The Daily Stoic - Seasonality and Understanding Pseudo-Productivity | Cal Newport PT 2

Episode Date: March 16, 2024

Ryan continues his conversation with computer science professor and bestselling author, Cal Newport. They discuss how to be indispensable in your personal and professional life, the myth of busyness, Cal’s latest book Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, and more. Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His scholarship focuses on the theory of distributed systems, while his general-audience writing explores intersections of culture and technology. He is the author of eight books, including Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. Newport is also a contributing writer for the New Yorker and the host of the Deep Questions podcast.Watch or listen to Cal’s podcast, Deep Questions.Subscribe to Cal’s newsletter, here. Listen to Cal’s take in The Wealthy Stoic: A Daily Stoic Guide To Being Rich, Free, and Happy. ✉️ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. I told you I've had some weird experiences with Cal Newport. I was in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and this sheik was telling me how much he loved Cal's work. I was visiting a senator who'd read some of my books,

and he showed me his little deep workroom. My sister heard Cal was here, gets off the phone, and goes, oh my God, you changed all these meetings we do. And actually, Cal gave her a really good piece of advice that I thought I would share. He said, in hybrid working environments, and maybe you have a hybrid company, I outlet most of the Daily Stoke employees, we do a certain number of days in the office, a certain number at home. He was like, no Zoom meetings when working remote.

So his point was, when you're working remote, work remote. Do the job when you're at home. Do the meetings when you're in the office. And I thought that was really interesting. My sister was talking about how much, so much of her days, whether she's working from home or not, are eaten up by these endless Zoom meetings and what a suck on creativity they are.

Anyways, about two weeks ago, I was in Las Vegas, just doing a talk, and this guy, he's a veteran, he's a doctor, runs a big organization. He was saying, you know, like, whose stuff do you love? Like, who's one of your peers in your group that you read on a regular basis? And the first name out of my mouth was Cal Newport. I love his stuff. Mark Manson, who's going to be on the podcast in a couple weeks, he was saying the exact same thing to me when he was here. Everyone I know is just a fan of Cal. And I think we're a fan of Cal because he does great work. His thinking really applies not just to a large audience, but also to people like me and people who do what we do.

His stuff isn't like, oh, this is great advice if you're at this phase in your life. I think it's great advice for everyone, elite performers and people who are just getting started. I mean, he got his start giving advice to college students about how to do better in school. But he's just always a delightful guy. You listened to part one of the episode earlier and in this half we talk about the concepts in his new book Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Kyle always does subtitles well. We talked about slow productivity, we talked about autopilot, we talked about how to be indispensable, when to take that big swing, when to really bet on yourself,

use the leverage you've accumulated. And then we talked about pseudo productivity. And the thing I've been thinking about most is this idea of seasonality. There's a time and place you go through phases. You're not just doing the same thing every day, which is more my style. And I think Cal really spoke well about seasonality, and that's something I'm taking away from the interview and going to try to apply more in my life. Cal is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown. He's a staff or a contributor. He's a contributor writer to the New Yorker. He's the host of the Deep Questions podcast, which is wonderful. And his books, Slow Productivity, Digital Minimalism,

Deep Work, and one of my favorites, So Good, They Can't Ignore You, has sold millions of copies for very good reason. Enjoy this part two of my conversation with the one and only Cal Newport. If you want to focus more on your well-being this year, you should read more and you should give Audible a try. Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks focused on wellness from physical, mental, spiritual, social, motivational, occupational, and financial.

You can listen to Audible on your daily walks. You can listen to my audiobooks on your daily walks. And still, this is the key. I have a whole chapter on walking, on walking meditations, on getting outside. And it's one of the things I do when I'm walking. Audible offers a wealth of well-being titles to help you get closer to your best life and the best you. Discover stories to inspire, sounds to soothe, and voices that can change your life. Wherever you are on your well-being journey, Audible is there for you. Explore bestsellers, new releases,

and exclusive originals. Listen now on Audible. Yeah. Like I'm trying to make this movie. Yeah. You know, and this other stuff is cool, but I'm trying to make this movie. Or Neil Stephenson's,

Why I'm a Bad Correspondent essay, right? He's like, if I answered all these letters and went to all these conferences, which is what science fiction writers typically do, in the end, I would have all these different one-on-one conversations to point at, but I'd rather have like a hundred thousand word book that a million people read. That's better than having 500, making 500 people happy in a conversation. But that same mindset is applicable even the jobs where, okay, I have a boss and I can't completely

just stop listening to emails. And so, people often say, so, it must be nice for you, but I don't even want to hear this advice because I can't just be Neil Stevenson or Chris Nolan. But knowing the game that matters really makes a difference. Now, you might not be able to play it as purely as a full-time writer, but you can for sure play that game better than the other people in your office if they don't even know that's the game they're playing. So you're not able to ignore your inbox.

But when you understand like, oh, this is what's going to make a difference in my company. Now there's all sorts of things you can do to reduce the burden of that inbox, to begin to trade, you know, Adam Grant calls them idiosyncrasy credits. As I get better at this, I'm going to trade accountability, hold me accountable, for less accessibility. I'm not involved in these things over here. There's things you can start doing if you know the game you're supposed to be playing. It's going to be maybe very specifically constructed for your particular job and the personalities,

but it shouldn't be imperfect be the obstacle of being much better. Even in a job where I can't throw out my email address, if I know this is what's going to make the difference and this is getting in the way, there's a lot I can do where I'm now spending 2X more time on this than I was before. I still have to do emails, but I'm doing half as many because now I'm getting clear about what I'm trying to do here. Yeah. For better or for worse, businesses will make all sorts of allowances for people who get stuff done and deliver results.

Yes. Do you know what I mean? And look, if you're at a company where you're delivering crazy good results, you know what's, you're like a topper, an elite performer, and they're hassling you about your dress code, you're probably at the wrong company, and there is a company that will not hassle you about that and like make whatever arrangements

or stipulations you want to get you. Like talent is always the variable that is rarest. It's the number one problem employers have is getting good people. They're desperate for good people. I think sometimes we tell the story in our heads of like, no, it's just like purely sort of vindictive, exploitative relationship. And like, I'm nobody and they're just sort of pulling the strings of what can I do?

People are desperate for good people. I gave you credit for this in an interview recently. I don't know if I actually heard this from you or not. So you'll have to tell me if this was you or not. There's a danger along these lines. There's a danger, especially when you're in a, it's the opposite danger. So like when you're new to a position,

being too good at the stuff that's not the core value. And I don't know if this is from when you were talking about early on being an assistant. Yeah, I was an assistant in Hollywood and this guy who's now a very big movie producer, he was like, look, I was where you were. He's like, my best advice to you is like, don't be too good of an assistant. He was pointed down the hall.

He's like, that guy right there. He'll never let you go. He's like, he's a lifer. And he's like, there's two types. There's people who are lifers and then there are people who are going places and you got to decide which one you want to be. He's always been saying like, if you wanna be an assistant, don't be one.

But he was saying, yeah, like if you are indispensable on the phones, they'll keep you on the phones. But if you're holding down the phones, but you keep like giving your boss good ideas that they use in meetings, like they'll promote you much quicker. Right, so be competent, don't be incompetent. So be like, clearly I'm competent.

