CAL NEWPORT: DEEP WORK

EPISODE 185

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Mike Parsons: Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 195. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by mark deep work Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, mark. Good morning, Mike. And yes, you're right. Deep work. What an opportunity, not only to reveal my middle name, a very unusual middle name.

[00:00:24] What an opportunity for us and our listeners to get back into an absolute classic within this productivity series with Cal Newport's deep work. Oh, my gosh, it is on my bookshelf. It is in my Kindle. It is right up there for me personally, with a Tim Ferris, four-hour workweek as one of those books where you read it, where you study it, you research the thinking, mind it.

[00:00:52] And you're like, this makes so much sense. I'm glad I found it. I wish I'd found it 20 years ago. I [00:01:00] could have produced so much more, but deep work. I think it's one of the greatest struggles that we have as modern knowledge workers. The act of getting deep work done is so damn hard. We're in a war for our attention, mark we're in a war to avoid another notification, another interruption, because on the other side of that, If we have time and space, we can do deep work and Mark Good things happen when we do deep work.

[00:01:32] As Cal breaks it down in his book, he actually calls that level of focus that deep work as a super. Oh, yeah. Cause it is increasingly competitive with all these different notifications. We talk about it on the show all the time. Mike, with notifications, your watch, your phone, your iPad, your emails every single thing nowadays, 

[00:01:54] Chad Owen: not only people, but thing and 

[00:01:57] Mark Pearson Freeland: apps are driving and [00:02:00] striving for your attention.

[00:02:01] So the ability to actually do some deep work, to focus on something without distraction, often on a, as coward, call it a cognitively demanding task and far between. And what's interesting, again, as we dug into Chris, Bailey's, hyper-focus a few shows back. This idea of focus nowadays is probably even harder to find than we'll encounter released the book Prius.

[00:02:31] I think it is it's a timeless classic deep work by Cal Newport. And what is so great in this show? We are going to decode not only like how you can cultivate deep work, some of the routines and the habits that you can use to do deep work, we're going to crack why it's hard, how the brain kind of works and the sort of results that you can get.

[00:02:56] If you deep do deep work and look, my [00:03:00] mark. What I have learned from this book is basically if I want to do deep work, I need to schedule it. I need to schedule it in the morning. I don't want to check email beforehand. Massive do not stir. I literally go into both a virtual and physical bunker. I close the study door.

[00:03:18] I close the blinds. I go deep and I do this on regular occasions in order to think, work and produce better. Otherwise I'll just be drifting along from meeting to meeting cold, to call urgent request to this, that, and I'll be like, damn, I'm not working on the system. I'm just caught in the system. It's very exactly.

[00:03:45] As you're describing Mike, you have to have a deliberate practice. In order to go deep, you need to identify and be honest with yourself. Even whether you're doing deep work or shallow work, you need to identify maybe as you were just [00:04:00] describing the time of day, that works best for you. Maybe it's before other people are around before those emails start creeping in it's understanding and blocking yourself in order to go out and do that deep work, as well as cultivating those precious moments, which they are pretty precious nowadays.

[00:04:18] Aren't they to go out and do that, put yourself in the bunker, like you say. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The and look the reviews. If you read the reviews, the theme here is. Look, it's very inspiring because I think we all want to produce a body of work and that's where deep work helps. But then he gives us some really good rules to follow.

[00:04:40] And, there's this one headline here on our review, quite relevant in our noisy age. Quiet. That is like beautifully said quite relevant in our noisy age. Mark, I think it's time for us to. Get away from this noisiness. Don't you think? [00:05:00] Yeah, I totally agree. I can't wait to get in deep into count.

[00:05:04] Newport's deep work. So Mike, let's jump in, 

[00:05:08] Brian Optimize: tell us what deep work is and then we'll drill in from there. 

[00:05:12] Cal Newport: Yeah. I define deep work to be when you're focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding 

[00:05:18] Brian Optimize: task. Got it. And the book is basically, which kind of leads us to the deep work hypothesis, which you established in the book and then spend the first half proving it. And then the second half showing us how to apply it. Can you tell us what the deep work hypothesis? 

[00:05:32] Cal Newport: Yeah, this is the foundation on which the whole book is written in the foundation on which actually I live my life.

[00:05:38] So it's pretty important. And that's the idea that deep work is becoming more valuable in our economy. So it's becoming one of the most valuable skills you can do in our economy at the same time that it's becoming more. So people more and more are losing their ability to actually do deep work. So that is a classic economic [00:06:00] scarcity scenario.

[00:06:00] Something is becoming more valuable. It's becoming more rare. And the conclusion of that is if you're one of the few, the cultivate, a deep work ability you're going to thrive. 

[00:06:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: I couldn't agree more. Now we got it from Cal Newport himself. This really is a pathway to thriving in any sort of passion, vocation business work, whatever.

[00:06:25] However you might choose to a blight deep work is the thing, because for me, it's a, we're surrounded by a world of noise and deep work is this practice of where instead of knowing just half of the picture or half of the story, you can like, know something back to front and upside down. And when you do that, you can then apply it to your work and get the benefit of it.

[00:06:47] And to me, Deep work is the Alec sites, the medicine to all what you might call the shallow work that we get. So preoccupied with. 

[00:06:59] Chad Owen: I love [00:07:00] his economic argument as well, where he's saying, Hey, just the fact of the marketplace now in, in the job and skill and abilities and market is such that those of us that can cultivate this deep workability will be more, more productive.

[00:07:16] And therefore also more valuable. He's saying that there's a financial incentive and like a career advancement incentive for us to invest in this as well. You brought up the idea of shallow work. It's not easy to do this deep work because there's all these competing forces.

[00:07:32] And so here's how cow conceives of the difference between what deep work is versus what shallow work is. 

[00:07:41] Brian Optimize: Tell us the difference and tell us where most of us spend our time. 

[00:07:44] Cal Newport: Yeah. It's important because people are not they're not lazy, so it's not the case that most people just aren't working much.

[00:07:53] Yeah, at the same time they're doing less and less deep work and getting worse at deep work. So what are they doing instead? So this is where we have this notion of what I [00:08:00] call shallow work which are tasks that. Do not require distraction-free focus. They tend to be logistical in nature.

[00:08:06] They tend not to actually apply your hard won skills or create a lot of new value in the world. This includes things such as doing email and meetings and sort of PowerPoint slides and social media optimization and tweaking your website. All of this type of things is shallow work. It's not that there's no value in shallow work, but it does not require distraction-free focus and it's not producing massive amounts of new value.

[00:08:30] So the reason why we're busier than we've ever been before yet doing less and less deep work than ever before, is that we're spending more and more of our waking hours dedicated to these shallow work efforts. 

[00:08:41] Mark Pearson Freeland: Yeah. This just triggers this visual in my head of all the people that you see just being.

[00:08:49] Busy, but not really productive. And I think one of the greatest time suckers or shallow practices is emails and [00:09:00] meetings that don't really need to happen. And how many people do you see or experience, or even for yourself that matter, find that you're just going from meeting to meeting.

