Ep. 235: Is Productivity Overrated?

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2023

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

Today’s Deep Question: Does Cal Still Think That Productivity is Overrated? [6:46]

- Should I abandon my careful plan when I get on a roll? [30:47]
- How do I achieve slow-and-steady work mode? [35:38]
- How do I make my the most out of idle time? [41:37]
- How does a deep work lover survive the shallows? [47:34]
- Does productivity require that you’re anti-social? [51:16]

Something Interesting: Rethinking productivity in academia [1:02:44]

Links:

calnewport.com/blog/2007/08/31/dangerous-ideas-productivity-is-overrated/

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Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, the show about living and working deeply
0:17.0	in an increasingly distracted world.
0:23.3	I'm here, my Deep Work HQ. I'm joined, as always, by my producer, Jesse. How's it going?
0:30.0	You know, Jesse, there's something we did. Actually, something we failed to do last week
0:33.6	that sent me down a rabbit hole in the days that followed. So, I don't know if you remember
0:38.5	this, but we had a website. I think it was like an archive version of my website. We
0:44.8	were going to bring up onto the screen because I wanted to show how I used to have affiliate
0:50.5	links on my website. It didn't work because it was using the way back machine, which
0:55.9	has frames and somehow it puts the old version within frames. It didn't really work with
0:59.8	our tablets. We moved past it. Setting up for that, though, got me thinking about the
1:04.7	old days of calnewport.com. I started that website in 2007. It was a blog early on for
1:12.5	a while. Now it's a blog slash email newsletter that is still going on strong today, but
1:16.7	I was going back through the archives. It was nice, actually, to re-encounter some
1:22.2	of the early things I wrote that at the time hit a cord. Back in 2007 or 2008 hit a
1:29.4	cord. Here's one that came across. I'm going to load it up. Go down memory lane here.
1:34.4	Here's an article for those who are watching at youtube.com slash calnewportmedia. This
1:39.1	is episode 235. If you're watching, you'll see this. If you're not, I'll narrate what's
1:43.3	going on. I have an article on the screen from calnewport.com from August 31, 2007. This
1:50.7	is early calnewport.com. I started it, I think early that summer. The title of this piece
1:57.2	was Dangerous Ideas colon productivity is overrated. Now I want to actually just touch on a
2:06.4	few points from this article because it's going to lead us to the question I want to dive
2:10.2	deeply into in today's episode, but let me just touch on a few of these points. First
	...

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