I'm not dropping the ball and I can do these things. But I'm not going out of my way to be like, hey, I foresaw that this is near your dry cleaner and I set up the driver to stop. Don't make your life too easy. But then keep signaling the stuff that matters for the next rung up, which is take me off the phone to make me a junior agent, that I'm showing you I could bring in money. Yeah. Yeah. Like I probably have what it takes to do that. Right. I'm not easily flustered. I have good ideas. I'm good with the client relations. I'm okay with this other stuff, but that same, but the reason why I brought that up and I've

been bringing it up in other interviews is because I'm thinking about this is essentially what you're doing when what you're mastering is the game of your inbox. Yeah. Like I'm gonna clear this thing out. Okay, you, yes, everyone's getting what they need. I'm following up at this. And like, I'm very responsive and I get everyone answers quickly

and I'm always on my phone at all times. So you're always gonna answer pretty quickly. And I'm never the thing that's gonna slow down. I'm never gonna be the link in the chain that makes the whole thing pull through slower. You're the assistant who's great at manning the phones. Even if you have a high level job in some sense, that's the wrong game to be playing well because ultimately the CEO is not the

person who was, you're so great at answering emails quickly. You're right. It's you're never actually measured on that. You want them to go, Hey, come in this meeting with me. Don't just set it. You want to be sending the signal that you have something to contribute, not that you're good at getting coffee or whatever. Or I produce when you give me a project, like I knock it out of the park. That's good. And then you're slow in answering these emails, but you know what? This is important. So I'm going to give this report to Ryan because it's going to be really good. Yeah. He's a really good researcher and his writing's sharp and the

last thing was really impressive. So yeah, I don't care about the... Yeah, I'm going to bother this other person over here with the small stuff because he's really quick at answering on emails. Yeah. And by the way, that can be someone who likes that and wants to be good at it. And the funny thing is when you find those people, you're so excited to find those people and they can command their own salary and benefits and demands because so many of the people that you tend to hire or see for those positions see it as a stepping stone and don't want to be in it. And there's a cost to that, right? Because you're having to constantly replace those people.

Yeah, that's no good either. So it's figuring the thing that you want to be good at that moves the needle for you. Yeah, but don't accidentally become an assistant when you're seven steps up. That's what I think happens when you play the game of email, is you could be an executive, right? But you're playing the game of the assistant

by like, what I'm good at is answering emails really quickly and people get quick responses because ultimately there's no friction or traction on that that actually generates direct value, right? What's the thing you produce that we sold? What's the client relationship that brought in a lot more money? What is the new insight on which we built a new business strategy? It's not playing that game. So you can very high up the chain.

I see professors fall into this a lot. This is like an assistant professor trap. You have to know as an assistant professor, the game you are playing is publishing. It's the only game you're playing. You are going to lose your job after seven years if you don't publish a lot. That's how it works. We're going to temporarily give you this job. If by the end of seven years you have not gone tenure, you have to go.

How do you get tenure? We solicit confidential letters from the top researchers in your field and all they talk about is how important is his or her work. That's it. You can't get tenure by teaching really well. You can't get tenure through politics because it's confidential letter writers looking at your research. You can't get tenure through, I did a bunch of committees and I was really useful, the

dean likes me or all these things people think goes on. It's your work, your research. You can't get tenure through, I did a bunch of committees and I was really useful or the dean likes me or all these things people think goes on. It's your work, your research. How important was it? Right? And these letters are brutal, by the way, I've been on the other side of this. It is here are the institutions at which this person would get tenure and would not. Here are the three people that I think are most comparable to this person right now. This is two people who are better than this person right now. I would say this person is a little bit worse. Like's like the NFL combine, but with publishing papers basically. So an assistant professor has to learn that's all that really matters. Right.

All right. Now, once you know that, try not to be too annoying to other people. Yeah, try not to be horrible at it. Don't be horrible, but this is not your game. And a big trap for assistant professors is they get stuck in the game. Because it's scary. The publication game is scary because that might not

look like anything today. It's played on the scale of years. So they feel much more comfortable. I'm answering all the emails. I'm joining all the committees. I'm very responsive and useful. I'm taking on it. Because they want to create a sense of I'm doing things

and I'm busy. And then when the tenure time comes, it's, hey, where's your papers? Well, you could argue the same is true for a college student, right? So you get into the college, you're at an elite university or a mediocre university, it doesn't really matter. And if you think success at the end of that four years is like what your grades are, you've probably screwed up, right? Even if you're trying to get into grad school, because really it matters what relationships

have you formed, what things have you learned, right? Even if you're trying to get into grad school, because really it matters what relationships have you formed, what things have you learned, right? What have you found out you really don't want to do, right? So if you spend four years getting great grades and you get into a law school, but you haven't figured out that you hate the law, that's a huge failure. But also, for both students who aren't going to be continuing on, nobody's going to care about your GPA ever again.

So if that's the game that you're playing, you're setting yourself up not to be very successful because the important thing was, oh, I learned these people or I got a job at this place. You have to be figuring out big things that are going to matter 5, 10, 20 years from now. The things that are very easily measured and clear don't matter even then, and they're definitely not going to matter down the road. It could be even worse. I had this exact experience. Early in grad school, I'm at MIT. I had published these two books about how to be a good student, right?

And I had a blog. And so I had this great idea. I was like, what I'm going to do is mentor a collection of students from Boston area colleges who are struggling. And what I'll do in my mind was, oh, I'll just apply my advice. And they're going to be A student and happy. And then everyone will see how good my advice works and buys my books, right? So one of the students, I called her Lena, wasn't a real name, but I called her Lena. I wrote about this on my blog. This is

almost 20 years ago now. So she came to me and she broke my whole understanding. Because she came to me and was saying, yeah, I'm really, I'm stressed out. I'm struggling and my grades aren't where I want them to be or whatever. And so I said, okay, here's what we're going to do. Let's build a calendar. I used to, you know, let's, I call it autopilot schedule. Let's just take your activities and classes, figure out what work is due regularly, find time for it on the calendar. You know, this is a standard thing. I started doing this for her and we ran out of hours. Like we ran out of hours for her to work because she was double majoring with a minor and had nine different activities and it didn't fit. So it wasn't... Her problem

was not, oh, grades are what matters. It was actually a college admissions mindset that said activities, quantity of activities, extracurricular. So you had all this stuff. And I was like, okay, Lena, look, it literally doesn't fit into your schedule. So we have to slice and dice. Get rid of all these activities. Cut down the one major. Just do something well, but give yourself time to also be a person, a student. She couldn't do it.

And it turned out what happened was, her whole town, her whole family was like, oh my god, she got in the MIT. All of their hopes were on her shoulders. And so she felt like I have to do really well here. But she didn't know the game that mattered. So the only game she knew was, well, the way I got in the college.

Was by doing a lot of stuff. I did a lot of things. So she's like, if I'm not doing a lot of things, how else will I signal that I'm being impressive? And I owe it to all these people to be impressive. So she had a mental breakdown and had to leave. I think she eventually came back, but she had to take a long had to leave. I think she eventually came back, but she had to

take a long leave of absence and come back because she couldn't get out of that game. Right. And I was telling her, look, if you want to go to grad school, let me tell you how this works. How do you get into grad school? Let's say you want to go to grad school, you want to get a doctorate. You do need to have a good GPA in your field. You need to be a really good student in your field. But that means don a really good student in your field. But that means don't do anything else. Don't do double majors. Why would you double major? Don't have seven activities. Grad school admissions is decided by a group of professors. I've been on this committee many times. I've run it before. They don't care what activities you're in. All they care about, can you come and contribute to our research? So what matters is you did very well

in specifically that field and that you got involved in research so you can signal, here's a paper or two I got involved in as an undergraduate. I can handle doing research. I was like, nothing else matters, right? Like, so that was the game, but she was playing the wrong game and it completely burnt her out.

