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The Moonshots Podcast goes behind the scenes of the world's greatest superstars, thinkers and entrepreneurs to discover the secrets to their success. We deconstruct their success from mindset to daily habits so that we can apply it to our lives. Join us as we 'learn out loud' from Elon Musk, Brene Brown to emerging talents like David Goggins.
ms 136
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 136. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always I'm joined by the man who's at war with email. Yes, it's Mark Pearson failing. Good morning. Hey, good morning, Mike. How are you on this fine Sydney winter morning? Well, the sun is shining despite our little luck down here and we are certainly going to unlock some things on this.
Yeah, you're totally right. Last week we unlocked our minds and our behaviors and our patterns towards a small little thing called email electronic came out, dominating our lives and in doing so, we were reminded, I suppose, Mike, at least for myself, certainly was of the epic work that Cal Newport who wrote the book a world without email, which we covered in show 1 35.
And it reminded me of all the amazing tips that he has with regards [00:01:00] to technology and digital minimalism and so on. And I thought he was such a nice reminder of some of the body of work that he's revealed over his career. I couldn't agree more. I mean, he is challenging us in our modern ways of working he's timely release of the book, a world without email.
Seems like more appropriate than ever here in 2021. But as you said, mark, his body of work is really substantial and I'm going to go as far as saying he's quite popular. He hasn't reached the levels of the cynics, the Adam Grant, but he deserves that level of recognition. So we single-handedly here on the moonshots podcast.
I going to be the number one standard bearers that Mr. Count new book, because if you want to improve. Your focus. If you want to improve your productivity, if you [00:02:00] want to do better quality thinking and work. And if you just want to, you survived the Barage of notifications and messages and media that we use.
There may be no one better for you as somebody who wants to be the best version of themselves. There's nobody better for you to learn from than cow Newport. I mean, am I overselling him here? Mark? What are you? I dunno. I mean, cow do not disturb Newport or cow distraction-free Newport and he's got a lot work in his catalog that moves us away from this distracted world.
So I don't think you can really oversell that. I think it's a problem or a challenge at least, or an obstacle that a lot of us face in our day-to-day work, whether it's from a social life or work. And the truth is it can get in the way of anything that you're doing, whether it's work [00:03:00] orientated or family.
And this distraction does clutter the mind. And I think does get in the way of being able to enjoy what's what's here. And now I want to build on that by saying. To all of our listeners. I think this is a show that will help you take back control of your time for your attention and where your energy goes.
So you can truly be the best version of yourself. If you think about what this goes hand in hand with, think about the trend that apple has really led by actually going to war with Facebook and do not track think about the war that we have with so much media notifications. We were just talking last week, the average person, over 120 emails a day, the average person is checking Facebook 13 times a day.
I don't know how people can actually make the time to do all those. Check-ins. [00:04:00] I mean, this, all of this is surrounding us. W we are blitzed. Millions of media messages and impressions. I think the rule is that we have 70,000 different thoughts in a day. So this is the context in which we are all trying to work in.
Today's show is going to be your defense. This is going to be your shield and your armor against the war for your attention. So take back control and do not own the estimate. Ladies and gentlemen, it is a war and you need to be in control because if you're not present, if you're not living in your circle of competence, then you will merely be a victim of the next notification.
So mark, where do we start? As we go in, as we pray hard ourselves for this battle, let's set the foundation. I think you've done a great job there of aligning [00:05:00] our minds and our direction as we approached the clips today. So let's hear from Cal himself. Introduce us into the idea of the hyperactive hive mind by 2000, you have people complaining about overload.
It did not take very long before. We felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of email that we were answering. It was in the mall of this newly emergent email overwhelm that we then throw smartphones into the picture. And what this did is it extended the temporal boundaries of this hyper communicative approach to work so that now you could be a part of all this back and forth before you got to the office, you could be a part of all this back and forth when you're home in the evening on the weekends, when you're at your kid's soccer games on vacation.
And so it was a really unfortunate, I think, coming together of technologies because we got this workflow, which I call the hyperactive hive, mind, everyone just works things out on the fly ad hoc communication that emerged metastasized got [00:06:00] overwhelming. And almost immediately, after that, we found a way to.
Take that hyperactive hive mine with us everywhere. We went that combination, I think has led since in the last 10 to 15 years, in a real sense of exhaustion and unhappiness with a lot of knowledge workers with their relationship with these tools in there. Yeah. It's just like now we're, we're creeping into nights and the weekends and there's just, there's no barrier.
Yeah. And, and here's the, here's the key part. I think this is foundational to the, the optimistic vision I ultimately give we, when we think about improving these habits, I think we too often just focus on ourselves and our own personal habits and we think, well, I just need better hacks if I just didn't check email on weekends, that'd be better.
If I batched, when I checked my emails, that would be better if I just promulgated clear expectations about response times, that would be better. We sort of put it on ourselves, but one of my big arguments is the reason why we don't gain any traction with these hacks and this tips. And this advice is because what we're [00:07:00] not realizing is.
The underlying workflow by which we are collaborating in most of these teams and organizations is one that depends on, on unstructured back and forth ad hoc communication. So, yeah, as long as this hyperactive high mine workflow is basically the primary way that you collaborate. You can't get away from it.
And then when you do try to get away from it, when you say I'm going to do a Tim Ferriss auto responder twice a day, that's all I'm going to check email. It doesn't stick because actually you have to check email more because you have two dozen different ongoing processes. Each of which has their own asynchronous conversation going back and forth.
And you cannot let those all die for four hours because it's going to slow down other people. Well, everything is going to stop. And the, the, the big sort of foundational message in my optimistic vision is forget the hacks up here. When we're thinking about our relation to the inbox, we have to replace the processes down here.
