Conversation with Cal Newport — The Key to Productivity without Burnout

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0:28episode 296 the ferrari 296 is a sports car known as the first real ferrari with just six cylinders on it in 1996 the fox news channel launched true story my son goes to sleep with one of those white noise machines it has three settings low medium and fox news that's good go go go

0:58Welcome to the 296th episode of The Prop G-Pod. In today's episode, we continue our special three-part series covering the future of work. In last week's episode, we answered your questions and offered some valuable advice. I didn't really see my kids much before the age of three or four. I was just working all the goddamn time, but either did my wife. She was working at Goldman Sachs at the time. And we decided we made the conscious decision to trade off time with them then so we could have more time with them now. What is your niche? Start writing about it. Start posting about it. Start doing videos.

1:33Whatever it is, right? You're in PR. You understand this shit. But start building a brand and a profile for yourself across all of these different platforms. Before you collect dogs and kids, oh, my God, get back into the office. Friends, mentors, potential men. one of three relationships begin at work, for God's sakes. Where are young people supposed to meet, you know, partners, wives, other founders, great friends? You know, it's about hitting the pub after work. It's about grabbing a coffee and getting advice from someone. Nothing wonderful is ever going to happen to you over Zoom, in my view.

2:08Today, we're covering productivity, the importance of establishing a work-life balance, and the disruption of AI on work and higher ed with Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of a number of books, including Slow Productivity. Cal is like a rock star. He's one of those guys I look up to mostly because he sells more books than me. Don't know him, but he sells a shit ton of books. He's one of these academics that has found the intersection between retail success and academic credibility. I've got some of the former and none of the latter. Anyways, we'll get to that after our first break.

2:44But first, what's happening? The dog is on his way to Canada. That's right. Little dog, little maple syrup with that dog. How do you get 100 drunk Canadian fraternity brothers out of your pool? Hey, guys, could you please get out of the pool? That's good. Anyways, going to Canada. Love Canada. I was conceived in Toronto. My dad, every year, gets something off his bucket list. As you know, he's old and will be dead soon. Sorry, Dad. Sorry, Dad. It's turning 94 this August. Can you get over that? 94? By the way, I saw William Shatner on Bill Maher. That guy's 93. Jesus Christ, give the guy a fucking medal in a spaceship.

3:20That guy is sharp and funny at 93. And let me tell you, that is not easy. That is an unbelievable accomplishment. And congratulations and kudos to the Bill Maher show for bringing on a 93-year-old. Anyways, I thought it was really inspiring. So headed to Toronto. Wait, that's not true. I'm headed to Vancouver. Jesus Christ, speaking of 93, headed to Vancouver, I was talking about Canada. Where am I? Okay, I was over here, Canada. My dad, every year, gets something off his bucket list, and he chooses the same thing every year. He wants to go see the Leafs, play of the Habs, and the opening night at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.

3:53And I have never seen my dad cry, except when the Scottish bagpipes come out on the ice at the opening of the game, he starts to cry. I have no idea why there are bagpipers in Toronto at the Leafs game, and finally my dad cries because he just can't handle bagpipers on ice. Well, okay, dad. But anyways, and then he takes me to this old apartment complex and points up. And we've done this four or five times. And he keeps forgetting that I've actually seen it. And he points to an apartment. He says, that's where you're conceived, which is both awkward and weird. And anyways, my parents were met.

4:25They were both immigrants, came to Canada from Glasgow and London, respectively met in Toronto, where my mom was a court reporter. She used to write using shorthand the text or what was going on in a courtroom. Can you imagine that? But it was a well-paying job. Canada embraced my parents with open arms. My dad was, I think, a candle salesman. And they couldn't handle the weather, so they read an article that said that the place in North America, the city of North America, had the best weather in all of North America. So they decided, this was their analysis, they would load up my parents' Austin mini-metro and my seven-month pregnant mom and drive for nine days to San Diego.

5:08That's why I was born in San Diego, because it supposedly, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail, has the best weather in North America. Anyways, a little background. But I am not headed there. I'm headed to Vancouver to speak at TED, which I joke is the whitest place on Earth. And I've always made fun of it. But, of course, they've asked me to speak. And I said, of course I'll speak. And I'm excited to go there. I really like the founder, Chris Anderson. I think he's a thoughtful, funny, interesting guy. I think he's actually been a great steward of the brand. And I'm excited to go. My buddy Greg Shope is going to be there, who is Canadian, which means he's very nice and very thoughtful and very handsome.