[00:09:13] And at the end of the day, that's full of meetings for me, I literally feel like I have achieved. 

[00:09:19] Chad Owen: Yeah, it's so easy for people to just jump onto our calendars and send us endless invites and fill our inboxes. And as you say, deal with all of these urgent requests for our time when it's actually, the art of setting aside and blocking out that time, that is really the only way for us to combat that.

[00:09:38] Yeah. And I think 

[00:09:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: it's perhaps short versus long-term here. Like it's in the short-term it's instantly gratifying to see that, oh, my whole day is booked with appointments. How busy am I? How productive am I? But therein lies the break. Doesn't it? Because productivity doesn't come from just bouncing from meeting to meeting.[00:10:00] 

[00:10:00] And I think if we can all develop this sense of, I need minimum an hour or two a day devoted to no meetings, no calls, no email to think, to reflect. To work, to build insights and thoughts to get thoughts out of your head and just write whatever it is. There is this deep need, not just to fill the day with this shallow work.

[00:10:29] And I think what cow is really encourage, encouraging us to do is to see all the value that is in doing the deep work, particularly because it's hard to do so not many people are doing it. And. I think that this is one of the biggest mess of observations of how people work these days. They're all very busy.

[00:10:50] They're all getting interrupted a lot, but how are they really producing? And I think cow is laying the context here for what [00:11:00] comes later, which is, how we might think about going about deep work. 

[00:11:04] Chad Owen: Yeah. And he doesn't just say, Hey, do deep work. He's actually got a formula. And in this earlier hypothesis of his and this great definition of deep work that all come together that helps us understand the difference between the deep and the shallow work, how we know that the activities that we're doing are actually making a difference in having an impact in what you're doing.

[00:11:25] So here's cow talking about the formula for work. 

[00:11:29] Cal Newport: Deep work allows you to produce at a massively higher level of productivity. Deep work allows you to produce at a massively higher level of value. Your output in three, it helps you quickly learn complicated, valuable things. It's so 

[00:11:43] Brian Optimize: good. And you have a formula that captures the kind of production rate high quality work produced equals time, spent times intensity of focus.

[00:11:53] And that example of the dissertation is fantastic. Your life, I think is a fantastic example. You mentioned Adam Grant as well in many others in the [00:12:00] book. 

[00:12:01] Mark Pearson Freeland: So what's really interesting about this. Chad is that there's the allocation of the time, but what we're starting to see in these clips is the reference to the intensity and to the focus of this.

[00:12:16] And at the heart of this is half the battle. If not more is making the time. For me deep work. Once I've got that slot is all about don't check your emails, get away from social media and then really go deep. And then later in the show, we've actually got some clips that are going to go deep into some of the practices that our listeners and you and I chat.

[00:12:41] We can all do these practices to go super deep. I think the real point here is once you carve out the time, you've got to go deep and intensively into it. And for me, Chad, this is [00:13:00] something that I. I hadn't done for a couple of weeks. And when I did it yesterday, it felt so good, but it felt like a gigantic effort to make that time when you've made time for deep work, what are the ways you've made it possible or easy?

[00:13:18] Chad, like it's still not even easy for me. And I love this stuff and I can quickly fall into a week of shallow work if I'm not careful. How do you what are your cheats to creating deep work and or what are the challenges you face? Where are you at with that? 

[00:13:35] Chad Owen: It's been any number of things.

[00:13:37] For the longest time in my early career, I worked from home and one of the best decisions I made was to get an office space. Just the mere fact that I was driving into a different part of town and being in a different space, made a big difference for me. And, I had a workspace that was designed and laid out in a way that was [00:14:00] optimized for me to be doing that deep work.

[00:14:03] You had a standing desk. And then I also had a sitting desk for the different modes. And that was one way that I was able to combat that. That's 

[00:14:11] Mark Pearson Freeland: a really good point. Sorry to interrupt, but that's a really good point that you were environment sets you up. So this is, this reminds you. It's very similar. If you want to sleep well, you get blackout curtains.

[00:14:22] You don't have any devices. It's just the same with deep work. I love to get into my study. I don't go in the office. I don't stay at the kitchen table. I go into the study. I closed the door and I often will do it. This is another interesting thing that you've reminded me of. It's not only the space, but I do it really early in the morning, like five o'clock like I get up super early and I'm on a mission to go deep.

[00:14:51] Chad Owen: Yeah. I also try to protect my mornings for that as well, but I think what's happened to me is like the [00:15:00] routine of getting into the shallow work. First thing is crept in because of this kind of felt urgency of things that's going on. If I'm getting up and I'm getting into the office at six, like surely all that stuff can wait until 10 or 11.

[00:15:14] Like it's actually like doing work until that time anyways. So I think it's this false sense of of urgency. And I like going back to this idea of time, spent times quality of focus. Sometimes we can get one of them. But if we don't have both of them, it's not that like exponential increase in just like evolution and leveling up that you get, if you add them or actually multiply them together.

[00:15:41] And so I think for me, it's been that focus. That's been lacking lately. The, you make a 

[00:15:46] Mark Pearson Freeland: really good point that it's about the space. It's about the time. And if those emails are distracting you, when I want to go deep, I actually will skip two practices. I don't [00:16:00] write my journal and I don't re I don't check my email.

[00:16:03] I go straight to the task at hand. And I just know that gets me into it because I work with so many people on different times zones, my inbox, when I wake up can be quite a heavy duty, thanks to, north America and Europe. So if I really want to go deep, I don't even look at it for three hours.

[00:16:24] And if you can break the back of it and do it a couple of times, it actually becomes you're really grateful because, ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know what's in the inbox. So that might be on your deep days maybe to say I'm not going to look in the inbox. 

[00:16:39] Chad Owen: Yeah. An idea that I had was just to put my phone in my backpack.

[00:16:44] And just go through my morning routine and get to the office and don't take the phone out of the backpack until I've emerged having completed the Dior 

[00:16:53] Mark Pearson Freeland: and the reason that works so well for me, Chad, is I know I do my best and clearest thinking in the morning. [00:17:00] I do not do it in the second half of the day.

[00:17:02] So any effort I can do to allocate my brain power to the most important thing, I will do that. And I know that email will just eat away. We're going to talk a little bit about attention residue later, but if I've opened up that inbox, go through my emails for half an hour and then get to work.

[00:17:22] I'm still going to be, I don't know it's going to be, there's an edge that's taken off because it's like allocating Ram to your email. You don't instantly get it back. It takes time. And sometimes if something significant is in your inbox is really hard to not think about. 

[00:17:41] Chad Owen: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is.

[00:17:44] I'm taking so many mental notes now of how I can improve my deep work practice, but I want to get back to the clips here and cow not only, moves forward this idea that he's really fleshed out and in deep work, but he also ties it to other research, other,[00:18:00] brain research, psychology, behavioral economics, like all of these different things.

[00:18:04] And here's a clip where he's tying it to all of the work that some of you may be familiar with around this idea of deliberate practice. 