We have to actually replace the hyperactive hive mind with specific alternatives that specify for this type [00:08:00] of work. This is how we communicate about it. Here's how we share information about it. Here's how we coordinate about a, here's, how it works. We have to create these processes that are explicit alternatives to just, Hey, let's just rock and roll an email if we're ever going to escape from our inboxes.
And so I call that optimistic. I mean, it's harder, but it helps us explain why we've had no success. Just trying to at the upper levels, I would see better advice. We need better habits. We need better hacks Merlin, Mann's inbox zero. We can solve this problem. Now we've got to fix the processes. That's harder, but if you do it, you can significantly reduce the pressure of the inbox and get you the world.
Without email I'm talking about, which is a world, not where email doesn't exist, but where emails like your physical mailbox, maybe once a day, you check it. There's some stuff in there it's convenient. It's better than a fax machine, but it's not at the center of how you actually collaborate and get things done.
That is a promise to a bed at tomorrow. Mark. And we, we went very deep on this body of work from his book in a world without email. I want to. [00:09:00] Maybe avoid us going back over what we did last time and start with the idea that the way ad of the email barrage, I think is rerouting work that is in email to more appropriate forums might be a shared document.
It might be a call. It might be an in-person meeting if that's possible. But I think my call to action here is wake up and don't do everything. Okay. Email and move your work to other forums. This was the big takeout from last week show. This has been the thing that I worked so hard on. How about you mark?
Like how do you stage your battle with email? How do you kind of deal with this temptation of the hyperactive? Well, you might remember my last week that show 1 35, a world without email was quite big for me because it [00:10:00] challenged some of the behavior and patterns that I've had for for many years. You know, I personally haven't found social media to addictive.
For me, I'm probably not in the category of somebody who checks it 13 times a day in that statistic, which is what you're right is mindblowing. But I certainly check email at least 13 times a day. It will be are higher than that for me. So that's my, my social addiction there and the, the way. I've been able to challenge that since the end to cow's book or what would that email was?
What he says at the very beginning of that clip, actually, which is the boundaries have been broken when you're using this structure, this tool of email, and it's getting in the way of your weekends, your kids' soccer games, perhaps you're doing other work. And it's this thing that's constantly calling out to you and actually tempting you away from [00:11:00] whatever it is that has currently got your focus and attention.
That's pretty damaging. And the hyperactive hive mind means that you can't ever give one thing on focus, one project, all of your attention, which means that ultimately the, the output is going to be quite poor. So. I took away from that show. And what I think is a great way to begin today's show is remembering the damage that can be done when you're too distracted.
When you've got all these different notifications, pinging such as email. And for me, what did I do? I turned off notifications. I've stopped automatic pushes from my email device, from my devices, from my email. I close my email tab whenever I'm not actively using it. So I'm just working on one document at once.
There's no email open on the computer. That's actually helped me significantly over the last. That's really that's real. I mean, those are a number of steps. I [00:12:00] mean, I'd be happy if, you know, if there were just one of those, like I would recommend to our audience start with one of those to set an even broader context now and to start to get into the body of work beyond his most recent book.
I think he's, he's really challenging us when you're in the practice of work. Here's how you can perform better, but he's also giving us a hint on what you need to do before and after work. And the journey today, mark is going to be real through this enormous body of work, a number of books, almost half a dozen everything from deep work and learning minimalism.
It's all ahead of you today on this show. And I think the cornerstone to. Feeling better at work. Like it was quite interesting. He talks about how you feeling tired, frustrated, unhappy with work, or this is because we have these hyperactive minds in there being overstimulated. And he's saying [00:13:00] take back control.
So we know that we can shift the work that is in email to other places. Okay. A very good hygiene practice rerouting, not just trying to like get to a zero inbox, but just trying to have less in the inbox going right to the source. Now, the next thing that beautifully sets up and is one of the most powerful books that I've read.
And I'm going to say in my 25 plus years, Of working his book, deep work together, some loose notions I had of him, how to actually do big things, substantial things, create masterclasses, write strategic plans, do analysis and deep thinking. His [00:14:00] practice of deep work. His book called deep work has captured a moment of profound acceleration for me.
And I am so excited now for us to revisit deep work by Cal Newport and really lay a foundation on top of that hygiene that we've done with email and that context of knowing the war that we're at carving out time for deep work has been one of the most powerful things in my productivity over the recent years.
So, mark, are you ready to come with me on a journey into deep work? Yes, please. All right. So let's have a listen now to county Newport talking about one of the cornerstones of deep work, which is deliberate practice, that there is a lot of connections between from the world of performance psychology, the notion of deliberate practice and deep work deep work is actually a broader notion than deliberate practice, but we can learn a [00:15:00] lot about it from the deliberate practice literature.
So one of the reasons I really say there's three reasons why I think deep work is becoming more valuable. And one of the reasons is exactly what you just touched on there. Which is this notion that deep work is what's required to actually learn hard. So we, we know now as the simple things to wrote, things are becoming outsource and automated.
The people who are valuable today are those who can really keep up with complicated new information. They can master new computer systems or programming languages or statistics or mathematics, or the ability to keep up with complicated things is very valuable. That requires deep work. And if you really drill down to the neuron level, we can actually see learning in practice down at the level of the neurons what's actually going on is to learn something complicated.
You have to actually give it undistracted very intense attention. And what happens is at the neuron level that actually isolates the relevant neural circuits. And when neural [00:16:00] circuits are isolated and run again and again, you get a process called myelination where you actually get a, essentially it's a protein sheath that's that's that's actually spawn around the, the axons of the neurons and makes this circuit actually fire.
That's what it actually means at the neuron level to learn something. So it, it just requires literally the notion of focus without distraction to learn something. Because if you have lots of unrelated distractions going on, you're, you're looking at Facebook, you have all the things in your head.