5:41And I'm excited about it. Anyways, I will report live from Vancouver. Okay, moving on. Speaking of TED and speaking of speaking, what is the one skill, the one skill, and I was asked this the other day, that I would want my kids to develop in high school? I was asked a question about curriculum development or curriculum change in high schools. And I said if there was one skill, it wouldn't be computer programming or foreign languages or STEM even. It would be storytelling. So why? Why is storytelling so important? Our competitive advantage as a species is essentially communication and cooperation.

6:15And that sort of cuts a swath right down the middle of storytelling. And that is the majority of animals, they do mirror their parents, if you will, or the pod or the herd or whatever you want or the school. But a superpower is to be able to communicate outside or beyond just instinct or beyond just kind of visible cues and say, OK, this is where you plant the crops. This is you don't go over the hill. And so our ability to tell stories that could communicate to people outside of our immediate tribe was our superpower. So we could paint these stories on cave walls that said, okay, this is when you plant the crops or harvest the crops based on when the sun, the location of the sun and the sky, or you do not go over the hill because they're mean over there and they will kill us.

7:01And that ability to communicate and tell stories via captivating stories that captured our attention around the campfire or through song or through poetry or through art was incredibly important to our ability to advance much faster and become kind of the apex predator slash species across all species. And let's be clear, to an unhealthy extent, we sort of rule the world. We have this crazy stat that humans and their pets now have greater mass than all mammals in the world. Isn't that nuts? whenever I hear these stats and also having a big, big dog, bit of a digression, having a big, big dog turns you off meat because I just, I have a great day and I just can't imagine that she is that different than a cow and she is so lovely and feeling.

7:43And anyways, I'm going to try and eat more salad. Don't know where I was going with that. Okay. Storytelling. Your ability to tell a story is incredibly important. As a result, Mick Jagger gets to bang a woman 50 years younger than him. What's the connection? Mick Jagger is an incredibly powerful storyteller. And we have learned instinctively that storytelling is key to the species' success. So your ability to tell stories will not only garner you more influence, more money, but also be more attractive to mates, specifically for men. And yes, this is sexist. Okay, I have evidence showing that people born as one gender are predisposed to certain strengths over others.

8:21And by the way, I don't think men are any more predisposed to storytelling. Is that true? I don't know. Anyways. But women basically, men get turned on with their eyes. Women are unfairly objectified and evaluated based on their looks. By the way, everyone is giving Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez so much shit for essentially how she decided to dress to the state dinner and making comments about her looks. She's 54, for God's sakes. And I think, personally, I think she looks great. And I like it when women kind of flaunt their hotness or their sexiness over the age of 25. It feels as if the world is saying, oh, you can only be sexy if you're under the age of 25.

9:03Fuck that. Live out loud. I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And by the way, men are not objectified or evaluated on their looks. Just a pro tip to all the men, specifically the young men out there, there are only two things, only two things you should ever say regarding a woman's appearance. One, she looks great. Or two, nothing. Nothing. By the way, when you're on a date or when you see someone, it's always a good idea to kick off the date by saying you look really nice or you look great. You might find that sexist or objectifying. It's not. Women are unfairly evaluated based on their looks and men are unfairly evaluated based on their economic success.

9:44But you would never say to a man, oh, I get the sense you're not going to be very economically successful, not be a good protector or provider. You would never say that because that cuts to a man's being or purpose, yet we feel entirely comfortable disparaging a woman's looks. What the fuck is up with that? Anyways, storytelling. Back to Mick Jagger. He gets to communicate really well because he communicates really well. He gets a lot of money and has a much broader selection set of mates than deserves. So what would be the skill that you would want to develop or want your kids to develop? Absolutely, storytelling.

10:15And it doesn't have to be in any one medium. I started out presenting. That was how I made my living, was speaking in front of corporations as a consultant. Then I found writing. Then I got decent at creating PowerPoint presentations, or basically I hired people that could take my words and put them into PowerPoint presentations. I've always over-invested in design because I realized the importance of creativity in storytelling. These things now podcast. If I could give my boys any competence or skill, it would be storytelling. So what does that mean? It means give your kids opportunities to speak, give them opportunities or force them to write and to read.

10:51If they want to download Firefly from Adobe and get into AI in terms of visuals and video, by all means, embrace that stuff. Let them tell stories, ask them questions. I love that at Gulfstream School, their eighth grade project is they have to do a bunch of research and then speak in front of the whole school. Is that nerve-wracking? Is it upsetting? Yeah, it is. And it's important. It's important because your ability to communicate your ideas are really more important than your ideas. This is who you don't want to be. You don't want to be the guy or the gal in the back of the room speaking under your breath that's always right, but doesn't move people to action because you don't know how to tell stories.