[00:18:12] Cal Newport: There is a lot of connections between from the world of performance psychology, the notion of deliberate practice and deep work is actually a broader notion than deliver practice, but we can learn a lot about it from the deliberate practice literature.

[00:18:25] 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. And so we know now as the simple things, the road, things are becoming outsource and automated.

[00:18:44] 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. [00:19:00] 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.

[00:19:10] 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 circuits are isolated and run again and again, you get a process called myelination where you actually get a, essentially it's a protein sheets.

[00:19:27] That's that's actually spun around the axons of the neurons and makes us circuit actually fire. That's what it actually means at the neuron level to learn something. So 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 looking at Facebook, you have other 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.

[00:19:53] 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 [00:20:00] 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.

[00:20:08] Mark Pearson Freeland: Just going deep. I really love this context of the, the robots and the artificial intelligence are taking over all those menial tasks. So if you're not doing deep work, you're essentially putting yourself at risk. Aren't you. 

[00:20:23] Chad Owen: Yeah, I love how he, I'm 

[00:20:25] Mark Pearson Freeland: A brain science 

[00:20:27] Chad Owen: novice amateur geek here, but he goes down to the level of explaining how your brain, if you're in this deliberate distraction-free focused environment of deep work that there's chemical changes that are happening in your brain, that.

[00:20:43] Is making you smarter. I don't know. To me, that is just like super 

[00:20:46] Mark Pearson Freeland: cool. Yeah. It's very analogist to when you're working out and your muscles are sore. That's actually, because you've actually torn the muscles and when they grow back stronger. But it aches [00:21:00] after you've been at the gym.

[00:21:01] That's exactly why it's almost like your brain has the same practice. 

[00:21:05] Chad Owen: Yeah. And for me, just to know that there's this hard science behind this theory of deep work and, Cal didn't do this research others have, but this research in these findings, really, again, if you haven't been sold on the practice of deep work by now, we've got many more clips for you and the rest of the show absolutely.

[00:21:25] To 

[00:21:25] Mark Pearson Freeland: convince you. We've got we've got two big buckets of clips remaining. We've got some row we're going to go deeper into some science, and then we're going to get into some really practical tips on how you might employ deep work to gain mastery and to be more productive, but a quick production note, don't forget.

[00:21:44] Everything you hear on our show is available from moonshot. Dot IO. So I really want to encourage you to go and check things out there. And if you're sitting here and you're listening to the show on the Google play [00:22:00] store or on the apple iTunes, so please go in and give us a review and a rating. Every show.

[00:22:08] Now I've been talking about this. We get a couple more, which is fantastic. I think we need to get up to, what do you reckon is a good number? I think 50 reviews. Chad, what do you reckon? 

[00:22:17] Chad Owen: Yeah. Yeah. I've I've actually spoken to a few listeners who responded to the, find your why call to action. So I want to give a big, and I know that they have given us a good review.

[00:22:32] So thank you, Maria. For listening to the show, being a fan and yeah, thanks to everyone that reached out after the find your why episode. To find our Hawaii's 

[00:22:44] Mark Pearson Freeland: together. Exactly. Exactly. So if you get a chance, jump into your pod catcher, software of choice, give us a review, hit those stars, preferably five and give us all of that love [00:23:00] because we really do appreciate it.

[00:23:03] Okay. So now it's time to continue back to the science, to the hardcore science, where should we start shadowing? 

[00:23:09] Chad Owen: Yeah. So again, cow, as the geek that he is loves to bring in all of these other disciplines and brain science to, to back up this idea of deep work. And so in addition to this, what was it?

[00:23:23] myelination. There's this idea that switching between different tasks actually is more costly than just doing one thing. If you believe, oh, multitasking is great, I can get so much done. We've got a clip here for you that may make you rethink that. 

[00:23:39] Cal Newport: It's such a residue is a concept coined by a researcher named Sophie Leroy.

[00:23:44] And it was actually brought to my attention by Adam Grant, who is this phenomenally successful professor at Wharton. He's my age. Whereas I'm an assistant professor though. He's a full professor at Wharton he's is very successful guy and he uses deep work to [00:24:00] produce academic papers at a very high rate, incredibly high rate.

[00:24:02] And when I was asking about how he did it, he said, you have to read about attention residue, Sophie Leroy's research and the concept's actually very intuitive. If you switch your attention to something. And then bring it back to the task at hand. The thing you just looked at briefly leaves a residue on your attention that actually reduces your cognitive capacity by a non-trivial factor.

[00:24:21] So for example, if you glance at your email inbox and you see in there, there's some things that need your attention, but you can't take care of at the moment, right? You see some emails, you'll have to get to, and then you switch your attention back to a deeper task. Let's say, like writing something for the next 15 to 25 minutes, you're going to be doing that task at a much lower rate of cognitive capacity, because there's been a residue left on your attention from that quick distraction.

[00:24:47] And this is one of the key reasons why deep work produces so much more and at such a higher level of value is that it the more you're focusing without distraction, the longer you do it, you clear out all that attention residue. It's like getting all the cobwebs off of the old [00:25:00] gearbox, right?

[00:25:00] You start to hum along at a much higher cognitive.

[00:25:03] Mark Pearson Freeland: Just so sure. That, it's almost like this switching cost between tasks. I honestly, as he's describing that, switching from one thing to the other, when you go into the second thing, you really have to like, spend some time getting your thinking back together and to apply yourself because it's your brain is still computating on the previous task.

[00:25:28] As he describes that, I completely have this feeling that he's talking about, this attention residue, when I'm switching between things, do you experience it through jet? Yeah. I'm 

[00:25:37] Chad Owen: going to bring in one of our favorite visual metaphors here. It just came to me. I'm making connections between episodes here.

[00:25:46] You and I love the flywheel. And so if you think about your productivity and your kind of rate of learning. As a big stone flywheel, it takes a long time because it's [00:26:00] super heavy to get going. So if you start at the email flywheel for 20, 30 minutes, and you just, when you maybe get it going, then you turn around and go to the writing flywheel or the designing flywheel, and then you got to start it up again.

[00:26:13] And finally, when that thing gets spinning, then you go back to the email one, but it stops. So you got to get it going again. So that's how I visualize this idea of the task switching and attention deficit. But I think that's the problem that I'm having right now is that probably just when I should double down and keep going in a particular mode of.

[00:26:33] I feel pulled into a different direction and then, yeah, it's just, my productivity drops off a cliff. When I'm 

[00:26:39] Mark Pearson Freeland: switching and what's great is we've we've also managed for this show. We've found one or two experts online who have actually deconstructed cows work really well. And so this is the first of some clips coming up, which is not from Cal himself, but from other folks that are deconstructing him.

[00:26:57] And this attention residue thing [00:27:00] is so important. If you really want to understand when you're not at your best and how you can be at your best, this next clip is all about diving into this world of attention. So 

[00:27:14] Brian Optimize: Cal talks about the research on attention residue. So almost all of us know at this stage that multitasking a doesn't really exist.