There's too much noise at the neuronal level for you to actually isolate the circuit that you're trying to improve. So when we really dive down in the literature and deliver practice down to the neurons, we see focus without distraction is at the foundation of trying to learn hard new things, which is so valuable.
And that's just one of three different reasons why deep work I think is very valuable, but that's one of the important ones. Oh, science. Again, this is why I think Cal is such a unique character for us. He's got such an, a, [00:17:00] an easy to understand approach, you know, these recommendations and these breakdowns.
In today's show as well as last week are kind of practical, you know, they kind of make sense, but the way that he comes at it from a scientific background, myelination would be, you know, breaking down proteins and axioms. I mean, yeah, I, I don't perhaps understand all the scientific elements down to the DNA, but what I do get out of that clip and this idea of deliberate practice is it works focusing without distraction means that you are able to apply yourself and to learn those hot things.
And that's something that I certainly struggle with. And it's, it's a, it's a demonstration when you've got, you know, maybe a lots of books open, maybe you've got your phone, you know, notifications on when you're trying to focus on one thing, that's learning something new in this case. It's really, really hard when you've got lots of other things.
[00:18:00] Yeah. Cause, cause I think part of the heart is that if you're not used to doing it, it feels very big and it's a lot to take on deep work. But I think it's also the addiction to switching and multitasking and notifications. So w what's what's so fascinating is if you look at the shift in our behaviors, you know, when we were young, our parents would drive places without Google maps.
And now we can't go anywhere without Google maps. Right. People used to rely on the post for communicating and sharing documents. And, you know, when was the last time you posted a business document via the post service mark and Ben probably 10 or so years. So we get all these benefits, but what cow's teaching us is that we've forgotten the art of [00:19:00] quiet, calm, deep work that goes really deep into mastering complexity.
And you will notice there was a side note there where he's saying, listen, if you're not doing that, everything else is getting automated. So the knowledge worker has to be able to master complexity, to digest patterns and themes and data, create insights and recommendations. That's the future of work. And if you're not doing that, then you're like, you know, you're on the chopping block.
So, so here's the, here's the thing for me. Is he, he was actually sharing with us. What happens when you sit down for two or three hours completely focused. Like you literally have a chemical changes in your brain where you are building a resilience, the mental fortitude to go down and learn things at an atomic level.
And this is [00:20:00] so crucial because so many people. Just don't do this work. So people don't truly understand key themes in their work, in the challenges that they're facing. They haven't spent this time. I would make the case to you, mark. That. What is so exciting is that if the average person is not prepared to put in the work to go deep, to truly understand, to carve out big blocks of time, to master a thought, an idea, to think about a problem, and you develop this skill, you're at a massive advantage because I would say 99% of people just don't do the work.
So if you can go deep and learn and master, then you will be in a very rarefied surrounding because most people don't do it. Do that. No, I mean, this is a page right out of the gallery. Isn't it, you know, you get out of it. What you put in, nobody gets anywhere successfully without pursuing the [00:21:00] hard work.
And I think what cow's consistent message there is you're not going to be able to create those changes in your DNA, where you actually retain the information. And actually, maybe you learn to enjoy learning, which is another benefit. Isn't it of actually being able to focus and work on something and actually love the journey and the process of absorbing information and having the confidence that you know, what you're talking about.
Those are almost byproducts, I think of, of what cows say, but there's so much satisfaction that comes from being able to go out and learn that hard, that hard element through deliberate. Yeah. So, so I think we've made the case here. Like you've got to go deep. It's the future the highest order of value creation as a knowledge worker, it has to be deliberate and it has to really be addressing complex and hard [00:22:00] things.
Okay. So we've got that. So that's the sort of baseline of deep work. Now let's kind of move up a level and let's kind of pay homage to James clear and all the habit guys and say, okay, well, how are we going to cultivate this? How are we going to start to bring this into how we work? And the great news, once again, Cal Newport has answers for us.
So let's have a listen to Cal Newport talking about how we cultivate deep work. Yeah. So I have four big ideas for how to cultivate a deep work habit. And, and just to clarify what I mean by cultivate, it's really two things. One it's actually improving your ability to focus and cruising the depth and intensity of your concentration.
Plus the actual logistical challenge of making a time consistently in your schedule to do the deep work. I think you need both of those things in order to actually cultivate a deep work habit and to take advantage of the deep work hypothesis. So I had four big ideas. I call [00:23:00] them rules. The first was work deeply.
And this is about the idea that you actually have to you know, how you actually tackle your deep work when you do deep work that matters, right? And you need to actually give some care to this type of work. You need to protect it and give it what it needs to succeed. The second rule is embrace boredom, and this really captures this idea.
That deep work is a skill, not a, it's a skill, not a habit. It's, it's like playing the guitar, not flossing your teeth. It's something you can't just choose to do. You have to train. And so this rule is all about, you need to go out there and train your ability to focus and resist distraction. You can't just expect that you'll be able to do it even if you have the time for it.
The third rule is quit social media. And this is really about if you're going to take your attention and ability to focus seriously going through your life and cleaning house, right. Really making a statement that I am going to really set up my life in a way that really prioritizes concentration focus as a, as a tier one skill.
And I argue [00:24:00] for most professionals over the age of say 21 that's probably going to mean that you quit things like Facebook. And then the final rule is drain the shallows. And that's where it's really about how do you reduce and then control what remains of all the shallow obligations that permeates most people's knowledge work, professional life.
We can't get rid of the non deep work, but how can you keep it controlled and minimize the enough that you're left with the enough time to do serious deep work and really make a difference. So I think if you can handle do those four things you can really have a deeper, much more fulfilling life. A deeper, more fulfilling life for very practical rules and steps, right?
