Ep. 286: Rethinking Self Help

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 103 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A key step in cultivating a deep life is reflecting on what matters to you and the best strategies for pursuing it. This, in turn, requires that you engage in the consumption of some manner of self help. It’s here that many people sell themselves short, limiting this intake to short videos and the occasional advice guide. In today’s episode, Cal talks about cultivating a much richer approach to self-help in which you’re able to take in wisdom from a variety of sources of various levels of sophistication.

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: youtube.com/calnewportmedia

Deep Dive: Rethinking Self Help [3:21]

- How can I prevent hard tasks from derailing my productivity systems? [38:47]
- Should I get ahead in my career with a project that I hate? [47:54]
- How can I make progress on my novel when my day job drains me? [52:39]
- Is there such a thing as too much deep work? [59:32]
- CALL: Will short deep work sessions work to write effectively? [1:12:17]

CASE STUDY: Reducing stress with slow productivity [1:18:40]

The 5 Books Cal Read in January 2024 [1:30:22]

Links:
https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/preorder-slow-productivity/
FREE Download for “Slow Productivity”: www.calnewport.com/slow

Thanks to our Sponsors:

https://www.grammarly.com/podcast
https://www.drinklmnt.com/deep
https://www.shopify.com/deep
This show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/deepquestions

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
0:18.2	distracted world. So if you're new here, I'm a computer science professor and digital theorist who writes
0:29.4	about the ways that technology impacts the way we live, work, and relate to each other.
0:35.0	On this podcast, I give concrete advice about the types of big ideas I write about.
0:42.0	I'm here right now in my deep work HQ joined as always by my producer Jesse.
0:49.0	Jesse we should thank the audience you know last week we announced the pre-order campaign for my new book
0:56.9	Slow productivity. Right. This did well. I think people people showed up. we are moving a good number of copies of my book
1:06.6	Slow Productivity which comes out on March 5th but the pre-orders as I mentioned is
1:10.0	very important for helping the book get a big start and well you all showed up in a
1:13.7	big way the day we announced it we hit as low as top 50 on the Amazon
1:20.6	rankings I think we move 800 hard covers and just that day alone
1:26.0	so I really appreciate it if you're thinking about pre-ordering you haven't yet
1:30.1	just go to Cal Newport.com slash slow that has the instructions for how to
1:36.1	submit your pre-order receipt they get all sorts of nice bonuses my way of
1:39.7	thinking you. There's a new thing we've added that I'm excited about and I want to
1:43.4	mission it briefly. Signed books. So you can pre-order a signed copy of my book.
1:49.6	This is being fulfilled through our local bookstore here in Tacoma Park, People's Book.
1:58.0	I always mix that up, Jesse.
2:00.0	People's Book, not People Books.
2:03.2	Yeah.
2:04.2	Which one is it? Do I have it mixed up?
2:05.7	I know People's Book.
	...

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