[00:27:23] You can't actually do two things at once. You just rapidly split your attention, go from this, to this, diminishing your performance in both of them. So we all know that multitasking isn't the way to roll, but even those of us who. Go from meeting to meeting. So let's say you got a 15 minute meeting and then you go do this.

[00:27:43] And you're actually focused on that particular thing. You're not in the meeting, checking your email. You're not multitasking in that sense, but the research has shown that when you split your attention like that, and you go from one project to another project, you have something that researchers [00:28:00] call attention residue.

[00:28:02] What you were doing before is still like a residue on your attention. And they've come up with these creative ways to test your performance. And if you're getting your attention split like that, going from thing to thing, you perform less well than someone who goes straight in one thing for a longer period of time, you don't have the attention residue, which diminishes performance.

[00:28:25] It's a really cool idea. And this is the strongest reason to create. It's time blocks. So we talk about time blocks a lot. The one thing guys who wrote the one thing, Jay Papasan and Gary Keller talk about the fact that time blocks are the number one power tool for time management. Cal has a formula.

[00:28:48] He says productivity like high quality work is a function of time invested times intensity of focus. So if you want to create at a really [00:29:00] high quality, in a high volume, you need to combine putting a lot of time into it and intensely focusing. One great way to do that is via time blocks, not, oh, I did this and then I did that.

[00:29:11] And then I did this and I did that and I did this and I did that. That's shallow. You're not going to do a ton of great work when you split up the same amount of time would say this is nine to 12, or even nine to 11 or whatever. Timed. Intense focus over an extended period of time leads to extraordinary results.

[00:29:28] Just as a personal example, one of the things that I've done, I didn't realize I was doing it quite explicitly until I read this work on attention residue. I read the book, I then immediately create a PDF. So there's not a gap now I do some other things sometimes, but in a big sense, I'm going from one thing to the next.

[00:29:46] I'm going from one part of the same book to the next part. Once I have the PDF, then I create a time block where right before this, I recorded the MP3 of the philosopher's note. Then I'm recording this [00:30:00] TV episode, right? And then I immediately go into creating micro classes on my favorite big ideas. So I have a time block.

[00:30:07] And I don't fracture my attention and have attention residue. So it allows me to create a much higher level that I would, if I was splintering my time like this, there's no way I would go from one part of this phase to checking my email or whatever in this is why I would I, we all know this. We've all experienced this where you get into it and then you want to get into another project, but you're thinking about what you just looked at.

[00:30:32] You just looked at your email and it's taken up two or five or 10, or even 20% of your attention. And you can't give your best here. So keep that in mind, create time blocks and do deep work that matters and get a ton more in a shorter period of time, which is another theme that Cal comes back to higher quality work, shorter period of time equals.

[00:30:53] Mark Pearson Freeland: The time block, this is the big one. We're cheating a little bit here because we're getting into how you might do [00:31:00] deep work. But this time block idea, I literally love carving out two or three hour blocks into my agenda when I'm really managing my time. I'm thinking about the following week, blocking out that time and it feels so sacred when you have those time blocks.

[00:31:17] I honestly think that making them sacred and then putting them in your agenda in advance, perhaps on a Monday morning, you look at the week or even better on a Friday. You actually start allocating those time. Blocks this for me. I totally resonate with this. It's all about carving out those time blocks.

[00:31:37] What do you, what about you? 

[00:31:38] Chad Owen: Yeah, I think for me, I have good intentions, but when it comes to the discipline of sticking, so like showing up for that time block being, or actually being prepared for the time block, showing up to the time block and then working through the time block, something usually goes awry or a miss there, and sometimes they get blown up or, maybe [00:32:00] I miss prioritize or again, something urgent comes up.

[00:32:03] But I think for me, what's been Tasha's that self-discipline so I'm curious, like you carved out an entire day yesterday. Like how did you do that? How did you have the will and 

[00:32:13] Mark Pearson Freeland: fortitude 

[00:32:14] Chad Owen: to defend and shield yourself from all of the attention, the needs on your attention that that came here with.

[00:32:22] Mark Pearson Freeland: Oh, yeah. So part of it was that today is so jam packed. So we're sitting here and I'm 10 45 in the morning, and this is, I've already had a board meeting at five in the morning, a conference call with a client at seven in the morning and prepared for the show and this. So to be quite honest, today was so heavy that I used the opportunity to actually move things around and block the whole day.

[00:32:53] I literally arrived in the office at about four o'clock in the afternoon. That's and [00:33:00] then when I got there, all I did was finished the post-production on the course before running off to rugby training. It was a little frantic because. In transit. I had to catch up on all my email in transit. I was making calls I think I did three calls on the way to the office.

[00:33:19] I, it was pretty, it was a pretty intense day to be quite honest, but I feel like even though I can feel that I'm tired today because of that, it was so worth it. Because as I shipped a really significant piece of work that, and I did it on time and that's really the benefit of the deep work.

[00:33:42] Chad Owen: Something that you just brought up there that I don't want to let slip is this idea of a deadline or a goal? Oh, 

[00:33:52] Mark Pearson Freeland: because you're 

[00:33:53] Chad Owen: on time, right? Cause there's time blocking. You're like I said, I'd get it done today. And so I have [00:34:00] to create that time and get it done to be honest with yourself.

[00:34:04] Mark Pearson Freeland: Absolutely. So this time blocking is a big gift from from cow and sets us up for the for the third part of the show where we're just going to get into how we do this thing called deep work. How do we enjoy this mass productivity tool this pathway to mastery it all lays in deep work.

[00:34:25] And I think we've set the context. We've talked about the cost of switching between tasks, how we can just be w we can get to a Friday and go, geez, all I've done is calls and meetings all week. So we've got to, we've got to be really invested in doing it another way. And cow has already set up for us that if you think about.

[00:34:46] Working in a knowledge economy. It's not about doing the shallow stuff because that stuff is either going to Upwork or it's going to the machines. So you gotta be working on high [00:35:00] value, problem solving. And deep work is the ultimate tool for it. So with that said chat, oh, and we're going to get into how we might do deep work.

[00:35:09] And the question is, where are we going to start? Cal 

[00:35:14] Brian Optimize: gives 

[00:35:14] Chad Owen: us, and he gives us a great list of what we can do. And so we've got that list and kind of the enumerated things. So this is just going to be a jam packed sections or a jam packed section with lots of great clips. So here's Cal talking about how to cultivate deep work.

[00:35:33] Cal Newport: Yeah. So I have four big ideas for how to cultivate a deep work habit. 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.

[00:35:55] I think you need both of those things in order to actually cultivate a deep work [00:36:00] habit and to take advantage of deep work hypothesis. So I had four big ideas. I call them rules. The first was work deeply. And this is about the idea that you actually have to how you actually tackle your deep work when you do deep work that matters, right?

[00:36:14] 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 embraced. And this really captures this idea. That deep work is a skill, not a, it's a skill, not a habit. It's like playing the guitar, not flossing your teeth. It's something you can't just choose to do.

[00:36:30] 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 up.