I mean, my almost went, he almost went Jordan Peterson there for a second. We're digging the rules for a productive life from Mr. Cowan Newport fulfilling. Exactly. I mean the, these are they reminiscent and we'll dig into them in, in a, in a moment [00:25:00] they're reminiscent of you know, James clear the 1% better each day, forming a good habit, or cow's breaking down for us here, Mike of four steps that I think we can slowly practice they today in order to kind of cultivate that behavior, that practice of deep work.
So let me ask you this question. Let's start with his first rule, because I mean, here is, you know, arguably one of the greatest contributions he's work has given to us. So I hope you, our listeners, our moonshot is, are ready for this one full rolls of deep work. Now he says, build rituals and routines.
So my question to you, mark, let's put this in context of you say, right, I want to do some deep work. What would be the ritual and routine set up for you? Maybe let's start with, when would you tend to want to do [00:26:00] your date work? Well, there's a, there's a few different, I guess, factors at play here when I consider how I approach the routine.
You know, when I, when I think about it, when I plan it and when I do it and to answer your question. From a practical perspective. I actually find that some of my best deep work that takes place in the mornings when I don't have emails and calls flying around. So actually finding a, and I think you, you might be quite similar, like finding a moment in the day when it's less likely to be disturbed actually is a, is a fun, almost byproduct of, of working in the morning because then you kind of have your own barrier already present.
Correct. So I I'm totally the same. I know some people are night owls and do their, their work there. It's exactly the same principle. No, your circadian rhythm. [00:27:00] No. When you do your best work and a couple of builds from my side, yes, I'm also doing my deep work in the morning, never, ever in the evenings.
I will do a few things the night before. I will review the work for the day to come. So let's just say I was making a master class on product discovery. I would actually look at the outline the night before. So I might have like a 10 point outline for what I want to write, what I want to create. And I find it very helpful with ramp up time in the morning if I have given some thought and consideration to that overview the night before.
So that it's a weird thing with me. It's like, I'm almost more motivated, more ready to go more. The switching costs are less like I'm primed and I'm [00:28:00] ready to go. The other thing is I definitely want to start no later than eight, preferably seven in the morning is when I want to get at it. And you want to set yourself up so that, you know, And we'll get to these other rules second, but set it up.
So did you know that you don't need to be worried about time or what's coming up or other obligations? So how do I make that time? I checked my agenda. I will actually quickly review my email in the morning to make sure show there is nothing, a super agent that needs my attention and I, it's a real quick scan and I'll look through and then close the email.
No, no other distractions, but then I can be at peace. I know that my calendar has been cleared for this time. I know that there is nothing raging in my room box [00:29:00] that needs my time. I'm good to go. And that's the ritual and routine for me to do, to do deep work. And if I can achieve too. Two hour sessions per week, where it is completely dedicated.
That is sort of a minimum frequency for me to know that I'm generally producing the work that I need to. Now, as I've said that, mark, I wonder, does that spark any ideas for you when you think about rituals or routines that you can build into your day? Boy? Yeah. W the, the builder I have is in the pre-planning stage, so where I might be, I might reach the end of the week.
I'll review my objectives and agenda for the coming week. And the reason why I do that is so I can go into the weekend with a plan in place. It's kind of like your reviewing of the skeleton or the 10 points the night before I'll [00:30:00] try and review what's coming up in the following week and think, okay, well, if I plan.
Some example time here and I'll I'll time block it. I'll physically put a slot into my calendar and think, right. Here's my Google calendar. I've got two hours here. Great. That appeases my hyperactive hive mind because the anxiety of not knowing when I'm going to work on it has been solved. It's been, I mean, I might move it by the morning of the day, but that doesn't matter.
The point is I've released. It's almost like there, I make this connection like to journaling a lot, as long as I've written something down, as long as I've committed it into reality. It's then come out of my brain from an anxiety perspective, the steam has come out of my ears, so to speak, and it's now sitting in a, in a plan or an agenda for the coming week.
And I know that I'll get to it. And that reassurance that it will get done is actually [00:31:00] enough for me to then think, okay, well, I might think about it over the weekend, but I'd need to try and preserve some, some personal time to relax recuperate so on. So I don't need to worry about it as much. Yeah, totally with you there.
And my, my whole thing is that find what works for you. Try experiment, mix it up, but you know, some general good practices would, would be think about having a go at doing it in the morning, try and protect yourself because you know, if you're doing the deep work at say eight in the morning hopefully for most of our listeners, there's not too many you know, urgent things happening in the office.
I think, I think get yourself, if you work in a very noisy office, get yourself out of the office, work from home, work from a library, whatever it takes that can be very powerful cues to kind of trigger this ritual and [00:32:00] routine of deep work. I think the interesting one is training your mind so that you're focused by default.
I mean, mark is that simply like turning off notifications, batching your email. Is there something that I'm missing there? It feels that that one's pretty straightforward. That's that's rule number. I think it's rural. Yeah. It's I think it's pretty straightforward. If you follow the behaviors, we were just describing times time-blocking and so on.
I think if you're going into your day without having the time preserved, you're not going to be focused. So it's kind of like meditating without any practice. Your mind's going to go in a hundred different ways. And without having that time to physically lock it down, I think you will be distracted. Hmm.
Yeah. So rule one, build rituals and routines. Number two, train your mind, like clear the decks. Now what's interesting here. This is [00:33:00] surrounding deep work. He talks about selecting digital media. And I think he's saying more than turn off notifications while you're doing deep work. I have a feeling and this speaks a little bit to some of the work you did around digital detox.
I think he's really challenging us over the period of the week. Not just in the deep work session, he's saying select your media wisely and look for a net positive impact. How do you interpret that mark? Yeah, I think he's calling out the danger of using it day to day. So not only, I think it's fairly obvious and I'm sure the listeners would agree here not using your social media when you're trying to do the deal.
