ABOUT THE BOOK

You can pick up Cal’s ‘Deep Work’.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way.

In Deep Work, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

TRANSCRIPT

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mike parsons 0:10

Hello and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's Episode 58. I'm your co host, Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man from Brooklyn or better yet, the new uncle from Brooklyn Hello certo.

Chad Owen 0:24

And hey, Mikey, I wanna give a shout out to my six day old nephew now as you're listening to this and to the future, welcome to the to the past.

mike parsons 0:37

My gosh, what a week Chad. I hope everyone in the family is well and I am hoping that they're getting some deep rest.

Chad Owen 0:47

Yes, yes, I see what you did there, Mike. We are moving into yet another series where we're focused on extracting as much information as we can from I think yours is my favourite source of learning the, you know, these antiques known as books. We've got a fantastic author that we're turning our attention to, and that's Cal Newport.

mike parsons 1:12

Yeah, he is. He's a really cool guy. The reason I like Cal so much is that actually if you look formally at him, he's like an engineering dude. He's a,

he's a geek, and he writes

algorithms as a professor at Georgetown. And the funny thing is that in an effort to master his work, he's developed all these practices and then he ended up writing these books, which are, you know, many of which are New York Times bestsellers, cow, I'm gonna go this far, Chad, I think the reason our audience should be so interested in Cal Newport, he's almost an emerging he's almost Simon Sinek like and we've just got through a massive series on him. I would say he covers very different topics. But he's sort of caught the Zeitgeist on better ways to work and to live. When you say check.

Chad Owen 2:10

Yeah, I love the practicality of what he's written. And it comes from his direct experience, both as a student, a PhD student going up and defending his dissertation. And then now, as you mentioned, as a as a professor, and yeah, I think there's this interesting intersection between like, the hardcore engineering and his very long career as an academic up to this point. And it's, while it contrasts with Simon synnex kind of quite a lofty, you know, aspirational things for us to live by and do. Cow gives us some really simple and practical things that we can apply today. And that's why I'm actually excited to pick up with cow. I read the book that we're going to be talking about today. Deep work about A year and a half ago. And I've kind of let the practices fall by the side. So I'm really excited to dive back in with you and the listeners to to reincorporate all the amazing stuff that's that's in, in the pages of deep work.

mike parsons 3:13

Oh, this is perfect Chad because you're literally in need of a deep work. Top up a boost. I am. I am. Let's try and give you that because I have to say that deep work as a concept has probably only been on my radar, probably for the last five or 10 years, but it's particularly the last five to seven. And I love the opportunity to do deep work. Deep work for me just equals mastery. And mastery is the currency of the 21st century of the information age. And I think this is one of the most important things If you want to just not only be good at something, but you, you deeply want to be great at something, then I believe that you need to deploy deep work as a practice in order to get there. And we've got the guy who wrote the book, Chad, so I can't undersell. I can't sorry. I can't oversell the importance of this in how I've experienced mastering different things and continue to, to search for that mastery. I mean, just yesterday, Chad, I locked myself in my study for a day, I wrote, recorded, produced and published an entire innovation course. And I was just so single minded. Everything was turned off emails when getting into everything was off, and it was just deep, and I love it. And I just wish I could do more than I get the chance to, but when I do, it's some of the most satisfying work of my week. How is it for you Deep work you, you you confess, Chad, that you've maybe strayed from the path?

Chad Owen 5:06

Well, I haven't done the hard work of making the time for deep work. I've, I've been very distracted by the urgent work that needs to be done. And, and yeah, I think maybe I lost sight in how important it is to make the time for that deep work. Like the fact that you went from nothing to publish the course in a day. I think, if that's not enough to convince us that we need to incorporate this. I don't know what is but you, you might be wondering what exactly deep work is Mike and I have kind of been talking about the concept in the abstract, but let's go straight to cow and learn what exactly he defines as deep work.

Unknown Speaker 5:52

Tell us what deep work is. And then we'll drill on from there.

Cal Newport 5:56

Yeah, so I defined deep work to be when you're fully Focusing without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.

