Ep. 340: Productivity Rain Dances

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sometimes the quest for productivity can seem like the embrace of activity for the sake of activity, a prospect that inevitably leads to exhaustion. In today’s episode, Cal explores this idea by discussing “productivity rain dances,” why they’re dangerous, and what works better instead. He then answers listener questions and ends with a Tech Corner segment in which he fact checks Joe Rogan’s understanding of ChatGPT.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Question, the show about cultivating a deep life in a distracted world.
0:23.8	I'm here in my deep work, HQ, joined as always by my producer, Jesse.
0:29.8	Jesse, we made a little run last week on the podcast rankings.
0:33.3	What happened?
0:34.1	Hot on us saying like, hey, we're proud to be top 20 in the technology category.
0:39.9	I was like, is that really true?
0:41.0	And I went to the check.
0:42.1	And we were sitting number five.
0:44.3	I think that might have been temporary.
0:45.4	Like we just had an episode come out or maybe because Tim Ferriss tweeted about us.
0:49.3	It got like a little bump.
0:51.2	But, you know, hey, we're there.
0:52.4	That was on the Apple rankings?
0:54.0	Yeah.
0:54.3	So it was acquired.
0:56.4	Oh,
0:56.9	they're technically a technology one?
0:58.2	Yeah.
0:59.0	It was,
0:59.4	I think at that point,
1:00.4	acquired had taken the number one,
1:02.4	all in podcast number two,
	...

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