Like it completely held her back. Yeah, knowing what game you're playing, that's kind of the ultimate thing. I found this with Daily Stoke early on. So when we started the Daily Stoke Instagram, we would just do like quotes every day, right? Yeah. And then. They'd just be quotes from the Stoke, be like the picture of the Stoke and then quote. And then, you know, like I would have a book coming out

or we'd be making something and I'd I'd go, hey, it's Ryan. I have this thing. I'd be like, who the fuck are you? You know what I mean? Because I realized that the thing that was getting the most engagement by itself, so growing the account, wasn't checking one of the primary boxes of all of it, which was to develop a relationship with people.

So it was not an email newsletter yet? It was- No, this is just the- It was Instagram. It was all these things. But yeah, let's say I was like, hey, sign up for the email. They're like, what email? What book?

They didn't know. All they were seeing were these quotes, right? And it was devoid of any connection to any larger thing. And so one of the reasons that Daily Stoke, I became more involved in it as a person, even though it's not really what I'm as comfortable with, is that it became impossible without it to actually deliver anything but the quotes. Yeah. Let me ask you about this because I'm fascinated by this. Okay. Because I mean, that's what really like your whole empire really took off. I mean, I've known you a long time. I mean, it was RyanHoliday.net and the reading list email, right? Which was still around.

That's still around. So when Daily Stoic, so you're saying when you first conceived the Daily Stoic, you weren't quite playing the first game. You saw it as like, here's a spin-off thing. I actually saw Daily Stoic- That's going to just put out quotes and it's not really me. It's like another business. Well, I was attracted to it because it was a brand that was not me. I thought this would be like a relief. This would be better.

And actually, it could be more because it's not me. Oh, I can have other writers. Yeah, exactly. Obstacle had come out at this point. Obstacle had come out at this point. Or was this right after EGO? EGO came out too. This is all around when Daily Stoke, the book, came out.

So you're like, I'm going to write this book, so I might as well have the domain. And then you're like, why don't I have a brand? The domain was $6,000, I remember. And yeah, the idea was it was going to be this brand that wasn't me. And so it worked. At first, the brand grew very quickly, and it was doing well.

But it turned out there's actually a ceiling when there's not a person involved, because it's not personalized, and people trust people. You know what I mean? And so I see this now, there's all these other, it's funny, right, like when we did it, nobody thought it was anything, and it didn't seem like it would work. And now, of course, there's all these other people

that wanna rip it off, that do their own copycat versions of it, right? You mean like daily, but something else? Or stoic? No, no, no, like there's the stoic daily or, you know, there's like a thousand Instagram accounts, right? But like- Every other day stoic, yeah.

It might as well be AI. It could be some troll farm somewhere that's doing it because there is no person attached to it. So it bumps up into the ceiling in which they're all replaceable. There is no actual personal real connection with any of them. And there is no relationship. It's just like, I get quotes

and I don't actually care even who's delivering the quotes. Does that make sense? Yeah, so then how do you describe the game you figured out matters is what people want is a, they want an exemplar of this approach to life that they're able to have a bit like a daily interaction with. It's not just, I want to be more stoic. I want to have a Ryan Holiday- I want it to be explained to me and articulated to me and embodied to me. And I want it to

feel real and attainable and all these other things that only a person can do. So the shifts then would be, I'm deconstructing your business here, but the shifts here would be not just quotes, but let's have more like short videos, articles. Right. You have first person in the articles sometimes, right? More you, right? So like you get a YouTube strategy going, right?

And you invested upfront, like we're gonna do produced videos, which is not necessarily the play if what you're trying to do was maximize like views or YouTube views right off the bat, but was a good play for, here's Ryan Holiday, like here he is, he's on his ranch, here he is walking,

like get to see you again and again, okay. So that got into it, your socials were doing more, there's more video, more photo. Would you say, I mean, you'd have probably already moved out here, right? But you were leaning into that as I live on a rent, like I'm not living in the city. You just have to show it. You can't just be a disembodied voice with a message because how can I trust that? What affinity, what connection do I have to it? What does it actually mean to me?

How do I know that it's real? Then I'm going to argue, I guess this is what you were thinking, is the painted porch is another masterstroke in this time, right? Because, I mean, you're giving a... People, especially in an age of visuals, there's an embodiment of like Ryan lives in Texas and has this bookstore and he's there. And like people are in the book. We're in the like near the bookstore and there's books everywhere.

And, you know, it gives us. OK, I don't know if it's a master show, but it was the idea that like, well, it was something I wanted to do anyway. But but yes, it's it's a physical man. It's it's a physical manifestation that, again, if you're just like a rip off Instagram account, you could never afford to do and never would do and never could pull off. So yeah, making it real. And I think it's interesting, right? Do you read your own audio books?

I did for the first time. So I actually think that you wouldn't think that was important. It is. And it takes a lot of work. I got to do another one here very shortly. But then you go, okay, wait, there somebody is going to this audio book is seven hours long. So somebody is going to have a seven hour connection with this material. Is it going to be with me or is it going to be with an intermediary between me and that person? And, you know And so maybe on the one hand, not having a professional narrator, it could decrease your reach because you're not as good at it.

I'm not as good at it as whoever the best audiobook reader of the world is. But is that the game that I'm trying to play, Maximum Reach, or is it also about depth? And do I want to, when someone's deciding to have someone talk or when someone's deciding, hey, this is a difficult moment in my life. Do I, does this thing, does this thing resonate with me? Yes or no. It's going to be like whose voice was in there. Yeah.

Does that make sense? Like it's a funny, a funny trivia tidbit. Yeah. It's the audio book for Deep Work. Won an award in an audio, an audio book awards. I guess there's some ceremony. It won an award. Jeff Bottoms had a hat tip. Not me. Right. So it's kind of funny. Like, okay, yeah, that was so good. It won an award, but it wasn't playing the right game. You know, you know what switches it over? Why I had to do it

is like, well, you podcast now. Yes. Like, okay. So here's hundreds of thousands of people who now have this relationship. It's going to be really weird to have another voice that's like, your voice is well known, but that's one of the reasons why I got in the podcasting, is its relationship. And so in the writing sense, those old student books I wrote, for example, some of those have sold hundreds of thousands of copies now. They didn't sell that in 2006. It's because once there's a relationship with a writer, they want to go read his other stuff. At this point, it's probably parents are giving it to their kids, like people who read it. that in 2006. It's because once there's a relationship with a writer, at this point, parents are giving it to their kids, like people who read it. They have it's really distressing.

Rental fans of yours are giving it to their kids who are now in high school. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is distressing that I have people or people who read it. Maybe they went back. They actually read it in school and now are talking about their own kids. Yeah, that's the problem when you start writing when you're young. Yeah. Okay. So games that matter.

I know that sounds writing specific, but this is the challenge I think for almost anything someone's doing. Yeah. Where are the people that you're trying to reach? Where are they? What actually connects with them? And there is this, it feels arrogant, but figuring out that actually most of the things that your industry does or that people do are not winning that game.