Unknown Speaker 6:04

Got it in the book is basically which kind of leads us to the deep work hypothesis, right? Which you established in the book and then spend the first half, kind of proving it. And then the second half showing us how to apply it. Can you tell us what the deep work hypothesis is?

Cal Newport 6:19

Yeah, this is the the foundation on which the whole book is written in the foundation on which actually, I live my life. 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 is becoming more rare. So people more and more are losing their ability to actually do deep work. So that is a classic economic scarcity scenario, something is becoming more valuable else becoming more rare. And the conclusion of that is, if you're one of the few to cultivate a deep work ability, you're going to thrive

mike parsons 6:59

it Couldn't agree more. I mean there we got it from Cal Newport himself. This really is a pathway to thriving in any sort of passion, vocation business we're what we're however you might choose to apply it 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 and to me deep work is the Alec cites the medicine to all what you might call the shallow work that we get so preoccupied with

Chad Owen 7:47

Yeah, I I love his economic argument as well where he's saying hey, just the fact of the marketplace now in in the in the job in skill and abilities. Market is such that those of us that can cultivate this deep workability will be more more productive and therefore also more valuable. So, you know, he's saying that there's a financial incentive, and like a career advancement incentive for us to invest in this, as well. But, you know, you brought up the idea of shallow work, you know, it's not easy to do this deep work, because there's all these competing forces. And so, here's how cow conceives of the difference between what what deep work is versus what shallow work is.

Unknown Speaker 8:36

Tell us a difference and tell us where most of us spend our time.

Cal Newport 8:39

Yeah, and it's important because people are not. They're not lazy, right? So it's not the case that most people just aren't working much. Yeah, at the same time, they're they're doing less and less deep work and getting worse at work. So what are they doing instead? So this is where we have this notion of what I call shallow work, which are tasks that do not require distraction free focus, they tend to be logistical in nature, 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. So the reason why we're busier than we've ever been before, yet doing less and less deep work ever before is that we're spending more and more of our waking hours dedicated to the shallow work efforts.

mike parsons 9:40

Yeah, this just triggers this visual in my head of all the people that you see just being busy, but not really productive. And I think one of the greatest time suckers or shallow practices is emails and meetings. That don't really need to happen. And you know, how many people do you see or experience or even for yourself that matter? Find that you just going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And at the end of the day that's full of meetings for me, I literally feel like I have achieved nothing.

Chad Owen 10:19

Yeah, it's so easy for people to just jump on to our calendars and send us endless invites and fill our inboxes. And as you say, kind of, you know, deal with all these urgent requests for our time. When it's, it's actually, you know, the art of setting aside and blocking out that time. That is really the only way for us to combat that.

mike parsons 10:42

Yeah. And I think 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 bright doesn't it because productivity doesn't come from just bouncing from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. And I think if we can all sort of 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, you know, there is this deep need not just to fill the day with this shallow work. And I think what cow is really encouraging, encouraging us to do is to see all the value that is in doing the deep work, particularly because it's kind of hard to do so not many people are doing it. And I think that this is one of the biggest meta observations of how people work these days. They're all very busy. They're all getting interrupted a lot. But how they Really producing. And I think cow is laying the context here for what comes later, which is, you know, how we might think about going about deep work.

Chad Owen 12:11

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 kind of come together that helps us to understand the difference between the deep in the shallow work, how we know that the activities that we're doing are actually, you know, making a difference and having an impact in what you're doing. So here's cow talking about the formula

Cal Newport 12:36

for deep work. 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.

Unknown Speaker 12:50

So good and you have a formula that captures the kind of production rate high quality work produced equals time spent times and 10 To focus.

Unknown Speaker 13:02

And that example of the dissertation is fantastic. Your life I think is a fantastic example, you mentioned Adam Grant as well, and many others in the book.

mike parsons 13:10

So what's really interesting about this, Chad is that there's the allocation of the time. But what we're starting to seeing these clips, is the reference to the intensity, and to the focus of this. And at the heart of this is like, the half the battle, if not more, is making the time. But then, for me, deep work. Once I've got that slot, it's 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 are our listeners, and you and I chat, 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 something that 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 when you've made time for deep work, what are the ways you've made it possible or easy Chad? Like, it's still not even easy for me and I love this stuff. And I can quickly fall into like a week of shallow work if I'm not careful. How do you how do you kind of what are your cheats to creating deep work and or what are the challenges you face and where are you at with that?