[00:36:51] Really making a statement that I am going to really set up my life in a way that really prioritizes concentration focus as a tier one skill. I argue for most [00:37:00] professionals over the age of say 21. That's probably gonna mean that you quit things like Facebook. And then the final rule is drain the shallows.

[00:37:07] 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 enough that you're left with the enough time to do serious deep work and really make a difference.

[00:37:26] So I think if you can handle do those four things you can really have a deeper, much more fulfilling life. 

[00:37:32] Mark Pearson Freeland: Who? Geez, where do we start breaking that down? Chad, that seems like the essence of doing this thing could deep work. What's the one out of his, for his big four, Chad, which one does grabs you as being the most important or the one that's most relevant to you perhaps, or 

[00:37:56] Chad Owen: I think I'm going to give you the answer.

[00:37:57] You're not expecting [00:38:00] because I actually think the last, I actually think the last one of dealing with the shallows is probably what I should turn my attention to at the moment. I've got some things going on at work where I feel like. Surrounding myself with the right team members, delegating and creating systems to handle the shallow work will free me up in, in a lot of ways to get focused and do the deep work.

[00:38:25] But I got to give a shout out to my buddy cow for saying, get off social media because I'm not on social media. Like here I am having trouble doing deep work. So like just doing that, it doesn't it doesn't get it done. So I've, I got more work to do in some of the other rules that he has.

[00:38:43] That's the, 

[00:38:43] Mark Pearson Freeland: When I heard that clip for the first time, the first person I thought of is Chad Owen. You're amongst friends with Cal Newport. Yeah. Look I really like what he's setting up for us here which is, Get intentional clear the decks [00:39:00] I, something that I really want to pull out here is that he says it, it is a skill and not a habit.

[00:39:06] And if we just unpack that for a second, what he's really saying is this is like being a great athlete. You don't just have to train on the occasion. You have to intentionally train and get better at it. You have to search for the mastery of doing deep work. It's not like just brushing your teeth and as long as you've just showed up, you're good.

[00:39:29] You've got to do more than just showing up. You've got to be at your best when you do it. Because it really is such a battle. There you are, you said I don't even use social media and I'm still struggling getting this deep thing happening. Yeah. That, that is all the proof we need that this is a skill and not just, yeah.

[00:39:47] Chad Owen: And here, we're going to get into some more interesting examples, 

[00:39:51] Mark Pearson Freeland: both 

[00:39:52] Chad Owen: From cow and the book, and as well as from Mark Winters who we've been hearing from, but there's this, so you're [00:40:00] saying, it's not just a habit. It's really the focused, the intense focus with the time spent.

[00:40:07] And again, it's not just a recurring calendar time block, if you don't show up prepared with a goal in mind and that intense focus, not much is going to be accomplished. So we've got a clip here jumping into some more practical ways to implement deep work around this concept of routines of.

[00:40:27] Brian Optimize: Routines, our third big idea. Cal makes the point. So again, there's the why you should think about this, then there's the how to go about doing it. He has four rules. We're going to talk about the first rule of working deeply. You need to create routines. He can't have the intention of yeah. Yeah, I get it.

[00:40:44] I want to do less shallow, more and more deep work. You need to actually structure your life with routines and rituals to make that more likely to occur. And he talks about the fact that all great creators had routines. They didn't do it [00:41:00] haphazardly. They didn't just hope that inspiration would strike.

[00:41:03] They created the routines, such that it consistently showed up and they did deep work. He has four different ways that we can do this. That are awesome. See if I can remember them one, the monastery approach to the bi-modal approach. I'll tell you in detail about. Three, the rhythmic approach and for the journalistic approach.

[00:41:24] So if we go through those four, the monastery approach to creating routines is the most extreme. It's what I love to do a monastery, think of a monk who just detaches themselves from the matrix. They don't even check email. They're not involved online much, or at all. And they just go to work.

[00:41:42] I call it a hermit mode, right? You can't get in touch with me. I turn on my phone once a week only because my wife wants me to write for a number of hitting it out, just my son and I take adventures. That's monk mode, hermit mode. Now a lot of people can't do that. It's extraordinarily powerful if you can do it.

[00:41:57] But he realizes, Hey, you got to find your own style. Not [00:42:00] everyone's going to do that. The second mode is called bi-modal, which basically takes some of the benefit of the monk mode, but you also live a normal life. He uses coral young as an example, coral young. Was the therapist and Zurich, but he also had a retreat house that he would go to where he was a monk, no distractions at all, he would ride, but then he'd go back and he had this bi-modal approach to doing deep work.

[00:42:25] That's the second possible alternative, right? The third one is what Cal calls rhythmic in rhythmic. It's like Jerry, Seinfeld's write a joke every day. If you've heard of that, don't break the chain, right? Where Jerry Seinfeld gave the advice reportedly that the way to become a good comedian is to write a joke every day, create a rhythm, create a streak, and you get your calendar and you X off a day and another day, and you don't want to break the streak.

[00:42:52] You have a rhythm of creativity. That's one way to do deep work. You create a rhythm and might be at different times during the day, but you don't break your [00:43:00] street. That's the third, the fourth way to do. Is journalistic. Now the journalistic idea is basically like a journalist who needs to write on deadline.

[00:43:10] They've got a story that broke. They got to deliver quickly. They got to know how to go into deep work like that. They don't do it on a hermit basis and they don't do the the rhythmic per se. They just do it on demand. This is what Cal says is his preferred or main dominant way to do his deep work.

[00:43:27] He schedules his days in opportunistically when he has time, he creates chunks and he does great work consistently, and it keeps track of it, which he talks about in the book. Those are our four ways, super quick overview. Obviously check out the book for more, but we've got to find our rhythm, what our personal style is, and then commit to creating those 

[00:43:44] Mark Pearson Freeland: rituals.

[00:43:46] Right here, ladies and gentlemen, we are getting to the very Atomics level of deep work and these four different types of deep work [00:44:00] monastic bi-modal arrhythmic and journalistic. It is crucial that you work out, which one works for you and that you set yourself up for success to do it. Chad, are you the monastic put yourself on the top of the mountain, are you bi-modal every semester, are you raise, make, write a joke every day or you more the journalistic on demand?

[00:44:25] Which of those types, those modes of deep work, speak most to you? I 

[00:44:30] Chad Owen: think I would like to be monastic, but bi-modal 

[00:44:35] Mark Pearson Freeland: is probably going to be 

[00:44:37] Chad Owen: practically how I get it done. And, as I've been talking on the show, I think I need to do a better job of preparing, scheduling and protecting those times.

[00:44:48] Yeah. I'm almost thinking like an even further change of pace or location would do me well, cause I still do work from home. Sometimes they also work in the office. I'm wondering if [00:45:00] there might be a third place where I could do some deep work, leave the, maybe even leave the phone behind, keep wifi off of my computer or just take a notebook.

[00:45:09] I think those maybe some techniques to help me implement the bi-modal now. 