And if there's a certain amount of artifice to it or just inertia to it and that you have to, you have to figure out what that stuff is and then not do it. So what about this element? All right. So this element also seems important. All right. So you're trying to find the right game. The other factor here that seems to be important in people who end up winning is when you get that gut instinct of, I think I found the right game. Like, you know, you just, it's clicking or whatever, the willingness to push all the chips in. ["The Last Supper"] I'm Peter Frankenpern.

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So to me, the first thing you do is you have this, okay, so you're, you haven't been in this industry for 20 years. You just started this thing. You're some kid or you're, you have this idea for business and you go, you know, the way that this industry or this product is done or whatever, it's totally wrong. It's just nonsensical how inefficient it is. The first thing you should do is not trust that impulse. The thing you have thought about for three seconds

is probably not smarter than all the institutional wisdom and tradition and self-interest operating in that space. So the first thing you have to do is go figure it out. So you're like, hey, I don't know, the way they sell things at convenience stores is dumb and it could be better. Like you actually have to go spend some time behind the counter at a place or you have to spend hours and hours watching how it goes.

Why isn't there a book about this? Well, chances are there's not a book about this because nobody wants a book about that, right? Or whatever, right? And you have to figure out, you have to look for disconfirmation first and foremost that your hunch or hypothesis or insight into an established industry or space is not true because it's probably not true. Yeah. And so I think that is a very undervalued step, right? Because especially if you have been successful with other instincts like that in the past,

you start to believe you have this Midas Touch or this know-it-all syndrome, and that's when you blow up. Right. Okay. Then I'll add onto that also understanding how that world works. Yes. Right? So, okay. I think I've thought about selling things in convenience stores. Let me find out why don't people sell it that way. Also, how does one start a company that puts stuff in convenience stores? What's the reality of where those goods are, their margin? I always tell people for me, the most important phone call probably in my life is when I decided to write a book,

I called a family friend who was an agent and said, explain to me how do people sell books? And in particular, what would be the very narrow path that a 20 or 21 year old could follow to sell a book? And she was like, this is how the industry actually works. And I don't know how many other young people like Bright for Coach Sister and Ivy League School like, I'm going to write a book or whatever. And it goes nowhere because you don't do that step either.

You're like, I'm just going to... I had this exact conversation with someone. He came to one of my talks and he wanted to write a book. I was like, okay, I have my standard advice for writing a book. And he had this whole alternative world built out about how he was going to in run around the whole. It involved him spending a lot of money on these marketing firms. And these marketing firms were going to get a lot of attention to his self-published book. And then the publishers were going to come to him and say, this is so great.

And I was like, why would you do all of that? There's a very specific path that works really well. They're desperate for good books and it's a great threshold function to see if your idea is good. You don't want to have anything to do with it, right? So understanding is, is this idea really good? Don't trust yourself. How does this world really work?

Yeah. Then I would say, wait till you have traction. Like I've made money, I've sold things. So like, okay, like I'm actually playing in this world now until I'm playing in the world. I'm not ready to make my big swing probably either. So I think that comes into it as well. But then knowing, because it can be hard to figure out. Like again, I think about your story, like a lot of pieces came together writing about Stoicism, which your original decision to do that was not part of some master plan. And I've told you before, like those of us who knew you back then thought you were crazy. Yeah.

My editor told me later that she thought it would just not work and then I would go back to doing the other. So my publisher was like, we were just humoring you. Yeah. Who I've now sold millions of books on that topic for. So yeah, but it is important it wasn't a huge bet. You know what I mean? But obviously, that was like one of several elements, right?

So like that, like, oh, that's kind of working. There's a couple of books and a planner in there before that really established. Moving to Daily Stoic as a separate entity, but then making Daily Stoic around you, visual branding as well. And at some point, those things all started clicking together. And then it's, okay, we're going to do the four card virtues books. We're going to really push the studio quality pocket. The plays, it was like you push chips in, right? So it's like you're

waiting for your moment. I think like Andrew Huberman did something similar. He was going around doing all these interviews during COVID and was feeling like something here is working. Like just something about being a professor. He's realizing he's good on camera. Good on camera. His things are spreadable. I have authority. But someone with a-

He's hearing from an audience. Like he's probably getting lots of emails back from people. Like, did your thing change my life? There's these articles being written about him and his interviews were blowing up on these big podcasts. And he's like, Oh, this works. I'm talking in the way of practical advice, but I'm not just, you know, whatever. And so he's like, let's just do, let's push the chips in on this. Great. Let's like, this is what I need to do twice a week. Like, let's do this,

like do the research and like just put out these episodes. And, uh, and you know, all that sort of takes off too. Or like Lex Friedman realizing the AI podcast, which he'd been doing forever, forever. He was just interviewing scientists mainly about AI and other technology. And there was this pandemic moment where he's like, oh, no one's doing anything. And if I fly around the country and test myself every day and set up studios and hotel rooms, I could talk to a lot of people. Yeah. And that was kind of working.

Like, let's go all in on that. This is what's working as my interview style, not the fact I'm talking about AI. Anyways, you sort of see this. Right. You see this come up. OK, now that something's working, go for it. Yes.

What do you feel like of your advice or strategies? What do you feel like you're the biggest hypocrite about? What do you feel like you struggle actually applying the most? I think this book, Slow Productivity, is the most of the books I've written where it's question I have I want to be better at, really something I'm really working at. When I wrote Deep Work, for example, it was, yeah, I came out of this environment, the theory group at MIT in which focus was the number one thing. It was like extreme focus. It was, we could stare for hours. And I was trying to bring this to more, like, hey, there's this thing we learned in this narrow world, which is more broadly applicable

than we think. I was trying to bring this message out there. Digital minimalism, I'd never had a social media account. And so I was talking about why you need to be careful about this and how do you build... I have an intentional relationship with technology, how do you build that too? It's connecting to that. This, I was actually motivated by real problems in my life. I am slow productive. I don't like busyness. I do not like having schedules on a regular basis

that are packed. Like a big thing for me is I need work as much as possible to be in a scenario where it makes no difference if you work tomorrow or not. But if you don't work a lot this month, like you're in trouble, right? Like that's my sweet spot, right? But still things things creep.

Yeah. And I'm in constant tension. So what pushed me over the edge to writing this book was my three boys got all the elementary school age. Yeah. And when they got to elementary school age, it swapped to this point where they needed every minute I had. Yeah.

Right? The tension between work and non-work became less of a pragmatic thing. You know? Like, hey, what toddler needs to be taken where? And we make sure everyone's getting a break. And it became more like, they need as much time as possible with me. It made that tension really palpable.

And so I was like, I really got to clean up my understanding of these intuitions and instincts I have about slowly working towards what matters because I've accreted a lot of things as I've gotten better and gotten more stature and the opportunities are everywhere. And I felt like I was in danger of impeding my own progress. So this Slow Productivity is probably the book.

Like I most had myself in mind as a reader. I mean, I do it, but this clarified what I'm trying to do so I could do it much better. Yeah. The way most people set their lives up, the way sort of business and life is set up, I think we don't maybe compute enough, like who gets screwed the most in that system. Because the workers are miserable.

