Ep. 277: From Chaos to Calm (in 1 day)

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2023

⏱️ 105 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We talk a lot on this show about remaining organized in a digital workplace that drowns us with incoming obligations. In this episode, Cal focuses on the key question of how you get *started* toward this goal. What do you do, in other words, on day one of your quest to find depth amidst the shallows.

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

Deep Dive: Getting organized in a distracted world [6:46]

- How do I get more excited about my work plans? [45:55]

- How do I get my classmates to get better about time management? [53:59]

- How should I organize my deep work blocks? [1:00:13]

- How do I account for contingencies in my quarterly plan? [1:05:11]

- When does Cal find time to read? [1:05:50]

- CALL: How to train Deep Focus muscles [1:11:06]

CASE STUDY: Investing concentrated time [1:17:04]

The 5 books Cal read in November 2023 [1:24:08]

Thanks to our Sponsors:

expressvpn.com/deep

blinkist.com/deep

hensonshaving.com/cal

zocdoc.com/deep

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 in working deeply in a
0:17.9	distracted world
0:29.5	so if you're new to what we're up to here, I'm a computer science professor and digital theorist at Georgetown University who writes about the impact of technologies on how we live, how we work, and how we relate to each other.
0:38.0	On this show, I give concrete advice for taking action on the type of big ideas I write about.
0:45.0	Now I'm here as always in my deep work HQ in Tacoma Park, Maryland joined by my
0:50.3	producer Jesse. Jesse I want to revive a segment we used to do a long time ago that we haven't done in a while
0:58.1	Yeah deep or crazy you remember this one, right? Yeah. For those who don't know, the whole
1:05.8	point of this segment was I talk about an idiosyncratic thing that I did in
1:11.2	pursuit of more depth in my life and then I run it by Jesse to see if that is a
1:17.2	reasonable move towards depth or from just a crazy person.
1:20.3	All right Jesse so we're ready for for today's the segment. All right,
1:24.1	Deep or Crazy, I spent. All right, Deep or Crazy, I spent $150 on a keyboard.
1:30.6	Deep.
1:31.6	Yeah? I'll give you the background. As you know and as long time listeners know I've had a hard relationship with the keyboard of my Macbook air.
1:42.0	This current generation of Macbooks uses a different cheaper type of
1:46.4	plastic which is more prone to wearing off with use. The actual black plastic will begin to wear off with use. The issue is I use my
1:56.8	keyboard a lot. I write constantly. So as I've shown before on the show, I wore away all the letters on the keyboard and all the black and it's just clear plastic with like the the backlight coming through.
2:09.0	So then I bought a latex keyboard cover, so it's like all the keys you put it on top of the
2:16.2	keyboard and so I could actually see my keys like I actually know what letters were
2:20.0	on there but the problem is the latex thing kind of slides around a little bit so I was
2:23.1	fingertip typing and my fingernails just ripped that up. So now I have a ripped up I
2:28.0	wore away all the letters on the latex and have ripped it and I'm trying to
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -441 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cal Newport, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cal Newport and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.