Is is going to be obviously advantageous, avoiding one, so you can focus on the other, but you're right. I think what cows then saying with the rule, number three here is actually consider how you use the social platforms during the week when you're not doing the deep work. And that in turn [00:34:00] almost influences the second rule, which is training your mind.
If you're, yeah. You know, if you're building that practice day to day, it means that by the time you get to the moment of deep work, whether it's tomorrow in half an hour or next week, you've almost laid the, found the runway so that your mind is in a peaceful focus state. Yeah. And I would say some quick tips and practices that have really worked for me is I moved all social media apps off my homepage.
It sounds so simple, but it was amazing how they were tempting. And number two is just not installing apps. So I here's what I don't have. I don't have Snapchat. I don't have slack. I don't have clubhouse. I don't even have tick-tock. I'm just simply saying to myself, you know what, that's just more [00:35:00] competition for my attention and between the spectrum of things that I do really want to do.
There is no time for those things. What about you, mark? How are you selecting, you know, net positive media for your mind? It's it reminds me of that, the idea that we learned in last week show in Cal's book, a world without email, think of your brain as a, as a CPU. You know, if you've only got a hundred percent and 20% of it's taken up with considering social media, well, that's 20% that you could be using elsewhere.
I like that. I do a lot for me. It's actually what apple have built into their product now, where you can put a time allowance. I guess the name is on the app itself. So I might have maybe five or 10 minutes. I can't remember which I think it's 10, 10 minutes a day, then I'm allowed to use Instagram. So I'm not, I rarely [00:36:00] actually get to 10 minutes, but when I do, let's say it's on the weekend that I'm sitting on a bus or something, then I'll get a notification saying, Hey, you've only got five minutes left.
And then when I get to the 10 minutes, it'll actually lock me out. I can open it up again if I choose to, but the application is turning or the iPhone is turning around to me and saying, Hey, it's up to you. Do you want to reopen it? Or do you want to close it now? And I love that ownership. Yeah, that's pretty valuable.
That's, that's a great things. The other thing that I used to do that might be helpful for you and our listeners is I used to have a no social Sunday. I would not open social media at all. Yeah. But then some days. Yeah. And you know, if you're, if you are interested in that, do go to moonshots.io and check out our back catalog.
There's a lot of things that we cover on the show and date book, but we have a number of shows on cow's work all@moonshots.io. And lastly, let's go back [00:37:00] to this final rule mark, before we go into Google word from county, I thought this is perhaps the most tricky one where he says limit shallow work.
And what on earth does that mean? And if it is what I think it might be, that is pretty hard. So the way that I interpret limit sharp or shallow work. Is a reflection on how I might respond or interact with emails. So if I have time blocks, half an hour, an hour on emails, what that might contain actually is jumping from project to project communication, to communication lines, therefore creating lots of switching costs when I'm going from project where one customer to a different one and all of them are, are important.
Of course. So they will require some attention. But I think where Kelly's going here with the [00:38:00] shallow work is if you're going to do it, make sure that you allocate it within a bigger piece of deep work. So if you're working on one big project, maybe that's when you should attend to those emails or those calls that are related to that project rather than dipping your toe in lots of different pools at the same time, because I think.
Products that comes out of that behavior is, is going to be less efficient and less strong. Right? Yeah. I totally hear, I think that's really good advice. I think if you're doing deep work once or twice a week, it becomes easier to switch between smaller smaller tasks because you know, you've got that body of work where I think the stress is, is when you're trying to, like, I'm going to write this chapter in the 35 minute break I have between two meetings.
And that just by the time you get your brain going, you're like, oh, damn, I'm like halfway through. At the time I had alligator, I've only just really started. So I think that [00:39:00] you know, managing and allocating your time appropriately, there is a big one. And the freedom you get from having big slabs of deep work mean that you can be a bit more flexible.
I think for me is one of the things that I'm learning. This new hybrid way of working is trying to understand the appropriate time between meetings and how, how to allocate that to tasks. Because I do find that where I'm becoming overloaded is when I have a lot of calls. And I haven't really thought about all the work that I need to get done, or I've been too optimistic.
I've got half an hour there or an hour, maybe there, if I'm lucky, but what I've, what I've failed to realize is I've actually got three hours of work that I need to get done. And then I'm trying to compress that into an hour and a half. Do you ever get those situations? Yeah, absolutely. So when you're trying to cover too many [00:40:00] bases, yeah, I think, I think that's, that's a real.
Yeah. So I think the watch out there is know how your time, you know, the best thing you can do is actually time-blocking allocate in your diary, how you spend your time and watch an observer, which I try to still trying to improve it, but just be careful for, for being over-optimistic in, in planning your time allocations, and then you have to jump around a lot of things.
Cause you're trying to balance the urgency of them. Mark. Good to go back to deep work. Isn't it. I just, I find there's so much to discuss. We've referenced a few of the pieces of advice. In some previous shows, particularly time-blocking is a, is a firm favorite of ours and it's just really, it's a pleasure to be able to dig into it with a little bit more detail.
Hmm. It really, really is. So before we go into the second half of the show where we've got a ton of goodies, I think we [00:41:00] should talk about. The exciting things that are happening for our members. So you, our listeners, you can become members of the moonshots podcast, official moon, shoulders, and each moon shutter that becomes a member of the moonshots podcast where you can do that at moonshot study.
Oh, you will. An additional brand new show from us, it's called the master series and mark we've recorded the first one. We'll be teasing it out a few little snippets from the show. But if you want to get the whole thing and really lend us your support, your patronage, you can do so@moonshots.io, mark, I'm pretty excited about offering the moonshot master series to our members.