11:27Your ability to move people to action through creativity, through art, through inflection, through presence, through the way you dress, through your humor, is not only key to your professional success, it's key to your personal success, right? Your ability to make people feel good, your ability to articulate ideas, to show your commitment, to move people to action. This is the key. Tell stories. We'll be right back for our conversation with Cal Newport.

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13:08Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Cal, where does this podcast find you? I'm in Tacoma Park. It's a small town outside Washington, D.C. I'm in my studio. Oh, good for you. So let's probably start into it. In your new book, Slow Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout, you share your philosophy for creating great work at a sustainable pace. What do you mean by slow productivity? Well, it's meant to be an alternative to what we're currently implicitly using as our understanding of productivity and knowledge work, which is what I call pseudo productivity.

13:51So I have this argument in the first half of the book that there was actually a large issue, an economics issue, when knowledge work emerged as a major sector because the notions we had for measuring productivity that were developed first in agriculture and then carried over to industrial manufacturing, those notions didn't apply anymore. right we couldn't count model t's per paid labor hour input we didn't have clearly defined production systems that we could tweak and see their impact and so i argue we fell back on a heuristic that i call pseudo productivity which says we'll use visible activity as a sort of crude proxy for useful effort so i want to see you work more works better than less you want to be more productive stay late come early right slow productivity is an alternative to that because my argument is that might have been okay for a while, but it really began to falter when combined with the front office IT revolution that picked up steam in the late 90s.

14:45Pseudo productivity became less sustainable. So slow productivity is an alternative that's based more on outcomes than activity and is more grounded in how humans actually operate, what's actually going to be sustainable for humans. I struggle with this or worry about this with my son, and that is he gets anxious about grades. So he says, I'm going to study all weekend. And I ask him, I'm like, well, do this, get some real studying done for a couple hours and then take the rest of the day off. Isn't it, aren't you basically arguing that kind of FaceTime does not necessarily translate or effort or anxiety doesn't necessarily translate to productivity?

15:19Yeah, I think that's true. And in fact, that specific example with your son, I have a lot of grounding in. When I got started in writing, I wrote my first books when I was in my young 20s. They were books for college students about how to study. And the big idea of those books is most college students are really bad at study. They use studying as an ambiguous verb. It's, I'm just doing stuff. I'm in the library. I'm stressed. And they hope to alchemize the effort and distress of this vague type of studying the better grades. And I wrote this book that said, you know what, the best students, they have really specific ways they study that works really well.

15:53It takes them a few hours. They nail the test. They move on with their lives. So I was actually sort of grounded in that idea from my days as a student writing for students. And then bridging it to another personal experience in the work world, my first company was a company called Profit, and we couldn't attract the quality or caliber of consultants for a small firm started by a 26-year-old that we needed to get kind of Fortune 500 clients. So I tapped into this untapped vein of the labor force, and that was recent mothers who felt like they couldn't commit to being in the office nine hours a day, five days a week.

16:28And if you gave them a little bit of flexibility, they would take the job. And so I didn't care if they worked from home as long as they were in a couple times a week. And I found, I immediately registered right away, they were the most productive employees. Because come hell or high water, they had to be on the train back home at a certain point. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is one of the negative externalities of activity-based productivity, is you take these type of options off the table, right? So if it's, look, activity is what we look for, more activity is better than less, You're basically biasing towards 24-year-olds right out of college with no families and nothing else to do, right?

17:04Because if activity is what we value, you're narrowing that lens. So it's one of the advantages you get when you begin to value more things like expertise, like experience, like leadership, like know-how, like a long track record of things you've produced over time that have been very valuable. It allows a lot of different people into the workforce, a lot of different configurations of work into the workforce as well. where we, in a pseudo-productivity regime, we look with suspicion when someone wants to work, let's say, flexible hours or they want to work less than full-time or they want to take a leave because of things happening within their family situation.

17:37In a pseudo-productivity regime, that's suspicious. Well, that's just producing less value. I'm therefore going to devalue you and your contribution. In more of a slower productivity regime, a lot of that becomes a lot more acceptable. What we care about is what you can do. What have you done? What skills you have to do something cool in the future and interesting in the future? So I think this is absolutely right. When we focus on activity, we really narrow what work can really mean, what successful work can really mean. You have three principles of slow productivity. Break them down for us. Do fewer things.

18:10This is really an argument about workload management. I think it's one of the biggest unforced errors in modern knowledge work is that we allow individuals' workloads to spiral out of control. This doesn't make people more productive in any sort of objective sense of the term because everything you agree to brings with it administrative overhead. So when you agree to 10 things versus five, you're doubling the administrative overhead, which means you're having the amount of time available to actually do work. So I think workload management being something that we ignore and allow a list of tasks and commitments to grow out of control, it's a real unforced error.