They're sitting in the cubicle. They're not happy. They're inundated with email. But the person who gets the people who get the short end of that sticker are children. I was thinking about this. Like, yeah, like. I know how I'm able to drop my kids off at school at, you know, like eight, thirty or nine or whatever, and pick them up before like three o'clock

or whatever. I don't understand how someone with a job could possibly do that. Like, it's insane who can work from nine to three. Yeah. Right. That's not it. That's not a day. And and and so what this is obviously where daycare comes in, and nannies come in, and in-laws come in. But it's also, by definition, a world, I think, back to my own childhood, where I probably

saw my parents for like an hour or two a day. You know what I mean? Interesting. And then the weekend was like catch up. And obviously, they were burned out. And then they wanted was like catch up and obviously they were burned out. Yeah. And then I like, or they wanted to do stuff and I wanted to be home because I wasn't home all day.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And so you think about how, what I, if you can get what you would call slow productivity or you might call like an artist life, what's so wonderful about it is the flexibility to be like, oh, my kid is sick. OK, I'll just spend all day with you today. Or like you have a half day. I'll pick you up. Let's do that.

Like you or you run into my office. Yeah, focus is important. And I like to lock in what I'm doing. But I also can turn it on and off if I need to. Right. Because, yeah, I'm measuring it not in terms of what did I get done today? Or my boss is gonna be breathing down my neck, but I measured in terms of like months or years.

And so like the system of, I don't know what the opposite of slow productivity would be, but like- Pseudo-productivity, that's the term I use. But I mean, the way like corporate America and life is set up, that the large blocks of hours away from where you live focused only on this thing. The people who suffer from that system the most are children.

Yeah, I agree with that. Right? And the system, I use the term pseudo productivity, because we give it a definition. I always define things. But I think pseudo productivity is using visible activity as a proxy for useful expert. That's what we did in knowledge work. And we did it because there's no other easy way to measure productivity.

In a factory, there's easy ways to do this. There's numbers, Model T is per labor hour. In agriculture, there's ways to do this. Bushels of crop per acre of land. And you had really clearly defined systems. Oh, I switched from the Kraft method to the continuous motion assembly line. This model T per hour number went up by a factor of 10. This is a better way to do it. Knowledge work had none of this, right? I'm working on seven things. It's unclear what I'm doing.

It's different than what you're doing. You have no idea how I'm organizing my work. That's up to me. So we had no numbers. So we fell back on pseudo productivity, right? Okay. Activity will be our proxy for useful effort. This was okay when it was, we all gather at an office for a set amount of time anyways. And then it was just a game of, don't be seen reading the magazine during the day. But my argument, it's like the first part of the book, is that when we got the front office IT revolution, so especially when we got network computers, portable computing, and then ubiquitous wireless internet, now you had the ability to demonstrate activity on a very fine granularity at all times.

But you could send an email anywhere. You could do a Slack message anywhere. You could jump onto these calls anywhere. You could do your work from home. And that's what put us then into this constant tension between work and everything else. And so I think it was pseudo productivity plus digital. Because I'm a techno critic, so everything kind of comes back to that. Those two things together is when the wheels began to spin off the bus.

And you can actually see this by looking at business advice literature, like books, like the popular books, right? So in the 80s and 90s, he was like, the big name is going to be Stephen Covey. So you get Seven Habits, you get First Things First. Read these books. They're very optimistic. They're all about self-actualization.

If you've ever read these books, it's like you figure out your roles in life. And then you're building, there's this optimism of using these quad charts and priority systems. I'm going to figure out the right things to do that allow me to actualize all the things I care about. What do you get in the early 2000s?

David Allen. Right. How to manage your inboxes or your alerts and all this stuff. Not even manage, like survive. You go back and read David Allen. What's his goal? Occasional moments of zen-like peace among the deluge. There's nothing in there-

It's turning you into a processing machine. And a survival process. So clearly the biggest thing afflicting David Allen when he's writing that book is just a sheer overload. And he doesn't even attempt to say, let's make work meaningful like it is with Stephen Covey. Let's not try to actualize our values. It is, can we find a way to be cranking widgets all day without going insane? And his whole methodology is about how to just get stuff out of your mind and on the list,

so you can just execute blindly off the list and it won't give you stress. Right. Right. It's because the whole, what changed between the nineties and early two thousands, it was emails, computers, it was like the rise of laptops. And most of the business, the best-selling business advice literature since then, it's like essentialism. Yeah. It was like the rise of laptops. And most of the best-selling business advice

literature since then, it's like essentialism. It's one thing. It's deep work. It's these books that are all about trying to escape overload, get away. And then it's the whole anti-productivity, anti-work movement. This has been the whole literature ever since the early 2000s. So this is what I think happens. If your only definition is more is better than less, and then you give people the opportunity to visibly do work at every moment of their life, those two things don't play well together. And I think that's why we get this burnout epidemic that just starts in the early 2000s and it just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes.

And then the pandemic sort of pushes people over the edge and they're saying enough. Right. So what's the relationship between productivity and walks? Because I feel like people who are truly productive, not people who sit at their desk and pound at things all day, but I feel like people who have big scientific breakthroughs, artists, people who have theories about the world, whatever, there seems to be an undeniable relationship with walks. Yeah. Well, they they come up all the time, and there's

a good neurological reason for it. But first, where walks become important is once you realize what's important, as we were talking about before, actually having the valuable idea, like figuring out something good. It's not just writing, which we can use with scarecrow. It's just doing stuff, right? You actually have to think, right?

Walks are really common historically for big thinkers. scarecrow, it's just doing stuff, right? You actually have to think, right? Walks are really common historically for big thinkers. We think, it's not exactly nailed down, but we think what's going on is that the motor neurons involved in walking actually act as a bit of a dampener on certain circuits in your brain, right? So part of your brain now gets into these autonomous motion loops, which acts as a dampener on essentially neural noise. So more distracting thoughts or asides, you're thinking about this or that. So when you're sitting still, sometimes the problem is there's not enough dampening going on in your brain. And so it's hard to sustain your focus. When

you're walking, it puts on some cognitive blinders. You have an easier time holding your focus on an interior abstract idea. So it's, you know, it's jerry-rigging your brain to be better at this thing that's pretty artificial for humans to do, which is to hold abstract ideas in our mind's eye. And, you know, this is not what we evolved to do. We're hacking it.

We're certainly not evolved to just sit down for long periods of time either, but we are evolved to cover long distances and look for things and explore places. So- And taking information while we're walking and process, right? Yeah. So all we're doing different now in the modern world is we're just turning the eye inward. Yeah.

So instead of taking in information across the savanna and kind of processing all this information, instead we're walking on the river walk and boss drop, we can just turn that eye inner and put it on internal things. But yeah, it's the same idea. So walking, yeah, it's super common. That's why. I mean, I do all of my best thinking, all of my best thinking walking. Me too. Yeah. And Nietzsche said only ideas have had while walking have any worth.

Nietzsche walked a lot. Yeah. Kierkegaard would walk just like hours a day. I mean, Aristotle's school is named after his movements, his walking, right? And so, yeah, there is, it's almost inseparable scientific discovery, philosophical discourse and walking. Even though the irony is when we think of the philosophers, we think of them standing in the Lyceum or in the school,

or we see them stationary, but in fact, they were always in motion. Yeah. You read the various dialogues, right? There was a trillion dialogues and yeah, they're walking. It's Socrates with Phaedraeus and they're walking by the river as they're talking. Right. That's the way it unfolds. You know who the champion walker in the arts right now is? David Sedaris. Oh, does he walk around and pick up trash all the time? He does, he will, but these walks he does are epic.