Yeah, I think it's just, it's fascinating when you get to as many shows as we've done and we've covered so many superstars innovators, entrepreneurs, moonshot is [00:42:00] we've covered ideas on a habit, forming motivation, transformation, leadership skills, and gradually over all that period of time. Mike, it's clear that piece of DNA almost, or a thread can connect a number of these moonshots as innovators together and having the ability to create the master series.
And listeners, in addition to this show, you'll still be able to hear our show as every week. It'll, it'll still maintain a business as usual, but having an ability to actually delve deeper into some of those themes and those topics within the master series is a real pleasure. But Mike, I mean, we're not just using the same product format here.
W we're delving into frameworks. We've got additional clips from moonshots as we haven't covered before. I mean, we're going pretty far down the rabbit hole of a lot of these different topics on the master series, aren't we? Yeah. So the first show that we've [00:43:00] recorded is a complete body of work on motivation spanning, you know, everyone from Daniel pink to you know some of our favorites, Gagarin, Goggins.
You will be blown away by just how much we've been able to pull together. Motivation. So if you're hearing this, now, you can head over to moonshots.io and you can become a member and you can hear that show it'll be live. It'll be there for you. And we're working on the next one, which is a a second area of the show.
So the first area is making yourself better. The second area is how to think better. And so we will be doing a deep, deep, deep dive into first principles thinking which Elon Musk has made flavored . And last but not least, you know, the show after that is going to be about teamwork because our third pillar of the moonshot master series is how we can lead others.
So make yourself better [00:44:00] think better and help make others better. That's what the moonshot master series is all about. And if you want to get it mark, where do they. They pop along to www.moonshots.io, click on our members section in the top navigation bar. And you can sign up as little as $1 a week. Oh my gosh.
What a deal. And come on. Moonshot is we have over 30,000 listeners a month and we want you to join up. We already have a couple, but I think we can do a lot more than that. So go dementia study, become a member, support the show, get the moonshot master series. It's all there for you to be the best version of yourself and talking about improving oneself.
I tell you what we can all do is put the mobile phone down, mark. He couldn't be more right. And that's a perfect little segue Mike into the second half of [00:45:00] our show today on our account Newport collection or listeners as I coined before the show, the Cal. Well, the Cal edition. So now we're going to hear another clip actually from cows.
Another book we've covered a few clips on deep work, dig into digital minimalism now, which was another absolute stonking book by Cal Newport of which we did a show on a little while ago. And this next clip, a great demonstration of cow, that scientific approach is digging into this ability of balancing digital and social dynamics.
And this next clip will be the impact of excessive phone use. There's a part in, in our book, everything that remains in the actual scene that have, I was driving into I 71, the Cincinnati and it's bumper to bumper traffic, some of the worst traffic in the countries and Cincinnati, and as I'm going south, I'm stopped.
We're going zero miles an hour. I look to my right and the person in the driver's seat has a newspaper [00:46:00] over the wheel and, and a bowl of cereal in their hand, like the worst kind of multitask in here and just milk is dripping down their chin. And as they're reading the paper and, and we looked at that like, oh, That's not right.
Yeah. But now we look at it and say, oh yeah, I do that too. Yeah. So, so that normalized it problem. Right? Lack of solitude. The other problem is taking this sort of social processing hardware. That again is incredibly specialized. It's the story of our species success is that we have these social supercomputers that can do this.
Like I can, I can talk with you guys. I can look at your facial expressions. I can practice limbic consonance, where I try to match the pacing and I'm doing something called mineralizing right now, where I'm building a model of your mind in my mind, so that I can test against this model, how you would react to different things.
I mean, it's a social supercomputer, but it's evolved for. With people, you know, people have known for a long time, we're in person we're interacting. This just messes with it. It doesn't know how to deal with [00:47:00] like a comment, you know, like a bad tweet or something like that. Right. Because we treat it as if the person's right across, because our brain doesn't know the difference.
Right. So it's like, oh my God, like someone in my tribe is really mad at me. Like I'm going to get a spear in the back, like red alert. Right. But it's some rando on, on Twitter or the likes coming in that I get more likes or not likes. Our brain is seeing this as like we're around the campfire. And I can see that, you know, the, the tribe mates are unhappy with be like, this is, this is a serious issue.
Right. I need to manage the social dynamic. So this brain does not know at all how to deal with this sort of artificial sociality. That was sort of, again, schemed up. Yeah, dorm room at Harvard, you know, 15 years ago, right. It's not some grand experiment. So that's also, and then the final thing is we're losing the ability to concentrate.
And this is one of the issues. I mean, I've totally seen attention spans, and this has economic consequence. I mean, it has huge consequences to quality of life. For sure. If you can't just be present in a moment, you can't concentrate on something that you're seeing. If you can't concentrate a conversation, it's having economic consequences.
I mean, non-industrial productivity metrics have been stagnant throughout [00:48:00] this last 10 years of all this technological innovation. We have a whole generation of people entering the workforce that are incredibly uncomfortable with sustaining attention at the same time that our economy is shifting more and more towards the thing we do is have brains concentrate and produce value.
We're we're going towards this high level knowledge economy where this is like the most important resource we have. This is our oil fields, right. And we're getting worse and worse at using it. So he's right. I mean, SACS is right about this is that what's happening to our brain. It's really non-trivial and your TV did this too, but you only, but you watch TV in the evening.
You only watch TV in the evening, but with your phone in your hand, you're experiencing artificial sociality. I loved the way he was describing the illusion of Spears and campfires mark. I mean, it really does scientifically work like that, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, it does. And, and that first analogy at the very beginning, driving down the highway with a bowl of [00:49:00] cereal and written in the newspaper.
I mean, if I'm trying to check emails or imagine you and I are recording the show today, and one of us is in our emails or working on another project, you know, we're not going to be as focused. We're not gonna be able to drive that car. And it's, it's just a really, it's a very valid reminder. I think to me, when I.