Chad Owen 14:48

It's been any number of things. 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 you know, I had a workspace that was designed and laid out in a way that was kind of optimised for me to be doing that deep work, 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. But that's a really good point. Sorry to interrupt, but that's a really good point, your environment sets you up.

mike parsons 15:32

So this is this reminds you it's very similar. If you want to sleep well, you get blackout curtains, 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 do the kitchen table. I go into the study, I close the door, and I often will do it. This is another interesting thing that you've reminded me. 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, I'm on a mission to go deep. Mm hmm.

Chad Owen 16:07

Yeah, I also try to protect my mornings for that as well. But I think what's happened to me is like, the routine of getting into the shallow work first thing has kind of crept in, because of this kind of felt urgency of things that's going on. But like, if I'm getting up and I'm getting into the office at six, like surely all that stuff can wait till 10 or 11. Like it's actually like doing work until that time anyways. So I think it's kind of this false sense of urgency and, like going back to this idea of time spent times quality of focus, sometimes we can get one of them right. But if we don't have both of them, it's not that like exponential increase in just like evolution and levelling up that you get if you add them or actually multiply them together, and so I think for me, it's been that focus that's been lacking lately,

mike parsons 17:04

the you make a really good point that it's, it's, 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 to practices. I don't write my journal, and I don't write, I don't check my email, I go straight to the task at hand. And I just know that that gets me into it. Because because I work with so many people on different time zones. my inbox when I wake up can be quite heavy duty, thanks to you know, North America and Europe. So if I really want to go deep, I don't even look at it for like three hours. And if you can break the back of it and do it a couple of times, it actually becomes like you're really grateful because, you know, ignorance is bliss. I don't want to know what's in the inbox. So that might be on your D days. Maybe So I'm not gonna look in the inbox.

Chad Owen 18:02

Yeah, an idea that I had was just to put my phone in my backpack, 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. Yeah, having completed the

mike parsons 18:16

work. And the reason that works so well for me, Chad is I know, I do my best and clearest thinking in the morning. I do not do it in the second half of the day. So any effort I can do to allocate my brainpower to the most important thing, I will do that and I know that email will just eat away, you know, 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. I'm still gonna be, I don't know, it's gonna 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 it's just something significant is in your inbox is really hard to not think about. Yeah,

Chad Owen 19:06

yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. I mean, 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, you know, moves forward this idea that he's really fleshed out in deep work, but he also ties it to other research other, you know, brain research, psychology, behavioural economics, like all of these different things. And here's a clip where he's tying it to all the work that some of you may be familiar with around this idea of deliberate practice.

Cal Newport 19:39

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 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. 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 things. We know now as the simple things, the rote things are becoming outsourced 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 circuits are isolated and run again and again, you get a process called myelination, where you actually get essentially it's a protein sheath. That's, that's That's actually spun around the the axons of the neurons and makes this circuit actually fire easier. 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. 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.

mike parsons 21:42

I'm

just going deep. I really I really love this this context of the you know, the the robots and the artificial intelligence. So taking over all those menial tasks. So if you're not doing deep work, you're essentially putting yourself At Risk Archie chat.

Chad Owen 22:01

Yeah, I love how I mean, I'm kind of a brain science, 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 is making you smarter. I don't know, to me that is just like, super cool.

mike parsons 22:26

Yeah, you know, it's very analogous to when you're working out and your your muscles are sore. That's actually because you've actually torn the muscles and when they grow back, they grow back stronger, but it kind of aches after you've been at the gym. That's exactly why it's almost like your brain has the same practice, isn't it?

