I'm Cal Newport, and this is in-depth, a semi-regular series where I talk to interesting people about the quest to cultivate a deep life.

Today's episode is presented by Defender,

a vehicle designed for those of us seeking adventure in a distracted world.

Now, we're trying something different today.

For the first time, I am having two guests at the same time.

The first is longtime friend of the show, writer Brad Stolberg.

He's a co-founder of the growth equation and the author of Practice of Groundedness and Master of Change.

I'll also be joined by Clay Skipper, a longtime writer for GQ, who has interviewed me actually multiple times for that magazine,

but is also the host of the Farewell podcast, which is produced by the growth equation.

All right, so why are the three of us talking?

Well, the other day Brad texted us on a group chat in New York Times op-ed, this was from last week, and it was titled,

Elon Musk is the world's richest man. Why is he sleeping on an office floor? This is written by

Eric Baker. Now, this op-ed was adapted from Baker's book, Make Your Own Job, How the Entrepreneurial

Work ethic exhausted America.

And in this piece, Baker takes, you can think of it as a critical stance on the constructed

idea of greatness. Core to Baker's book is this notion that sort of post-war, we had a notion

of industriousness as an ideal for labor in the American context,

that you work hard and do your job well,

and that this evolved over time to a culture of entrepreneurialism,

where it was much more important that you pursued greatness,

you became a sort of self-created mogul, that there is more of this

pressure on you to do something really noteworthy with your professional lives.

...