Like crazy walks. Like when he's in Manhattan, he'll like walk from the battery, like all the way up to like the Upper West. Like he'll just walk the whole island or whatever. He'll walk 10, 15 miles. No, he got an award from the queen because he would just take these walks and then

he started picking up trash while he was on the walks, which I also do. I live on the Sturt road and so I'll sort of walk it over and over again. And it's like, there's another nail or whatever. Sometimes it's even worse than that. But yeah, there's something about you're doing this thing, so there's not really any expectations that you should be working or that you should have the breakthrough. And perhaps that's where it comes from too, like Archimedes in the Bath or whatever. It's when you've turned, it's still operating in the background because you can't turn it off. The thing that's working on the problem. But when you stop being so willful about it, something unlocks and it's

very powerful. And it comes to you. Yes. Do you also get, I get this in my town, people think you're eccentric, but you probably get it worse here. You know, like I live in a little town outside of DC, but I walked the same loops through my neighborhood and they're like, oh, there goes, I mean, they know it now because we're a small enough town.

But people are like, why do you walk so much? I was like, it's what I do for a living, I think. The way that it has intersected with my life is, it's like, OK, so you've got to get on the phone with someone for this thing. And I'll send you the invite. And then I don't look at the invite until I'm about to get on. And it's like, oh, this is like a Zoom call with 15 people.

I'm already walking. So now I have to make up this excuse for why it's loud where I am or that I'm not at my computer and go, oh, I'm out in the country. And so, you know, I'm trying to get some trying to get reception. Yeah, exactly. But but it's like, I can't I already didn't want to do this call. Yeah. And if you told me that to do this call, I had to sit at my desk for 30 minutes and not move or be outside, I'd want to do it even less. Yeah.

And so, yeah, I do almost all my phone calls walking. So sometimes that can be weird in a small town because people are like, oh, hey, I want to talk. And I'm like, you know? But yeah, I try to move. Also, yeah, the only one that caused problems for me, it's like if you're doing like therapy or whatever, if you do it over the phone. And it's like, I don't know if I should be talking about that like out in the thing.

But I also, again, don't just want to sit there for no reason for an hour. And so, yeah, I think being active and moving, it's first off, it's just better than being sedentary for you physically. And then psychologically and mentally, there's just something very, very powerful about it. I'm Dave and saving with TD Insurance made me feel like I scored my own jingle. Save on home and auto like only you can at tdinurance.com slash ways to save. TD, ready for you.

Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondry's podcast British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say, but there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line.

What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple podcasts, or the Wondry app. We're gonna write a book about the science, we have three elements of what we're going to call the artist's life. Okay,

right. We've discussed three elements, right. So one is the work expectations are tomorrow doesn't matter, but this month does. Two, you can be done by three and start at nine. And then the third one is you can spend a lot of time walking. That to me, my heart's singing. That's all I want. That's a great life. That's all I want. Yeah. Yeah. Now I do it a little differently because I'm a believer in seasonality. Okay. Right? So different seasons being different than others. This is like an old professor thing, right?

And so it'll look different for me where this semester might be my teaching semester. So I largely now just teaching one semester. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of these days I'm going on the campus and I'm meeting with students and it's like, it's an academic life. But then there'll be like another semester when I'm going to campus one day a week and I'm more at my studio and writing. And then the summers we disappear.

And we often go up to New England. And then it's like, I'm completely off the grid. And like the only thing I'm doing is book writing. Maybe like some New Yorker work, but probably just book writing. So I lean in the seasonality. So sometimes that's the answer is like, well, I still want to be a professor. So, sometimes it's not all going to be, I'm done at three or I'm walking a lot because some days I'm in the classroom and have a meeting with the dean.

So, why not make that this season of the year and this? And then on bigger timescales too, like I'm doing book publicity now. This is not, if I had to operate like this- Yeah, this is the worst. It's the worst. I mean, it's fun for like a while because I get to see people, but it's like the worst because it this. Yeah, this is the worst. It's the worst. I mean, it's fun for like a while because I get to see people, but it's like the worst because it's not the,

this is the fun part. The worst is like my email right now, there must be seven different teams that all are just like, we need this. Can you do this? Can you get back to me on this? Or is it these eight teams? What starts to feel like, it's probably for you a glimpse

of what regular life is for a lot of people. I think if you're like a higher level executive that like a lot of people needed things from it probably feels like book tour all the time. Yeah. No, I the seasonality thing is interesting. And it's it's probably a throwback to an older way of life. You know, it's like politicians, you know,

the Washington would clear out during the summer because it was a malarial swamp or whatever. Right. Or or school, you know, has always sort of been in the seasons. But but but people used to do things that way. Whereas now and I find myself doing it, I am much more of a like, well, what is my ideal day look like? And I just going to do that all the time. But there is probably something unrealistic

and unnatural about doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and not having large chunks of time where you're doing it differently and you're forced to re-examine and question and try it a new way in a new place. And so I am trying, especially as my kids are getting older and now, hey, yeah, this is the season we're in school. So if I had some idea that like,

I don't do meetings on Friday and I'm work, I'm going to stay at home. Well, that was great when they were two. Yeah. Cause they were around, but now they're gone all day. So I might as well. So, so yeah, I think the rhythms of, oh, this is baseball season. And then the rhythms of this is, you know, this is the winter and not only are the hours shorter, but we're all sick all the time. So the hell with your plants. You know what I mean? The season of accepting that that instead of having a routine, you have a series of routines. You rotate either seasonally or day to day or different days of the week through which one makes the most sense.

So I had a couple of weeks ago, a New York Times op-ed on this idea, the non-seasonality. And one of the things I was arguing is this is so valuable to humans, right? Because it's the way we lived until evolutionary speaking, like a blink ago. This is when we're farming. This is when we hunt the buffalo. Yeah. And I went back to all of that. Yeah, really.

It's all over the place. I also wrote a long New Yorker piece about this last year too, where I looked at what do we know about hunter gatherers and what work looked like for them. It's important enough that it's worth sacrifices as well. It's like, here's something I'm considering because I still, I'm not, my podcast is not with a network. We still sell ads directly with an agency and you sell ads, as you know, like a year in advance, makes you fill out the year ahead. So I'm thinking about for the next year talking, you know, you know, my agency, I hope they're not listening, but saying- I still work with them. They're great.

Yeah, they're great. But I'm thinking about saying, let's not sell 52 weeks. Right? In fact, let's take, why don't we sell like 45 or 46 weeks? And I am going, because I'm not going to podcast in July. And I'll just batch the production and sell all year round. Well, I could do that too. But then that's also more like this might mean by sack. Well,

I was because I was thinking about this. I was like, well, what would happen if I just said, we're going to take six weeks off for two months off, no batching, just like the shows on hiatus there as like, okay, what does happen? Well, it's less money. But I like this might be a fair trade though. No, I do like that because- So I tend to do the batching thing. It's a signal as well to myself, right? Of like, hey, wait a second. This is so important to me. I'm willing to, we're giving up money to do this. And then it becomes a brand signal.

Like, hey, I actually take the time, there's a whole way to make it work. Well, I'm struggling with this right now. This has been a very, very crazy week for me. I think we did like eight interviews and then I have a bunch next week and then I have meetings. I have a bunch of stuff.

So you're batching ahead with interviews? I didn't think I was, but I was like, why is this so crazy? And then I realized the reason it's so crazy, first off, it's something that's outside of my control, which is it's out by Southwest in Austin. So a bunch of people are here. So they were just like, this is the only time they can do it in person.

But then I realized really what's happening is I'm going out of town for like 10 days for my kid's spring break. So what happened is I took 10 days off the calendar. So it just moved that stuff this way or that way. And so, yeah, or like we went out of town for a month this summer and it was great. But then I was like, why was it not as relaxing as I thought it would be?