Chad Owen 22:46

Yeah. And for me, just to know that there's this hard science behind this theory of deep work and you know, cow didn't do this research others have, but this, this research in these findings, really, again, it's 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, to convince you absolutely. I mean, we've got,

mike parsons 23:10

we've got two big buckets of clips remaining, we've got some real, we're gonna get 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, everything you hear on our show is available from moonshots.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 Store or on the Apple iTunes Store, please go in and give us a review and a rating. Every show 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?

Chad Owen 24:02

Yeah, yeah, I've I've actually spoken to a few listeners who responded to the Find your Why call to action. So want to give a big and I know that they have given us a good review. So thank you, Maria, for listening to the show being a fan. And yeah, thanks to everyone that reached out after the Find your y episode to find find our wise 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 because we really do appreciate it. Okay, so now it's time to continue back to the science to the hardcore science Where should we start shadowing? Yeah, so again, cow as the 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 was it myelin ization myelination? There's this idea that switching between different tasks actually is more costly than just doing one thing. So you know, if you believe Oh, you know, multitasking is great, I can get so much done. Well, we've got a clip here for you that may make you rethink that.

Cal Newport 25:28

Tension residue was a concept coined by a researcher named Sophie Leroy, that 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 Warren, he's a very successful guy. And he uses deep work to produce academic papers in a very high rate incredibly high rate and when I was asking about how he did it, he said you have to read about attention residue. So if you Leroy's research, and the concepts 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. 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 know, 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. 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 gearbox right, you start to hum along at a much higher cognitive rate.

mike parsons 26:57

Hmm.

I mean, Just so true, I mean that, 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 like your brain is still computing on the previous task. Like 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 do you experience a teacher?

Chad Owen 27:35

Yeah, I'm gonna bring in one of our favourite visual metaphors here. It just, it just came to me. I'm making connections between episodes here. You and I love the flywheel. And so if you think about your productivity, and your kind of rate of learning, as a as a big stone, you know, flywheel it takes a long time. Because it's super heavy to get going. So if you start at the email flywheel for 2030 minutes, and he just just when you maybe kind of get it going, then you turn around and go to the writing flywheel or the designing flywheel, and then you got to like start it up again. 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 visualise this idea of, of the of the task switching and attention deficit. But I think 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 amount of work, I feel pulled into a different direction. And then yeah, it's just my productivity drops off a cliff when I'm when I'm switching.

mike parsons 28:47

And what's great is we've, we've also been used for this show, we've found one or two experts online who have actually deconstructed cows work really, really well. And so this is the first of some clips Coming up, which is not from Kyle himself, but from other folks that are deconstructing him. And this attention residue thing 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 residue.

Unknown Speaker 29:23

So Cal talks about the research on attention residue. So almost all of us know at this stage that multitasking, a doesn't really exist. You can't actually do two things at once. You're just rapidly split your attention, go from this to this to this to this, diminishing your performance in both of them, right. So we all know that multitasking isn't the way to roll. But even those of us who go from meeting to meeting to meeting so let's say you got a 15 minute meeting and then you go do this and you're actually focused on that particular thing. You're not in the meeting, checking your email. You're not in 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 to another project to another project, you have something that researchers call attention residue. what you were doing before is still like a residue on your attention. They've come up with these creative ways to test your performance. And if you're getting your your attention split like that going from thing to 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. So really cool idea. And this is the strongest reason to create time blocks. So we talked about time blocks a lot. The The one thing guys wrote the one thing Jay papasan and Gary Keller talks about the fact that time blocks are the number one power tool for time management. Cal has a formula 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 high quality and 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. 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 tonne of great work when you split up the same amount of time would say this is nine to 12, right or even nine to 11 or whatever, right? Time blocks. intense focus over an extended period of time leads to extraordinary results. Just as a personal example, one of the things that I've done I didn't realise 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 I'm going from one thing to the next, 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. We're right before this, I recorded the mp3 of the philosopher's note, then I'm recording this TV episode, right. And then I immediately go into creating micro classes on my favourite big ideas. So I have a time block. And I don't fracture my attention and have a tension residue. So it allows me to create at a much higher level than I would if I was splintering my time like this. There's no way I would go from one part of this phase two, checking my email or whatever, in this is why I would I we all know this. We've all experienced this where you kind of get into it. And then you want to get into another project, but you're kind of thinking about what you just looked at, you just looked at your email and it's, it's taking 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. It matters and get a tonne more in a shorter period of time, which is another theme that comes back to higher quality work shorter period of time equals a good equation.

