Ep. 279: Confronting Overload

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We talk a lot on this show about getting more done, but what’s the best way to handle the inevitable situation in which you have too much to do? Cal walks through a sensible response to the crazy-making reality of overload.

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

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

Deep Dive: Controlling Overload [4:48]

- Is building a “second brain” important? [37:53]
- How can I bill 40 hours a week without getting overloaded? [43:30]
- What book should I buy my department to best increase their work quality? [46:31]
- How do I make progress on projects that have lots of overhead? [51:53]
- How can my wife deal with her new position and the overload that comes with it? [57:35]
- CALL: What is Cal excited to gif this holiday season? [1:06:14]

CASE STUDY: Quitting Twitter to build a better life [1:09:55]

CAL REACTS: Why did students get dumber starting in 2012? [1:17:31]

Links:
https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1734436486727254218

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Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for slow productivity 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 in a
0:18.1	distracted world. So if you're new here, I'm a computer science professor and digital theorist who writes
0:29.8	about the way that technology impacts how we live how we work how we relate to each other
0:34.1	here on this show I give concrete advice for taking action on the types of big ideas
0:41.9	I write about I'm here in my deep work HQ joined as always by my producer
0:47.4	Jesse. Jesse who today is keeping an extra close eye on the time because immediately following this
0:54.8	recording and I'm talking about this is like one hour and 25 minutes from the
0:58.8	current point I have to administer online a final exam to the graduate distributed algorithms
1:08.5	elective that I'm teaching this semester at Georgetown.
1:11.6	Jesse I resisted my initial plan of using today's episode as a final review for the graduate students
1:18.7	in this course, reviewing the intricacies of advanced distributed algorithm theory and I figured maybe we should do a normal show.
1:26.0	I asked earlier if the exam is going to be hard.
1:28.0	Yeah, well and I said no and then I realized actually many of the questions are on papers I wrote, so maybe I have a biased answer.
1:37.0	I started laughing.
1:38.0	You know what this got me think about though, Jesse, is our sort of running challenge to figure out what could we do on this show that
1:46.0	would lose the maximum number of listeners as quickly as possible. So I think lecturing
1:52.4	about the distributed algorithm theory would do pretty well, but I was thinking about it coming in here today.
1:57.5	What could we change this format of the show to that would do even worse than lecturing on distributed algorithm theory.
2:04.3	I have three ideas I wrote down.
2:06.3	Yeah, I see.
2:07.3	I don't even know what the second one means.
2:08.8	Yeah, you will know in a second.
	...

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