I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, the show about living and working deeply

in an increasingly distracted world.

I'm here on my Deep Work HQ, unlike normal, no jessie today, I have a little trip coming

up that is going to intersect with our normal recording time so I actually jumped back into

the studio on Saturday night to knock this episode out so we would have it in the can

even while I was away.

Now long time listeners have noticed, in recent months we switched to a new format for these

episodes, they're now built around themes.

So the deep dive will look at a deep question and then I will take audience questions that

are all roughly related to that same idea.

So the whole episode for the most part can circulate around a common theme.

Now there's a reason why we did this.

It makes the show more approachable.

So if you're a long time Cal Newport listener, there is some comfort to the old format

of I'm jumping from topic to topic and you're getting a tune up or a touch up or a homily

of sorts and all of these different areas I talk about.

And you put it on the background and it just helps keep you in the mindset of I want

to be deep.

I want to be intentional.

But if you're new to this universe, you don't know the Cal Newport cosmology.

It can be a little bit unapproachable when I'm jumping from thing to thing.

It also made it hard for people to share episodes with others because you couldn't just say,

...