Ep. 294: A Tactical Assault on Busyness

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the biggest problems afflicting knowledge workers in the digital age is frantic busyness; days filled with emails, chats, and meetings, without much to show for all the effort. In today’s episode, Cal dives into one of the most-discussed ideas from his new book, Slow Productivity, which offers a simple, tactical assault on this state of persistent busyness. He then answers listener questions about similar issues and lists the book he read in March.

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: hyoutube.com/calnewportmedia

Deep Dive: A Tactical Assault on Busyness [3:47]

- How can I stop chasing the “perfect” productivity system? [34:51]
- How do I avoid losing my day to distraction? [39:08]
- How do I help my partner escape meeting quickstand? [42:31]
- How do we design the perfect client/task/scheduling system? [48:59]
- Can Apple Vision Pro help deep work? [54:46]

The 5 Books Cal Read in March 2024 [1:06:43]

A Short History of England (Simon Jenkins)
Into the Impossible (Brian Keating)
The Amen Effect (Sharon Brous)
Sink the Bismark! (CS Forester)
Hidden Potential (Adam Grant)

Links:
Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at calnewport.com/slow
newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/can-an-ai-make-plans
Thanks to our Sponsors:

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/deepquestions
expressvpn.com/deep
zocdoc.com/deep
notion.com/cal

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 cultivating a deep life in a high-tech world.
0:19.0	I'm here in my Deep work HQ. No Jesse this week he's traveling so I just decided to
0:27.4	to knock this one out the old-fashioned way by myself so all weirdnesses or unusual occurrences you hear is all my fault
0:37.4	because we don't have producer Jesse here to help me out. What are we going to
0:41.4	talk about today? Well as you know on this show there's three
0:44.4	general categories of topics we cover all relevant to cultivating depth in a
0:49.7	high-tech world. We have surviving and thriving in digital knowledge work. We have the promises and
0:54.3	parallels of new technology and we have creating analog bullworks to the digital
0:59.1	incursion. Today we're going to draw from that first category of a deep dive that
1:02.4	gets right into the heart of one of the core problems caused by digital knowledge work and I'm going to pull out a popular idea from my book, Slow Productivity, and give some tactical advice for
1:16.1	putting that into action. Then I have some questions that are themed around that
1:19.7	same topic, maybe a little more haphazard than normal because Jesse normally pulls the
1:23.6	questions but I think they'll be fine. And then at the end of the show I will get into the
1:27.4	books I read in March. Yes, the show is airing, believe it or not, in April.
1:32.1	In fact, airing on April 1st, I thought about doing an
1:36.0	April's fool's joke. I don't know, something about moving the show entirely to
1:40.6	Tik-Tock and trying to interpret the quest for resisting distraction and
1:46.9	finding meaning and digital age through mainly synchronized Tik-Toc dances.
1:50.9	But you're welcome because I decided not to do that.
1:55.0	Speaking of slow productivity, quick logistical announcement.
2:00.0	On April 11th, at.m. Jesse and I are doing a live recording of the
2:06.8	Deep Questions podcast at People's Book here in Tacoma Park, Maryland
	...

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