And it's because I didn't just continue on with my normal schedule and then there was a month gap and then I continued on with my normal schedule. It was all the things that had to happen while I was not doing the things for a month, basically just made the proceeding month and the proceeding month more stressful than it needed to be. And it might've been a wash, right?

And so, yeah, the idea of like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, it's more like the rapture. Like I just go to the thing and I disappear and then maybe I'll come back. So that's real, I'm inventing this term now, but real seasonality versus fake seasonality. It's fake seasonality if during this period, I'm doing less work, but that work all still got done.

We just moved it or whatever. Real seasonality is we know Ryan disappears like for this month. Yeah, can't go outside, it's raining. That's real seasonality. We've known disappears for this month. Yeah. Can't go outside. It's raining. That's real seasonality. We've known that for a year in advance.

As we've been booking the schedule, we just book around it. I figured this out as an academic. So if you had a research institution as a professor, the university does not pay your salary in the summer. They pay you 10 months salary. But your contract. Can you pick your paychecks to like,

my mom was a teacher, they were like, do you want 12 months of paychecks, or do you want 10 months of paychecks? But it's the same salary. So no one does that, because what you do instead, if you're a researcher, is you put in what's called summer salary into your research grants. So you fill in those two months, now it's

like the National Science Foundation or DARPA is paying it, because you're like, yeah, I should be working on research in the summer. And so that's what people do. Right? So now you're taking your summer salary comes in from a grant or something like this. And then what people think is like, okay, but I still want to take vacations or this or that, but I am on the hook to keep working.

So they have to do fake seasonality. Right? And then at some point I figured out you don't have to do that. Yeah. Like, what if you just say, I'm not taking summer salary from a grant. As far as the university's concerns, you're not their employee in those two months. There can't, you don't- Yeah, yeah. There's nothing for you to do. They can't ask you to do anything. You're gone or whatever. And I figured out at some point, like, oh, why not just, I write books. When did that be a good

use of part of a book advance is to cover the summer. And that was real seasonality versus... I was doing fake before, which is summers are more flexible because I don't have to teach and we can go travel and do things, but also I'm working and I have to write these reports or this or that. When I went to real seasonality, like, no, I'm taking a sacrifice, I'm losing money, but I owe nothing to no one during this time.

It really changed the character. That's why I wanted to make the podcast be protected in the summer as well. So it's just we know in advance. I completely shut down. Yeah. I think your tricky part is going to be audiences are not seasonal. I mean, you are on TV shows, right? And you're like, whatever.

But if a thing is more like a daily or a weekly habit, breaking that habit is hard. Yeah, but here's my thought on it. I thought about that. So this is why podcasting things okay. Because podcasting doesn't, it's a push, not pull, right? So why do I listen to Cal's podcast? I like it and I see it come up in my list of new episodes and I listen to it. All right, you go away for six weeks. It's not showing up in their list. You come back. It just shows up again. They're already subscribed to the show, right? And when it comes back again, like, oh yeah, like listening to CalShow, right? It's not that hard for them to get the habit back.

That's not how algorithms work, right? And that's also not- It's podcasting. There's no algorithms in podcasting. Oh, there absolutely is. And there's also- You're thinking YouTube, right? No, no, no. There's definitely algorithms. So what gets suggested in your things. And did your downloads take a hit earlier this year? Probably.

As all shows did. Yeah. So what happened is Apple started recalculating. In the fall, right? Yeah, how they calculate episodes. So the point is, even if it's not totally true now, it's definitely going to become in the past. Is that like, it's going to, when you stop listening to a thing, that's a reinforcing habit

algorithmically. And then also when you do think, so I think, I think the- You're raining on my parade, Ryan. The recurring is great, but it is, anyways, that I would say though, the thing I struggle with, I wonder if you struggle with the hard part, the decision to do seasonality. I was like, I'm going to take a month, I'm just going to hang out. Only thing I'm going to do is I'm going to write maybe an hour or so a day just working on this project. But that's what I love doing.

I'm only doing the things I love to do. But then, so I take this month off the calendar and then, you know, my speaking agent calls a couple of weeks before and he goes, hey, you know, you got this offer to do this talk in Boston, you know, smack in the middle of it. You can be in and out in one day. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to be like, I'm going to, I said I'm not going to do anything, so I'm not going to do anything. And then, you know, he's like, okay, I told them this and then they doubled the offer or whatever.

So it's now the most I've ever been offered to think. And I decided to stick with it, to not do it. But now I'm going like, not only was I already paying for this vacation, but now this is the most expensive vacation that I've ever taken in my life. We could have, you know what I mean? We could have gone on like a round the world trip first class for what I... Yeah. You know, so the decision to be seasonal, I think was, is it's easier when there's norms about it,

when everyone leaves for the summer, when everyone in, you know, gilded age New York gets in their trains and goes in different directions, that's easy, but then when you're the only one doing it, then you are actually having to calculate what that thing is costing you. And that's very painful. It is.

It is. I mean, I have this... My speaking agency knows this now. I don't like to do things in the summer. I mean, I completely frustrate them, right? Because I think from their perspective is this is money on the table and it's like really big money and why not just... We can get you in and out same day or it's like going overnight or whatever.

But the unpolluted seasonality, I don't know, there's an advantage to that, right? Because there's the signal. Does it take you a lot of discipline to enforce that? Or for you is it just kind of naturally? It's socially difficult. Especially with like agents. Be like, I'm not going to do it.

So socially difficult is one thing. Is it difficult for you personally to, like, would you rather do it? No, I don't like doing things. Okay. All I want to do, honestly, like what am I wired to do is to like be in a cabin or on the beach riding. And like what I would be optimal set for is like the once a year novelist. Come back at the end of this year with a novel.

That's also a great seasonality, sure. And we're going to leave you alone. Novelists have this figured out. It's the only industry I can discover where there's no expectation. In fact, the expectation is you do nothing else. Novelists don't start, they don't podcast a lot. I mean, they do sometimes. They don't have business. If you're John Grisham, they'll say it's completely fine. But you're talking about novelists instead of when you're actually referring to like 10 novelists. Basically the, well, all literary novelists, right?

So, no, no, but not the, but you're referring to the industry as if that's not like seven people who can, who are at that level. Yeah. But, but, but the thing is like, if you, let's say if you got to our level of success in novels, okay, to make it comparable, it would be completely understood if we disappeared before publicity choice. Like that's a, not everyone does it, but it's a complete, like I wrote this article once looking at Crichton versus Grisham because they were doing similar types of novels. And Crichton went like the maximalist route.

Yeah. I want to do TV. I want to do scripts. I want to direct. I moved to Hollywood. And Grisham went the other way. This is great. I can quit my job. I can disappear. I'll do three weeks of publicity a year. I don't have it. I don't even have a team. Yeah. You're like one assistant. And then she did marketing for one of his books. Yeah. And then when she retired, he was like, I don't need anyone else because only my agent, my editor ever called me and they call me like this time of year when I tell them what I'm

writing. Right. Uh, and he went that way with it. And that's complete. People are like, that's fine. Yeah. Like it's completely fine. Right. It's the only, if you or I said like, okay, I'll be back in two years with my book, it just doesn't happen as much in nonfiction and certainly not in a lot of other jobs as well. But there it's normalized because there's this belief that came from literary novelists of this is not going to be good enough to win the award if anything pollutes me. This is like Dave Eggers writes on the non-internet connected laptop and disappears.