18:45The second principle is work at a natural pace. I think this idea that we're trying to mimic a factory setup in knowledge work, come to an office eight hours a day, full intensity. We're suspicious if at any point during that day, you're not doing full intensity year round, no change. That's not very natural. Humans aren't good at that. We need more variation. We need sprints and rest. We need seasons that are more busy than others. We need to play the long game. What's going to produce the most value? And then the final principle is obsess over quality. The biggest bulwark we have towards the allure of busy is to get good at things.

19:18Craft is like an antidote to the poison of excessive busyness. As you care more and more about doing something well, the more the idea of just being very busy, being very visibly just displaying the performance of work, the more that becomes anathema. So the final principle is this idea of let's make craft what we focus on, not activity. So I have a very kind of a boomer mentality around this, and that is, and I'm very open to push back here where I have this wrong or, you know, I love your color here. But I've always thought that if you want to be economically in the top 10%, much less the top 1%, that it just requires a certain level of commitment around not only productivity, but just sheer time.

20:05That output is going to be a function, I think, of productivity times the amount of time you apply to something. And then unless you're smart enough to be born rich, if you want to attain real economic security, there is going to be a certain extended periods of your life where you're working a great deal. Where do I have that wrong? I don't disagree with that. What I think matters is what you're aiming that effort towards. Right. So I think a trap that people get in is that during this period of busyness, they focus it on things that aren't actually pushing forward their value to the market. So I am in on every meeting.

20:40I'm quick to respond to the emails. I'm volunteering for every small thing that comes forward as opposed to I'm really locked in on trying to get very good at this thing that's unambiguously valuable to the market. So, I mean, I agree with you that if you want to get to the top 1%, there's a huge amount of hours involved in that. There's a huge amount of grinding. I think that's just the property of the jobs that get you to the top 1 % of incomes. This is just how major law firms are structured. This is just how finance is structured, for example. But if you want to be in a situation where you're financially secure and you have a lot of autonomy in the shape of your working life and how it fits into the other aspects of your life, building a skill that's unambiguously valuable, that's the number one lever you have to pull.

21:19That's what's going to allow you to say, this is where I live. Oh, I work these months and not this month. I'm taking a sabbatical. I don't do meetings, right? You want that type of autonomy, that really slow productivity. That's all going to be based on unambiguous skill. This thing I do is valuable. Other people can't do it. Now I'm going to start dictating how I want to actually apply it. I love that term, unambiguous skill. And I think a lot of young people think, okay, I have the context for that. Maybe I have the certification. They like to think they have the core character and attributes to develop an unambiguous skill that's highly differentiated, can't be replaced easily.

21:57And I often hear people talk about that you're 20 or 30 for workshopping. Have you thought about the steps and the atmospherics for a young person to try and figure out, identify, and then develop what is ultimately that unambiguous skill? You know, a decade ago, when I was first entering the job market, out of grad school, entering the academic job market, I wrote a book all about this. Because I really cared about this question of how do you engineer the right career. So I wrote this book called So Good They Can't Ignore You. And it was all about this idea, building up what I called career capital.

22:31So one of the tricky things that came out of that book is that it's difficult to figure out what's valuable. And it takes a lot longer than you think when you're in your 20s to actually get good at those things. And I ended up advising young people after this book came out to spend even more time than I emphasized, almost treating their own field like you're a business journalist. Like I am studying my own field. I really want to understand who is getting ahead in this field. Like, who's the stars in this field? Why are they the stars in this field? Like, what was it that they did that other people didn't do?

23:01What really mattered for them? Often these answers aren't what you think they're going to be or what you want them to be. I also emphasize it takes longer. Like, I came out of college sort of moving hot, right? I was like, this is what I want to do, computer science and writing. This is what I want to do. I want to be a professor and I want to write. It took me about a decade before I got anywhere notable in either of those. A decade of really solid building my life around computer science and writing, and this is all I do, and I'm not going to be distracted by this. It's head down, systematically trying to get better.

23:33It wasn't until I hit my young 30s, after a decade of work, that I had really made what I would say are publicly visible, notable steps forward. It took me a decade to get my first sort of major hardcover idea book out. It took me a decade to get hired as a 10-year track professor. So it often, this is the advice I tell young people, spend more time than you think to figure out what matters. Spend more time than you want to get good at it. Yeah, you're getting no sympathy from me. You're talking to a guy who wrote his first book at 52. I think it's just so funny to listen to you because you're a young man.