[00:45:15] Mark Pearson Freeland: What's really interesting is talking about this more monastic way of working in, changing up the location and is that there's a couple of guys that write books on planes because they really liked the force. They really liked the force seclusion.

[00:45:37] So it's called plain writing if you want to Google this, but there's actually people that I'm trying to remember, but there, there is a guy that. Has written several books on a plane because he's basically no choice, but to be in this solitary situation. And I [00:46:00] know the famous writer, Douglas Copeland was also renowned for writing a lot of his books on his plane trips around the world.

[00:46:09] Again, just because it created the conditions for that monastic way of working. Isn't that cool? Yeah. 

[00:46:15] Chad Owen: I love that idea. Although I think with the modern entertainment that's on planes now, I'm just, I'm too distracted. Visually from someone watching one movie, someone is, there's 30 movies going on all at the same time within your field 

[00:46:31] Mark Pearson Freeland: of view.

[00:46:31] So I'm not sure I can actually 

[00:46:33] Chad Owen: do that. I'd have to. Into the bathroom or something on the plane to but then that doesn't sound like, yeah. 

[00:46:41] Mark Pearson Freeland: But it's really powerful just to bring everyone back here. Are you monastic? Bi-modal rhythmic or journalistic in how you don't do deep work and if you don't know, that's cool.

[00:46:51] Try one of each, try and get yourself away somewhere unusual just for a day. Even take a whole day off [00:47:00] or bi-modal set yourself a weekly, monthly, quarterly, deep work routine, or do the classic Seinfeld just write for 10 minutes a day. I know. Certainly I write my journal almost every day now for several years.

[00:47:17] And it is a big part of how I like to start my day. The journalistic one, I think is a really acquired taste because it's really about. No, pre-warning boom. You have to dive into it. If that works for you. That's all good. But right here, I think if you can find. The moment and the style of deep work, this will be so powerful that everything else that we're talking about will be much easier, like carving out the time and so forth.

[00:47:50] If you've experienced that state of flow where you've found the right solid, deep work for you, I think a lot of the other challenges get [00:48:00] become right. They become easier. Yeah. 

[00:48:02] Chad Owen: And I, I think. Preferred mode, this journalistic mode, she thrives under those tight deadlines. And I think she can get more done in a four hour stretch of time under those conditions then many people get done in a week.

[00:48:16] Yeah, so it's interesting how there's four different routines in when she can set up to help enable the deep work, but we've got some more ways to learn from Cal and how we can implement deep work in our lives. And here's another clip where he's talking about this idea of being sure or how the outputs of deep work is really high value work.

[00:48:40] Cal Newport: The second is deep work as necessary to produce things of high value. So that the output you produce when you're in a state of deep work is really at your max function. It's at the max of what your current skills and training allows you to do. Whereas work gets done in a state of distraction. With more fragmented attention is going to be at a fraction of that quality [00:49:00] level.

[00:49:00] We see this all the time. For example, if you want to isolate it, but if you look at the habits of say literary novelist, I think they're a good case study here, because if you're a literary novelist the only thing that matters is actually the quality of what you produce, right? This is very much not a quantity type job.

[00:49:18] It doesn't matter that you wrote a hundred thousand words. It doesn't matter that you wrote a book. If it's not really good as literary novelist your career is sung. So they care a lot about. Not surprisingly, if you look at the work habits of literary novelist, that all of their energy goes into protecting themselves from distraction.

[00:49:35] Being able to concentrate more intensely it's among novelist of the Vanguard of the park. It's where you see things like very elaborate isolated writing sheds and huge rituals. So deep work helps you produce at a very high level of quality. 

[00:49:50] Mark Pearson Freeland: That is such a good analogy is such a good case study in people that live and die by their deep work.

[00:49:58] Our authors, [00:50:00] there it is. It's in black and white for everybody to read into deconstruct into review. So it's imperative that it's of the highest quality and it's this classic archetype of the lone Wolf, a rider who inhabits, the peaks of toll mountains in a cabin, locked away. That analogy is perfect.

[00:50:22] If we could all be a bit more like those writers, those authors, where we dedicate that sort of time and intention to producing 

[00:50:32] Chad Owen: and thinking. Yeah, it is very telling. I would love to get more high quality work done. So again, this is just reinforcing the fact to me, how I need to begin to reapply.

[00:50:43] These routines and practices, he had mentioned college young, and he's talking about writers here. I almost said my favorite author and I wasn't sure, but I do actually think he's my favorite author. Stephen King in his book on writing, describes his routine. He writes in Maine and he does have a writing shed,[00:51:00] up until very recently, you typed everything out on a typewriter.

[00:51:03] Surrounded himself with other books and it was just a writing room for him. So he could lose himself there for days at times, even though he's, like a hundred yards from his main residence up there. But I'm gonna, yeah. I would love to have a writing shack, there's a lot of things that need to happen between now and then, but yeah, I think maybe when they need to do is figure out how to find or create my own 

[00:51:26] Mark Pearson Freeland: writing shack.

[00:51:27] That's great. The thoughts do not end there. I'm producing at a higher level, so let's have a listen to this next clip, which gets really into the art of extreme productivity. 

[00:51:40] Cal Newport: And the third reason is the deep work helps you produce at a very high level of productivity. Your rate of output per time invested is significantly high.

[00:51:50] When you work in a state of deep work as compared to working with more fragmented attention. One story I tell in the book is of a PhD candidate. They he's also named Brian, [00:52:00] but it's not you, but it's another Brian C we'll call him. And he was actually, he had to take a job at the university while he was writing his dissertation.

[00:52:08] He needed some funding. He had to pay the bills and his first year trying to write his dissertation while also having this job and just trying to find time and do it when he could, he got one chapter done in the whole year and he said, this is not working. So he put into place. Some deep work rituals inspired in part about my writing on deep work.

[00:52:26] So we had a way to really think about it clearly where he took this hour and a half every morning, 5:00 AM, five to 6:30 AM and had for deep, completely undistracted concentration. And he was suddenly producing one chapter every four to five weeks as compared to one thesis chapter per year, before.

[00:52:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: Wow. That's, 

[00:52:43] Chad Owen: That's a 10 

[00:52:44] Mark Pearson Freeland: X increase. Yeah. Yeah. It's a really stark case study in the before and after of deep work. And I think we would probably all find when we compared shallow versus deep work, that those numbers match up pretty closely. And again, [00:53:00] I think what's interesting is there's a theme that he didn't touch it on his book, but you and I have discovered, which is it's about the space and the environment and setting yourself up for doing everything that cowl says, but how your environment plays such a big part in that I find that it's almost a path to deep work is becoming so much clearer now because you set the environment and the intention blocks the time be uninterrupted.

[00:53:34] And go intensely deep for 2, 3, 4 hours. Yeah. 

[00:53:39] Chad Owen: Yeah. I still can't get over like the 10 X improvement. He went from one chapter in a year to a chap, one to two chapters every four to five weeks. I think. I think another thing is, as I think about it in this next clip touches on it, it sounds like you really need, not just like an important or high value thing, but it really has to matter [00:54:00] to you.