mike parsons 33:11

The time block, this is the big we're kind of cheating a little bit here because we're getting into how you might do 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. Well, I'm thinking about the following week blocking out that time and it feels so sacred when you have those those time blocks. 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 books. What do you What about you, Chad?

Chad Owen 33:57

Yeah, I think for me, I have Good intentions, but when it comes to the, to the discipline of sticking, so like showing up for that time block being 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, you know, maybe I miss prioritise, or again, you know, something urgent comes up, but I think for me, what's been tough is that self discipline so I'm kind of curious like, you carved out an entire day yesterday like how did you do that? How did you have the will and fortitude to defend in in shield yourself from all of the attention you know, the needs on your attention that that came your way?

mike parsons 34:44

Oh, yeah. So So part of it was that today is so is so jam packed. So we're sitting here and I'm 1045 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. I literally arrived in the office at about four o'clock in the afternoon. That's and then when I got there, all I did was finished the post production on the course before running off to rugby training. I mean, it was a little frantic because in in transit, I had to catch up on all my email. In Transit. I was making calls like I think I did three calls on the way to the office. 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 you know, I shipped a really A significant piece of work there, and I did it on time. And that that's, that's really the benefit of the date worker.

Chad Owen 36:09

Something that you just brought up there that I don't want to let slip is this idea of like a deadline or a goal. Ah, yeah, cuz you're on time, right? Because there's a time block and you're like, well, I said I'd get it done today. And so I kind of have to create that time and get it done to kind of, you know, be honest with yourself. Mm hmm.

mike parsons 36:32

Absolutely. Absolutely. So this time blocking is a big gift from from, from cow and sort of sets us up for the, for the third part of the show, where we're just gonna get into how we do this thing called Deep work. How do we enjoy this mass productivity to this pathway to mastery, it all lies in deep work, and I think we've set the context we've talked about The cost of switching between tasks how we can just be, we can't we can kind of get to a Friday and go, geez, all I've done is calls and meetings are awake. So we've got it, 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 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 got to be working on high value problem solving. And deep work is the ultimate tool for it. So with that, said, Chatto, and we're going to get into how we might do deep work. And the question is, where are we going to start?

Chad Owen 37:47

Well, cow gives us 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 an jam packed sections, a jam packed section with lots of great clips. So here's cow talking about how to cultivate deep work.

Cal Newport 38:08

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, there'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 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 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, you know, how you actually tackle your deep work when you do deep work. That matters, right? 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. This really captures this idea that deep work is a skill, not a skill, not a habit. It's like playing the guitar or 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 prioritises concentration focus as a tier one skill. I argue 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 Can't get rid of the non deep work, but how can you keep it controlled and minimised enough that you're left with 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.

mike parsons 40:15

Who

well, geez, where do we start breaking that down? Chad? That seems like the essence of doing this thing called Deep work. What's the one out of he's four? He's big for Chad. Which one describes you as being the most important or the one that's most relevant to you? Perhaps,

Chad Owen 40:40

but I think I'm going to give you the answer you're not expecting 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. You know, I've got got some things going on at work where I feel like surrounding myself with the Right team members, delegating and kind of 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. But I mean, I got to give a shout out to my buddy cow for saying get off social media because I'm not on social media but like, Here I am having trouble doing deep work. So like just just doing that doesn't doesn't get it done. So I've got more work to do and some of the other rules that he has.

mike parsons 41:32

That's the I mean, when 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 I really like what he's setting up for us here. Which is, you know, get intentional clear the decks is something that I really want to pull out here is that he says it it is a skill and not a habit. 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. 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. I mean, there you are. You said I don't even use social media and I'm still struggling getting this deep thing

Chad Owen 42:35

happening. Yeah.

mike parsons 42:37

That that that is all the proof we need that this is a skill and not just a habit.