Judge how I use my phones and my devices. I can't give, let's say to the TV show or a movie or driving down the street, whatever it is, my full attention. If I'm trying to simultaneously engage my brain with what's going on, on, on a device, whether it's a phone or otherwise, it's just a very consistent reminded to this concept of deep work.
You're not going to get the best result out of it unless you are able to be focused and therefore be more productive. Yeah. And, and just we heard the [00:50:00] real broader impact, lack of focus. In ability to like focus on things at hand, highly distracted, even challenges for economic productivity. So I think we we've just got that scientific evidence now for just how we need to bring a more minimal aesthetic to our life, particularly getting over this, you know, smartphone compulsion.
And as a build on this cow has some really powerful thinking radically purging having a bit of a social media detox. So let's have a listen to cow talking about how we should think about socially. Digital minimalism is a philosophy of technology use and it says what you should do is wipe the slate, clean of the various apps and services that you haphazardly downloaded, or just started using it at various parts of your digital life.
And [00:51:00] instead rebuild it from scratch, but very intentionally. So that the tools that you actually use your digital life directly serve things that you really care about when it comes to social media. I think you have to understand what's actually happening with this product, which is, this is an experience that has evolved over time from what it used to.
Which was a relatively static way for you to post information about yourself and see information for people you care about. It shifted from that it to it experience in which they are. Sydney's a stream of social approval indicator about yourself at you all day log likes and retweets and tags of photos that are costly coming at you deliver through this app.
And that every time you hit this button, you might see some new indication that someone else was thinking about you. That type of behavior, that experience is something that was not innovated because it made users happier. This is an experience that has been engineered to make you a compulsive user of your phone, and therefore should be [00:52:00] something that makes you wary, put it social media.
It's political in the sense that you're taking a stand against the exploitation, that a small number of companies are now perpetrated. Billions of users, but I think what they did, which was said, okay, we're going to build a walled garden in which the Internet's going to exist. We're going to build our own private internet where we'll make it very easy for you to actually connect with other people, to figure out what's going on, come into our walled garden.
It's fine. We've made it easy. It's free. Don't worry about it. And then once we're trapped in there, they start saying, now we're going to watch every single thing you do. We're going to reduce you to overnight 2000 data points. And then we're going to exploit this data to try to get you to look at this as much as possible.
Give us as much data as possible. Squeeze out every little. Dollar of value out of your time at attention, this is a serious move that they bake. And so I think it's an act of sort of economic activism, as well as a reclaiming of your humanity to say, I don't necessarily want to be the target of this.
And so I think there's a lot of [00:53:00] people who are coming around to this idea. Now, social media doesn't equal the internet and we can harness the excitement of all these innovations without having to be exploited by a $500 billion market cap company. Wow. That, that was, that was, oh my gosh. You know, the aha there, mark is so much of those addictive features were not built to serve the customer, but to serve the business.
Yeah, that's, that's pretty rough. When you actually take a step back and hear that overview of the social channels, isn't it. Knowing that your 19,000 data points that then get exploited, you're just in the machine of feeling good about yourself. Am I getting the likes from my friends and colleagues? You know, when you boil it down to those essential pieces, it does seem a little bit of a waste of time.
Reminds me of the huge noise that the social dilemma documentary on Netflix made. Do you remember when that launched [00:54:00] last year? And everyone's like, oh my God, look at what they're doing to explore it. That's right. It was, it was very, very good. But th th the thing that I am actually taking from this revisit to digital minimalism cow's book is the concept of being present.
You know, you're not present in your work. The deep work. You're not present in your sociality with those around you, whether they're colleagues or friends, if you're using your phone in all these different digital touchpoints and platforms that we're using in our day-to-day life, and maybe we've allowed them to come in without permission, and now they're getting it all our way of being focused and productive.
It's actually getting in the way of us being present in the moment. Isn't it? Hmm. Well, I think the the. The lesson that I learnt when I moved social media apps off my home page, as I learned that actually how much of my [00:55:00] usage of those apps was just discretionary. Right. And so I think the lesson that we're getting both from digital minimum, middle, gosh, look at me from digital minimalism, from county Newport, from deep work, from count Newport, how to speak properly from Cal Newport.
Now. I think what he's inviting us to do is shift mark. I think it is to take control of our time of our attention. So he's not only saying do the deep work, but he's also saying on the side, be careful of where your attention is. Like it's okay to have some time and space. You don't have to be checking your feeds in every single little moment between activities.
Just take control, because as you said, mark, our CPU of attention and our mind can only do so much. It has so much capacity. So every time we're going for the second, third, fourth, [00:56:00] 13th time to Facebook in a day, that's burning up really essential energy. That could be devoted elsewhere. I couldn't agree more if you find.
What you are trying to focus on. You can even go as far Mike as to reclaim it. And we've got one more clip for you and our listeners today from Mr. Cowan Newport, like you say, we've covered some deep work. We've covered some digital minimalism, but what are we all trying to do? We're getting back to the things that we crave.
So there's final clip listeners seeing us out and seeing us to the home stretch is Mr. Cal Newport telling us how to reclaim leisure. Yeah. So that's the hard part about all this, right? So I walk people through this, you know, redo your digital life, get back down to what matters, get some rules around how you use it.
Now they have all this timeframe that's actually really problematic. It is not at all. Obvious. What do you do if like the average American uses social media stuff, you like two hours a day? Like, what do [00:57:00] you do with those two hours? It's actually a kind of a hard question. And a lot of people that, that did this experiment at the book had a hard time with it.
There's one thing you could do, you could read. I actually, yeah, you can read the book, right. But that's like, it'd take you so many hours. Right. And so the book I actually get into you, you know what are the things we crave as humans? So a lot of this book is about like, what do we actually crave as humans?
