are we thinking about? I'm not
Speaker 1: just interested in just being here on the beach. We
Speaker 1: got to think about something, so I wanted to aim
Speaker 1: it at things that was not professional for anxiety reasons.
Speaker 1: And then the film interest had this unexpected secondary positive
Speaker 1: benefit I talked about in the book, which was studying
Speaker 1: an art form unrelated to what I do, which is writing,
Speaker 1: actually made me better at writing because it exposed me
Speaker 1: to people doing creative, interesting things, but outside of the
Speaker 1: specific context of my work, and I could find more
Speaker 1: inspiration over there than I could studying people doing exactly
Speaker 1: what I was doing, because that's too stressful and I
Speaker 1: know them all and it's hey, if they do it
Speaker 1: in my book doesn't do well, it's bad financially. But film,
Speaker 1: there's no stakes, it's not my field. And I found
Speaker 1: that the inspiration studying creative people over there carried over
Speaker 1: to what I was doing in my writing and actually
Speaker 1: injected me with some creative juices. So I accidentally found
Speaker 1: something productive in this complete escape from trying to do
Speaker 1: things related to work.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love how you talk about reading other nonfiction. It's
Speaker 2: always like, well, what are they doing that I didn't do.
Speaker 2: It's a little similar. I should have done that in
Speaker 2: the last one. Oh well, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Any more questions, Sarah that you have for.
Speaker 3: I was just going to say his hobby is also
Speaker 3: great for crowding out screen time, which is something he
Speaker 3: talks a lot about on his show. And we've done
Speaker 3: episodes on hobbies before as well, and I think it's
Speaker 3: an under I think that could be like another topic
Speaker 3: for you. Cal like dive deeply into hobbies, because.
Speaker 2: I think you're examply into running. She's like, that's my
Speaker 2: non obsession, you know, marathon training. I love doing thousand
Speaker 2: piece puzzles. That is something that I have found that
Speaker 2: keeps me mostly off my phone, not completely. I'm often
Speaker 2: texting with friends at the same time, but I've gotten
Speaker 2: pretty good.
Speaker 4: At them over time. Kevint convinced any of my kids
Speaker 4: to do them with me yet, but maybe someday.
Speaker 1: I don't think we do have every year. My wife
Speaker 1: is so much better at them that I am. I'm
Speaker 1: really bad at puzzles, but it gives me a hope
Speaker 1: that you said you got better at it.
Speaker 4: I did get better.
Speaker 2: Well, you start to see like, yeah, that's not going
Speaker 2: to fit there. I mean, you obviously can see it's
Speaker 2: not going to fit there, even just thinking in terms
Speaker 2: of that knobs, that size, and that's you know, it's
Speaker 2: a it's a skill, but if you wish to get
Speaker 2: better at it, I am sure that you will. So, Cal,
Speaker 2: we always end with a love of the week, which
Speaker 2: is something that we are currently enjoying that you know
Speaker 2: we want to share with our listeners. We can go
Speaker 2: first to give you a minute to think about it, Sarah,
Speaker 2: did you want to start off?
Speaker 3: Well, mine feeds on yours, So I'll give a teaser
Speaker 3: that Laura is going to talk about a book. So
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, do I have a book that
Speaker 3: would have something to do with Laura Cal And I
Speaker 3: am a very dedicated deep questions listener. Cal, you will
Speaker 3: know I do this very specific route on Tuesday mornings,
Speaker 3: and your podcast is always what I listened to. I'm
Speaker 3: such a nerd anyway, So do my square run listen
Speaker 3: to Cal? And So I know what you read because
Speaker 3: you talk about your books, and I feel like the
Speaker 3: Venn diagram of what I read and what you read
Speaker 3: is like the only overlap is Laura Vandercamp.
Speaker 2: So I'm in.
Speaker 4: I love your books.
Speaker 3: What can I say? You guys are both excellent writers.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to be chatting with you. That is my
Speaker 3: love of the week.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Sarah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say that one of the fun
Speaker 2: parts for me of reading Slow Productivity is your extended
Speaker 2: set piece on John McPhee, who is one of my
Speaker 2: favorite professors in college. I took his somewhat famous writing
Speaker 2: nonfiction writing class, and I actually took it the one
Speaker 2: year he offered it as a freshman seminar. So for
Speaker 2: many years he's offered it, he offered it as a
Speaker 2: regular class. My year he offered it as a freshman seminar,
Speaker 2: and then after that he did it as like a
Speaker 2: sophomore seminar or something.
Speaker 4: But anyway, my year.
Speaker 2: Was freshman and it was quite a great class. I
Speaker 2: was just say one of his books that people might want.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess by the time this eras basketball
Speaker 2: season is over. But if you are missing basketball season,
Speaker 2: you should read A Sense of Where You Are, which
Speaker 2: is his biography of Bill Bradley, as one of the
Speaker 2: best pieces of sports writing ever.
Speaker 4: So, cal what do you have for us?
Speaker 1: By the way, I talked to Tim Ferriss recently about that.
Speaker 1: He also took that class at Priston, and he told me,
Speaker 1: Tim said, I think that writing was the best writing
Speaker 1: I've still done in my career. On was the writing
Speaker 1: I did like draft three to try to like get
Speaker 1: marked up less by Professor McPhee. It's all been downhill
Speaker 1: from there. I'll tell you what I'm loving is just
Speaker 1: a few days ago when we recorded this, I had
Speaker 1: my first sort of in person book event for like
Speaker 1: one of my books since before the pandemic, right because
Speaker 1: I had a book come out in twenty nineteen. We
Speaker 1: did a traditional book tour. Then I had a book come
Speaker 1: out in twenty twenty one and that was all virtual,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've done events for other people's books,
Speaker 1: but like I have this, this is my first book
Speaker 1: that's come out post pandemic. And so I went back
Speaker 1: to the politics and pros here in DC's where I
Speaker 1: always do my book launches, and it's like, we're going
Speaker 1: to have a book launch and it was great. It
Speaker 1: was a real love fest. I mean, we broke all
Speaker 1: the fire codes. We had so many people in there.