[00:54:00] You have to, I would say you have to bring some passion to it and I'm easily distractable and I want to try and do many different things. And so I think part of maybe what I could do is not. And be focused when I'm working, but focus and choose one thing that I bring into my, containers for deep work.

[00:54:21] And then maybe that's how I can unlock some of the potential that's in, in the deep work. But here we've got a clip talking specifically about being passionate about what you're applying yourself to in deep work. 

[00:54:35] Brian Optimize: Fourth, big idea is an awesome one. It's one thing to say, Hey, quit distracting yourself in shallow Ville, right?

[00:54:43] That's not that inspiring though. That's a avoidance behavior. Quit doing that. What you really want to do is discover what you're just fired up about what is the wildly awesome opportunity in your life? What goal could you achieve in the next six to 12 months? That's [00:55:00] challenging yet feasible that you're really fired up about it will have a huge positive impact in your life.

[00:55:06] What is it? Identify that get wildly excited about it. This is awesome. Then you commit to that. You see what you're going to need to do to get there. And then you crowd out with your enthusiasm, all the distractions. You're so excited about your goal and so motivated that you move all these nos out.

[00:55:24] That's a much more effective strategy than saying, oh, I'm going to eliminate all these distractions. Let it be crowded out by your passion for doing something great. 

[00:55:34] Mark Pearson Freeland: Wow. This touches a lot upon purpose and fulfillment that cynic covered, but of course you can only really go deep on stuff that matters to you, stuff that is part of your vision for who you want to be, because that drives your sense of fulfillment and your commitment.

[00:55:52] But part of this is also I think, touching on. This intense focus that comes up just [00:56:00] consuming yourself in the moment in the work and making sure it's something that matters to you. I think that's really good advice for making deep work happen. Don't you Chad? 

[00:56:10] Chad Owen: Yeah. Yeah. As I was teeing up the clip, it was coming together in my mind of, huh?

[00:56:15] Maybe it is that big, hairy, audacious goal to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins. That's missing for me to apply myself towards, I can think of many in my head right now. I just need to 

[00:56:27] Mark Pearson Freeland: choose one. It does, it can do. And often, picking that one can be tough in itself.

[00:56:36] And I think as we all try and do more deep work, I would just pick up something and go with it, try it, 

[00:56:42] Chad Owen: yeah. Yeah. Actually I'm the the call to action in the find your way episodes seem to work. So I'm going to do it again here. I'm curious for you listeners out there, what, the one thing that you're going to put into your routines for deep work is I'm going to put you on the spot, Mike.[00:57:00] 

[00:57:01] What yours is. I have a feeling yours and mine might be a bit similar, but I'm curious, what's that one, what's that one thing that you're going to put in to your deep work 

[00:57:10] Mark Pearson Freeland: and are you talking about what projects, what effort or the goal? 

[00:57:16] Chad Owen: Yeah. Yeah. The six to 12 month thing where you're like, yeah, that's awesome.

[00:57:21] If we can if I could do that 

[00:57:23] Mark Pearson Freeland: well, certainly to build off the work that I did yesterday, that we've mentioned on the show making this course, I feel like if I could dedicate even three hours a week, every week of just pure deep work on this course, Cumulatively over time, this would be a ton of syllabus work that would be created.

[00:57:51] So what I'm, what I've really got to do is invest that three hours into writing these innovation courses. I deeply enjoy [00:58:00] the work. I liked the challenge of it. It makes my, there's this saying, Chad, that if you want to learn something, you should teach it. Yep. 

[00:58:08] Chad Owen: Absolutely. So you're doing it.

[00:58:09] It's like dual payoff there. 

[00:58:13] Mark Pearson Freeland: That's all right. That's all right. Now what about you? What comes to mind chat? You don't have to have all the answers, but is there some things that are floating around that? You're I know, 

[00:58:24] Chad Owen: I had a really great conversation with someone that I've worked with in the past.

[00:58:30] W we're talking about the medium of podcasts and podcasting audio, narratives and, hearing people's voices in your head. There's something really fascinating to me about this medium. I think it's directly applicable in my personal life and also at work. So I think if I could become, a mini master.

[00:58:53] Of the medium and having experimented in lots of different ways, shapes and forms, both for work and in [00:59:00] my personal life I think that's something that I'd really like to turn my attention to. I think it's probably pretty easy to say oh, like I want to write a book or I want to I was trying to come up with something that wasn't maybe.

[00:59:12] As so quick and easy, I feel like I could do well. If I can carve out the time and do the deep work. 

[00:59:20] Mark Pearson Freeland: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let's hold each other accountable on the next show. When we do our next Cal Newport book, which will be digital minimalism, which is fascinating book to let's hold ourselves accountable.

[00:59:33] Let's make sure we've done that first session of deep work before we record the next show. You know how busy I am 

[00:59:39] Chad Owen: right now, I'm making this real hard 

[00:59:42] Mark Pearson Freeland: on me. Oh my gosh, the excuses they've begun already. Listen, if we want to get these goals done and we want to be at our best when we're on, we also need to know how to turn off and funnily enough, turning your brain on for deep work [01:00:00] also includes the ability to turn it off.

[01:00:03] And the last clip for this show is once again, this expert breakdown done on cow's book and this thought is really tasty. So let's get into the idea of shut down is complete. 

[01:00:20] Brian Optimize: The big idea is shut down, complete count talks about the fact that. We need to create containers for our creativity.

[01:00:32] And he's amazing. He doesn't work past five o'clock or five 30 or something like that. And he doesn't work on weekends. You have somehow he creates way more than a lot of his peers. He's a young untenured professor. That's a pressure filled occupation. And he references juxtapose another professor who complains about how, oh, you need to work so hard.

[01:00:53] And I'm just, my whole life has taken up by all these shallow things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Cal says, look, when you get serious [01:01:00] about stuff like this, and you commit to being super productive efficiently, you need to do things like in one of the ways to do that is to create limits where you're just done.

[01:01:10] And he has a great idea of shut down, complete end your day. So for him, it's at five or five 30, I do something similar. I'll finish his story and I'll share mine. He goes through his. Routine at the end of the day, he checks his email one last time and he makes sure nothing urgent is sitting in there.

[01:01:28] He addresses anything urgent. And then he looks at what he wanted to get done today, but he didn't what tomorrow is going to look like and what he can push into tomorrow. And he's complete shuts down his computer and he says to himself, shut down, complete. Very, ritualistically done not going to think about it anymore until tomorrow morning going to go enjoy his family.

[01:01:48] And he's going to give himself the rest that he needs in order to perform at a high level. So this is what we talked about, making waves oscillate on off. And one of the best ways to do that [01:02:00] is to end your day at a certain time. I mentioned that earlier in the day, When I was reading this book, I interviewed Steven Kotler and Dan coil.

[01:02:09] They both referenced this exact idea. Steven Kotler said being in flow. His thing is about the rise of Superman and the science of flow, optimal human experience. He says that's expensive. It's hard work to perform at a high level to give a ton of energy to your craft. And the only way you can do that sustainably is to honor the rest phase.