And what are the ways that some of this tech has maybe diverted that? Right. And how do we get back to the things we create? Because what we want to do is would it be happy? Would it be satisfied? Would it be successful? And so one of the things we crave is really high quality activities. So fags we do or participated that are skilled, that maybe require so appreciation that, that we enjoy just for the sake of the quality of the faith, right?
Like I, this is something I do or something I listen to, but something I'm an expert on. I appreciate it. I just like it for it's a Trinzic quality. Right? We need that because life is hard, has all these ups and downs. But if you could, if you could just appreciate certain things like this is just really good and I appreciate it.
This a high quality activity, it helps. From a lot of that. And so the book [00:58:00] talks about you need to get more of that back in your life. When you, when you take two hours a day of swiping out of your life, try to fill some of that two hours with something that's like an activity that's high quality. So if that you're good at something that requires skill something that you're getting better at something where you could really appreciate.
And when you do that, you feel the shift at how you feel like that that background anxiety really starts to dissipate and you have more of a called this or a piece when you start replacing more of the frenetic, tapping out the little glowy screen with, you know, I spend an hour to two hours a day doing something that means something to me.
Right. Or it's really important, or it's a skill that I've been building or it's just really quality. Yeah. Something, I just really enjoyed learning how to cook, better, learn how to cook better. Yeah. I have a billion cookbooks at home that I don't use. That's a great example. I learned how to cook or like athletic, right?
You're like I can alert to Jitsi, right? How many people do, you know now would do that these days. Right. I'm going to go learn like Brazilian jujitsu, but they get so much out of it because it's like a couple hours of, of, you know, I'm doing something that it's hard. I could appreciate it drywall. So I don't have to pay all that money to hire somebody else.
You go ahead and electricity. Yeah. [00:59:00] Reclaim leisure. I mean, it's almost as he was describing that and he was, you know, bringing to life, the frenetic world in which we live. You're like, yeah, I want some of that. I want to claim some of mine back from where you like. Yeah. Give me some of that, please. I'm I'm, I'm, I'm signed up, you know, the idea of utilizing that time in a more productive way through some of the lessons that we've learned in today's show the rules of deep work, for example, how attractive does carving out two additional hours a day and having the result of feeling good about yourself and having confidence that you've learned something you've built something, or maybe you.
Expand on something that you found really difficult beforehand in a really productive way. I mean, that's thank you, Cal. What a great tip and direction I can go and work and a great closer for the show. Mark. I have to say we started with the [01:00:00] hyperactive mind and ended in reclaiming leisure. It was like a complete journey.
Wasn't it? Complete journey. And I hope listeners you've, you've enjoyed this build from last week's show the world without email and now getting into what practical tips we can do. It it's been a joy to go into today. It really has. And so I guess my question for you is, I mean, we obviously we've done cow several times.
He's one of our heroes. We want the cow to be huge. We think he's got so much to offer the moonshot is, but was there something that really grabbed you? Today, was there something that I don't know, maybe it was just relevant in this time and place or what tip, what thought from county Newport? Yeah, it's, it's a good one.
It's a challenge because I think all of them had a huge effect. You know, the idea of reappropriating, how I use social media is, is obviously a [01:01:00] big one. And the concept of reclaiming leisure by not you not wasting essentially the time on some of those less productive sites. I think actually the, the four rules for me, the, the way to, yeah.
The way to cultivate and practice deep work is, is my most valuable clip. My MVC. We have a new moon shot term. It's the M VC Mo most valuable clip Gino funny. My big takeaway was rule four limit shallow work. And that, as I was speaking of that, I was like, yeah, I ain't got some work to do here. I can, I can get better at this because look, here's the reality.
You know, you can't play the victim card, you have to take control and say, okay, how will I make this work? How will I make my hybrid way of working? How do I make this all come together? How can I feel good about my contribution? How can I make others feel good? Because I contribute [01:02:00] this is, is really incumbent on us.
Isn't it? Yeah, it really is. It's incumbent. And I think the reminder here that we have from last week show in this weeks, it's up to you. You can take ownership of how you utilize these platforms and how you interact with your emails. Or you can turn off your notifications. You can stop it, getting pushed or delete the app or move it to another screen.
And it's up to you to really go on. Yeah, it sure is. And it's up to you to go to moonshots.io, because if you want the show notes from this episode, if you want to see all the links or the clips, everything you need Newport, just head over dementia study and you will find it. So, mark, are you liberated? Are you reclaiming your attention Angelica?
All at the same? Yeah, I really am. I've I learned a lot from last week's show world without email, and I've learned even more in this week's show. So thank you for joining me. Wonderful. Well, thank you to you and thank you to you. Our listeners [01:03:00] joining us into a revisit to the full collection, or as mark would say the collection of all that great work from Mr.
Cal Newport, we went from the very, very beginning. How high for mine? Yes. The mysterious, the mischievous mind that runs into all the dangers of overload. And therefore we embrace deep work and that was built around two things, deliberate practice, which is all about getting rid of distraction. And then we cultivate the deep work habit.
So we're off to the races, but the job is not complete because we need to reduce the noise around us. We brought in some digital minimalism, we looked at the excessive and really dramatic impact that out, over worked phones really caused for us. And there was another coal, there was a coal to delete social media, detox, purge, and really challenge them.
To only [01:04:00] use tools with net positive impact. And if you do that, you have the highest part of the pyramid to obtain. You can reclaim your leisure. And that means less anxiety by directing your energy towards the things that matter to you. And moonshot is yes, every single one of you. If you truly want to be the best version of yourself, and you need to send your energy to where it belongs, what you were made to do, and if you do that, great things will happen.
All right. That's it for the moonshots podcast. That's right.