Speaker 4: I sign onto the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an hour and forty five minutes because everyone was
Speaker 1: just like wanted to stay and stay hi and like
Speaker 1: get something signed. And you know, I've been talking to
Speaker 1: everyone through a microphone for the last four years, and
Speaker 1: so to actually be able to for the first time
Speaker 1: for one of my books and my events to sit
Speaker 1: down and have so many people from the area to
Speaker 1: show up and talk to them face to face, not
Speaker 1: through a microphone or a screen, it was fantastic. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is great. I can't do too
Speaker 1: much of that because I'm an introvert and it drains me,
Speaker 1: like being in a matrix pod basically, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's good for me to do every once in a while.
Speaker 1: So I'm loving that. That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Politics and Pros is an awesome bookstore, so
Speaker 2: definitely any of our listeners visiting Washington, DC, you should
Speaker 2: go to check it out. And they have a lot
Speaker 2: of live author events and other community events, so worth
Speaker 2: going to. Well, Cal, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Why don't you let our listeners know real quickly where
Speaker 2: they can find you.
Speaker 1: So Calnewport dot com has all the information about me
Speaker 1: and my podcast is called Deep Questions I'm not on
Speaker 1: social media, but I am on cal Newport dot com
Speaker 1: and I am in your ears through deep questions. So
Speaker 1: if you're interested in my book Slow Productivity, are the
Speaker 1: other things I'm writing or doing? Check it out there.
Speaker 4: Sounds good. Well, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 4: Well, we are back.
Speaker 2: That was so fun interviewing Cal and with both of us.
Speaker 2: We had quite the time attempting to make sure Sarah
Speaker 2: and I weren't stepping on each other as we're doing
Speaker 2: our two person interview, but we're a little rusty at that,
Speaker 2: but I think we did okay. So this question comes
Speaker 2: from someone who says she's a long time listener and
Speaker 2: noticed recently that She says to Sarah that you and
Speaker 2: Laura have talked a lot about blogs that you read regularly.
Speaker 2: She says, do you use some sort of service to
Speaker 2: send a bunch of blogs to your inbox every day?
Speaker 2: Or do you visit like the website for each blog
Speaker 2: every day? How does this physically work?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I am a feed lely user. Feed Lee is
Speaker 3: a feed aggregator, meaning that you can subscribe to a
Speaker 3: number of blogs and then just go to feed lee
Speaker 3: dot com and then see all of the latest posts
Speaker 3: from each contributor. And that came about after an app
Speaker 3: called Google Reader went defunct somewhere in the I don't know,
Speaker 3: mid teens or something like that, because Feedlee looks a
Speaker 3: lot like Google Reader. But to me, it seems like
Speaker 3: someone was just like, Okay, that's going away. I'm going
Speaker 3: to make an exact copy of that, and everyone can
Speaker 3: move to that. And Feedle still works very well. It
Speaker 3: is free. I love it. I find it really really efficient,
Speaker 3: and it means I'm never checking to see if someone posts.
Speaker 3: I will say, every once in a while, something happens
Speaker 3: with someone's feed and you will stop getting it, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden you'll get like a dump
Speaker 3: of posts.
Speaker 4: But usually if.
Speaker 3: You're a creator, you're aware of that and you're gonna
Speaker 3: fix it. I do subscribe to my own blog on Feedblea,
Speaker 3: so I can see if any shenanigans are happening with
Speaker 3: my feed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was thinking about this.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, I just go to the blog website
Speaker 2: and the ones that I read regularly tend to post
Speaker 2: fairly regularly.
Speaker 4: So someone like the.
Speaker 2: Frugal Girl, she almost always posts in the morning and
Speaker 2: she posts Monday through Friday on a pretty set schedule,
Speaker 2: and so if you go to the website at seven
Speaker 2: point thirty in the morning, probably nine times out of
Speaker 2: ten there is going to be the new post there.
Speaker 2: So on some level it's inefficient, But on the other
Speaker 2: given that it is such a regular posting schedule, it
Speaker 2: isn't same with Sarah. She has a pretty regular posting
Speaker 2: schedule that I just kind of know at this point,
Speaker 2: So I just go and check the blog later in
Speaker 2: the day, and most of the time she has in
Speaker 2: fact posted. Now, if she doesn't, I guess I would
Speaker 2: go and see that it was the old post, and
Speaker 2: then I might not go again for another day, and
Speaker 2: then i'd go check again and she's still not posting.
Speaker 4: I guess I'd go in and check another day.
Speaker 2: So there's a little bit of inefficiency here, But I
Speaker 2: don't know. I guess I don't feel like I have
Speaker 2: to be that tight with my seconds that going to
Speaker 2: the website is a huge waste of time.
Speaker 4: So I have not.
Speaker 2: Come up with a more efficient solution, but seems to
Speaker 2: work okay for me. Well, we have been interviewing cal
Speaker 2: Newport speaking of people who do things efficiently in this episode,
Speaker 2: talking about all things slow productivity. Although maybe checking websites
Speaker 2: individually counts as slow productivity.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: But we will be back next week with more on
Speaker 2: making work and life fit together.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
Speaker 3: shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 2: Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
Speaker 2: has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
Speaker 2: us next time for more on making work and life
Speaker 2: work together.