And it's because they came out of that belief of you can't create this art. And if it's not art, then it's not going to, if it's not great and doesn't get the national book award, then why did we pay so much for Jonathan Francis' latest book? And so they had this idea of like, yeah, please just disappear and do what you do.

But very few fields have normalized that. Yes, that's right. But I think what they all have in common ultimately is to be able to pull any of that off is leverage. What you talk about in So Good, you have to have leverage. You have to have the goods, you have to have the audience. You have to write the firm. You have to have the confidence. Yeah. And you have to...

And so, yeah, whether you're a salesman who wants to be the only remote employee for your company or you want to be the author who takes a bunch of weeks off during the year, months after in the year, or whatever it is, no one's going to give it to you. You have to take it and demand it. And then you have to have the leverage to be able to give it to you. You have to take it and demand it. And then you have to have the leverage to be able to make it worth doing. That's why I say the obsession over quality piece of slow productivity is to glue because it gives you two different things that both reinforce slowness. So one, as we talked about, as you obsess more about quality, slowness, by which we're

saying here lack of busyness, becomes really natural. Once you get more obsessed with doing something really well, the more all the other stuff begins to feel almost morally bankrupt. You just instinctually want to have less busyness. And then the second piece is as you do something really well, you get the leverage. You get the leverage to be able to actually demand and get slowness. And that's why the story I thought captured both sides of that in the book was the singer Jewel. Because I said she did both, right? So when she was coming up, she was this

weird, really talented singer because she had grown up yodeling with her family troupe in rural Alaska and had this weird vocal control and then went to this interlock-in, which is like this really good art school in Michigan. So she had the goods, but she was singing at a coffee shop, leaving out of her car or whatever. And these record executives discovered her. She is very, very good.

So they go to sign her and they put a million dollars on the table eventually, right? And she turns down the signing bonus because she's like- I was gonna bring up this story when you were talking about talking to that agent when you were a kid. Yeah, so she turns down the million dollar signing bonus because she's like, this is gonna, it's gonna take me time to figure out how to translate this

into like a fully established singer songwriter who can make a lot of records. And if they give me a million dollar bonus, they're gonna wanna make that back, which means I have to have a hit record in the first like whatever many months, and I'm not going to. And she didn't, like the pieces of me at first

wasn't working, right? So she, her desire to be really good, she said, I'm gonna choose a slower trajectory in the music. No big signing bonus, this will give me a multi-year runway. And then she was very, I'm gonna be very cheap for you, right? No tour bus, I'm going to drive my own car.

Like I'm going to cost you nothing. Because her desire to be really good meant she's like, I have to slow down. Then once she got really good, she went on one of those Taylor Swift style international tours, started doing Hollywood stuff. She was in an Ang Lee movie. All of her people were saying, this is the plan. We're going to move to Hollywood. We're going to do movies in between international tours. She's like, well, wait a second. I have a lot of money and I'm really good. She

said, no tour. Never did another international tour. Never did another movie. Went to Texas actually. She came to, she was, her boyfriend at the time was a rodeo writer. Came out to his ranch in Texas. She's like, I want to just write music and do albums. And like, I don't. So the quest for quality slowed her down. She turned down the million dollars, went on to make more than 200 million. After that, we know that because her mom stole 200 million dollars from her. So that's a whole other story. And then she used, once she did get good, she used that to slow down her life too.

So you get this sort of like double edged virtue for obsessing over quality. Yeah, I feel like I saw on the one hand, I was very unlucky in that the obstacles away, which is sold a very large amount of copies. I only got a small advance for it. Like as we were saying, my publisher thought it was a crazy idea. My first marketing book had come out. I got in a big advance and it had done okay, but I got less than half for that book, for a book that ultimately sold millions of copies. So one argument would be I should have gotten a much higher advance, right?

But since they didn't really believe in it, but I did, I took the smaller advance. But when it came out, it did okay. They were like, sure, you want to do another one? And I did another one. And so now I'm three or four books in with the same publisher. We have a long standing relationship. I'm not going anywhere. They're not same publisher. We have a long standing relationship. I'm not going anywhere. They're not going anywhere.

The book's able to develop. I'm able to sell all my books. So I've been able to do which, I mean, what are you at four with portfolio? Five? How many have you done there? That's a good question. It was minimalism emails my third with them.

Yeah. So you're, which is unusual in and of itself. I've done 12 13 Nobody does that in publishing because you're always you're always chasing the next deal Which you think is you cashing in your leverage? Yeah, but actually someone else is getting leverage over you Yeah, because they're not giving you a large advance because you're awesome. They're giving you a large advance Because they think they're gonna make it back and as soon as they give it to you, they want to start making it back. Yeah. And so, so yeah, sometimes the thing that feels like financially actually

wasn't a great move is from a lifestyle and a freedom and a development standpoint, absolutely the right thing to do. And then in the end, the same financially. Well, you're the I always point to your example for this. Like you're the person I know most who says who cares about the advance. Yeah. Like it's just a loan on basically on earnings. If you're going to make the same money regardless. Yeah. And I've gone back and forth on it.

I do. I definitely don't try to get smaller advances. I think it doesn't like the thing. The thing that does matter, though, I learned, is it also dictates the energy they put into a book. So I began seeing the advances a little bit as a scorecard. Like if they spend this much, then their marketing budget is X and if it's this much, but I think that's starting to get in the weeds

a little bit, right? Like. But the point is if she had taken a million dollar advance, she wouldn't have been able to have one album that did okay and then do another album. They'd be like, they're already writing her off on the books. They're writing her off, exactly. And so the fact that the obstacles,

I mean the obstacles away sold 36, 3700 copies its first week, which is not terrible, but it wouldn't have predicted where it ended up, but they didn't cut bait on it because for what they'd given the advance on, they're like, ah, this is okay. Do you know what I mean? Managing expectations is an important part of it too. Deep work was the advance on, they're like, eh, this is okay. Do you know what I mean?

Managing expectations is an important part of it too. Deep work was the same way, you know. So the book before deep work, So Good They Can't Ignore You, didn't live up to their expectations at first. Reduced the advance for deep work. And I was like, I guess fair enough, right? And so let's just do this. Let's just roll.

I think this book is good. Let's get that going. And then when Deep Work was first coming out, because it was a lower advance, they weren't doing a ton. They were doing like, there was nothing bad happening here. They were doing what was reasonable for that level. And I was complaining. I still remember this call to my agent.

I was like, nothing's happening with this book. My friends' parents went to Barnes and Noble. They didn't even have it in stock. Like, this is a great idea. And she's like, they don't budget money based on ideas. Yeah, they want to work. They have a model. What can it do?

Yeah, what can it do? And she's like, look, you got to just do the work. And so I was like, okay, great. That so touched me. I was like, I'm just going to put my head down and keep trying to get better. And so then I started doing, I mean, I got my writing for my newsletter and then podcast emerged as a thing. And I was like doing all the podcast, just doing podcasts, really podcasts

and that book also millions of copies later. And then you're saying it was so good that they couldn't ignore it. It was so good they couldn't ignore it. And ironically, deep work doing well, pulled so good, they can't ignore you up to be like a very good seller. None of those books were bestsellers, though. That's funny. Yeah. Speaking of which, you want to go check out some books?

Yeah. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode. Hey Prime members, you can listen to The Daily daily stoic early and ad free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on an elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service,

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