[01:02:31] You got to know how to shut down. Jim Laura said, we need to train recoveries as important as anything else shut down. Complete is a way to train recovery. So you're consistent. Dan coil said the same thing. He said that when he was a journalist, he wrote a story on the world's fastest men. And he laughed because he said these guys.

[01:02:51] When they weren't racing and being the fastest men in the world, they were sleeping. They were napping all the time. They were professional nappers. It's the same thing. If you go [01:03:00] that hard, you need to recover. And that applies physically and mentally. If you go hard mentally and you're creating time blocks of deep work, and you can't do that more than really three to four hours a day, if you're really doing it, you need to recover.

[01:03:14] Shut down complete for me, it's digital sunset. The sun goes down, check in on the day, see what I did, but I'm excited about and proud of what I might not have gotten to what's on the list for tomorrow. 

[01:03:24] Mark Pearson Freeland: And then boom, turn it off. Turn it off. It's done. How good is that shadow? And, yeah, 

[01:03:32] Chad Owen: I it's funny. Cause I was trying to see if I have a similar ritual.

[01:03:37] I do not say shutdown complete, although maybe I, I should. I think I've, I think I do this well. I come into the office. I do on my work and right before I leave, I clear my desk. I don't ever leave anything out on my desk and I turn my monitor off. I don't know. I guess the settings on it are such that it doesn't go to sleep automatically, [01:04:00] but as I was thinking, like that's my shutdown ritual is once that monitor goes off, pick up my backpack and grab the dog and head out the door.

[01:04:10] And then I'm done for my work for the day. I'm curious if you have a 

[01:04:14] Mark Pearson Freeland: similar ritual. Only in as much that I don't take my iPhone into the bedroom. I only read on my Kindle. I do know Netflix in bed. I am engineering my body to completely turn off when I sleep. It's a bit hard for me because of time zones with with Europe to really flex this switch in the evenings.

[01:04:38] Similar in the mornings because of the U S but I'll tell you one area that I'm very aware of. And this Sunday is a great example. I've been really busy the past two weeks and my. I've got plans this evening. I have sport and rugby for the entire day [01:05:00] tomorrow on Saturday. And so I have a very clear thing that Sunday I'm going to be like a hermit.

[01:05:08] Nothing is happening, no work, no productivity. I am completely turning into a slob. I'm going to be watching Netflix. I'm going to be having fun with my family, having good food and chilling out. And there's going to be nothing that it looks anything like a productive for the day. No email, no calls, nothing.

[01:05:30] I'm just going to detox. And that is crucial for me to be good. Next week, my Sunday needs to be a total downs. 

[01:05:38] Chad Owen: I'm actually hoping for some of that tomorrow afternoon, my sisters invited me over to hang out with my nephew. So I've got to turn that monitor off by about three o'clock. In order for me to do that by, I love the verbalization of it.

[01:05:54] I don't know if there's something interesting about that. I'm curious if maybe that's something that I could do. [01:06:00] Yeah. 

[01:06:00] Mark Pearson Freeland: It's almost like a positive affirmation saying, there's that whole science behind saying positive affirmations out loud to reinforce them. 

[01:06:09] Chad Owen: Yeah. Yeah. And like the shutdown complete, it's also almost like a sigh ah, I got it done.

[01:06:16] It's like a, yeah. It's like a small celebration. I like that idea. I'm going to experiment with that. I just hope my coworkers here in, we work. Don't think I'm some kind of strange robot Android. 

[01:06:30] Mark Pearson Freeland: I'm sure they see you as a normal two legged, a human being, but what a nice thought for us to wrap up this first of our county Newport series, this idea of shut down complete it's a little bit unexpected for such an intense, deep work episode, but I find that what we've really done when we look at this whole narrative of how we.

[01:06:54] Spend this high productive high mastery time is it's really about [01:07:00] quality, not quantity. And that's my big takeout from revisiting this book. How about you, Chad? We've gone through a dozen or so clips we've really refreshed ourselves. Do you feel a little bit closer to introducing deep work back into your routine?

[01:07:16] Yeah, 

[01:07:16] Chad Owen: there's so much I'm taking away, find that, that big, hairy, audacious goal that you're really passionate about. Create those time blocks, defend them like your life depends on it. Create more of those time blocks more often, and just know that doing that, how high value work is going to have so many payoffs and literally change the way your brain.

[01:07:38] Functions working that way. It's all just so cool. And reaffirming to me. I can't wait to start putting it back into 

[01:07:46] Mark Pearson Freeland: practice. Nice. Nice. As we said earlier, this is only the first of four shows where we're going super deep on Cal Newport. You've heard it from me first. I think he's the next Simon Sinek, [01:08:00] super smart, practical Sage, like advice for succeeding in this digital age of interruption and too many notifications, too many interruptions, if you will.

[01:08:12] So there you have it. That was deep work. Now the next three parts of this series, we're going to cover digital minimalism. So good. They can't ignore you. And the body of work cow has done around learning and being a great student, what a feast of ideas and what a nice compliment to that lofty purpose driven world that we're in with Simon Sinek.

[01:08:37] Now we're getting almost into the very practical toolkit, if you will, of making it a reality every single day. Yeah. 

[01:08:46] Chad Owen: Yeah. I'm really excited to go. I've read all of cow's other books as well. And I can't wait to go back and re revisit them. I feel like incorporating the ideas from all of these. Kind of building on the [01:09:00] foundation of what you and I uncovered with Simon.

[01:09:03] Like we're building up these super powers. I feel , and 

[01:09:07] Mark Pearson Freeland: What's quite interesting is while they're very different type of storytellers, one thing that draws Simon and cow together is just how clear they are in their thoughts. Their ideas are so well thought out. I found cow he's much more pragmatic and he's tone, but he's equally comfortable with his subject.

[01:09:31] And I don't think, 

[01:09:32] Chad Owen: yeah. While Simon brings maybe more engaging stories or narratives into his work, I think cow brings some irrefutable science and in evidence for it's. Yeah. It's interesting. How. There, they're very convicted in their ideas, but they back them up in different ways.

[01:09:55] Yeah it's been very interesting to compare and contrast the 

[01:09:58] Mark Pearson Freeland: two. Absolutely.[01:10:00] There you have it, Chad, thank you for being part of this first of four deep dives into the world of county Newport deep work seemed like it was the perfect thing. It was like just what you needed to hear about right Joe.

[01:10:13] Chad Owen: Yeah, exactly. I've got a few plane rides ahead of me. Maybe I can turn those into deep work sessions because you can write a book or two. 

[01:10:21] Mark Pearson Freeland: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. But thank you to you, to our listeners. It's been wonderful to jump into a brand new author, to discover a whole new world. Very practical.

[01:10:32] I feel like there's 1,000,001 tips that came out of this show. I can't wait to dive into digital minimalism by Cal Newport. Thanks again to everybody. It's been a wonderful journey and that's a wrap of the moonshots podcast.