Ep. 248: Decoding Overload

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Few professional experiences feel worse than overload. But what really causes this unfortunate state? In this episode, Cal takes a closer look at overload, identifying its main culprits, identifying solutions, and helping listeners with their specific overload-related questions.

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: How does overload actually operate? [3:54]

- Does Cal use an executive assistant? [26:15]

- How do I write an effective communication policy for my team? [36:35]

- Does overhead compound exponentially? [42:50]

- How rare are high expectation/low overhead jobs? [48:05]

- My job has few shallow obligations. What should I do with my free time? [51:41]

Something Interesting: The future of social media is less social [59:39]

Links:

wsj.com/articles/workers-say-its-harder-to-get-things-done-now-heres-why-2a5f1389

nytimes.com/2023/04/19/technology/personaltech/tiktok-twitter-facebook-social.html

Thanks to our Sponsors:

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 DeepQuestions, the show about living and working deeply in
0:17.7	a distracted world.
0:19.7	I'm here in my DeepWork HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse.
0:29.2	Did you notice the change I made?
0:31.2	No.
0:32.2	To the tagline?
0:34.2	I missed it.
0:36.2	Living and working deeply in a distracted world.
0:38.2	Okay, because before it was two sentences.
0:40.2	It used to be living and working deeply in an increasingly distracted world.
0:44.7	It's always bothered me because here's part when you're writing, right?
0:47.2	When you're writing at the professional level, there's a lot of different components
0:50.6	that goes into that.
0:51.6	But one of the things that goes into writing is just the pure sound and rhythm of the
0:56.3	words and an increasingly, in and increasingly.
1:01.6	To me, that's a confusing jumble of in and type sounds, in type sounds.
1:07.4	It's sloppy writing, right?
1:08.9	It'll catch your attention in your mind's voice.
1:11.6	I never quite liked in an increasingly, it's just bad writing.
1:15.6	So when did you determine this on like a walk?
1:18.2	I've always been, I've not liked it, but I felt like, well, we're stuck with it and
1:22.6	today I said, no, we're not stuck with it.
	...

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