Chad Owen 42:42

Yeah. And here, we're going to get into some more interesting examples, both from from cow and the book, and as well as from from Mark winters. Who we've who we've been hearing from, but there's this saying, you know, it's not just a habit. It's So it's really the focus, the intense focus with with the time spent. And so again, it's not just a recurring calendar time block if you don't show up prepared with a goal in mind, and, and that intense focus, you know, not much is going to be accomplished. So we've got a clip here kind of jumping into some more practical ways to implement deep work around this concept of routines of deep work.

Unknown Speaker 43:28

routines. Our third big idea kalmyks the point so again, there's the 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. I want to do less shallow work 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 haphazardly. They didn't just hope that inspiration would strike. They created the routine such that he 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 him one, the monastery approach to the buy modal approach, I'll tell you in detail about these three, the rhythmic approach and for the journalistic approach, so if we go through those four, the monastery approach to creating routines is kind of the most extreme. It's what I love to do. monastery, think of a monk who just detaches themselves from the matrix. They don't even check email. They're not involved online much right or at all. They just go to work. I call it 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 whenever heading out just my son and I taken adventures. That's monk mode, hermit mode. Now a lot of people can't do that. It's extraordinarily powerful. Do you can do it But he realises, Hey, you got to find your own style. Not everyone's going to do that. The second mode is called by modal, which basically takes some of the benefit of the monk mode, but you also live kind of a normal life. He uses Carl young as an example. Carl young, was a therapist in Zurich. But he also had a retreat house that he would go to where he was a monk, no distractions at all he would write but then he'd go back and he had this bind modal approach to doing deep work. It's a second possible alternative, right? The third one is what Cal calls rhythmic in rhythmic it's kind of like Jerry Seinfeld's. Write a joke every day. If you've heard of that don't break the chain. Right. Or Jerry Seinfeld gave me advice, reportedly, that the way to become a good comedian is to write a joke every day, create a rhythm, create a streak and get your calendar your ex off a day and another day and another day and you don't want to break the streak. You have a rhythm of creativity. That's one way to do Deep work, you create a rhythm it might be at different times during the day, but you don't break your streak. That's the third, the fourth way to do it is journalistic. Now, the journalistic idea is basically like a journalist who needs to write on deadline, right? They've got a story that broke, they got to deliver quickly, they got to know how to go into deep work like that. Right? They don't do it on a hermit basis, and they don't do the rhythmic per se. They just do it on demand. Right? This is what Cal says is his preferred or kind of main dominant way to do his deep work. He schedules his days in opportunistically, when he has time he creates chunks and he does great work consistently and he keeps track of it, which talks about 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 rituals.

mike parsons 46:54

Well right here, ladies and gentlemen, we are getting to the very At atomic level of deep work, and these four different types of date work monastic by modal, rhythmic 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. So Chad, are you the monastic? Put yourself on the top of the mountain? Are you by modal sort of every semester? Are you ready to make like write a joke every day? Or are you more the journalistic on demand? Which of those types those modes of deep work speak most to you?

Chad Owen 47:39

I think I would like to be monastic, but by modal is probably going to be practically how I get it done. And you know, as I've been talking on the show, I think I need to do a better job of preparing, scheduling and protecting those times. Yeah, I'm almost thinking like in an event. Further change of pace or location would do me well, because I still do work from home sometimes I also work in the office, I'm wondering if there might be a third place where I could do some deep work, you know, leave the maybe even leave the phone behind, keep Wi Fi off my computer or just take a notebook? I think, I think those may be some techniques to help me implement the by modal method.

mike parsons 48:26

Right? What's really interesting is talking about this more monastic way of working and changing up the location and is that there's a couple of guys that write books on planes, because they really like the force. Yeah, that they really like the force. seclusion. So it's called plane riding, if you want to Google this, but there's actually people that I'm Trying to remember but 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 know the famous writer Douglas copelan, was also renowned for writing a lot of these books on his plane, plane trips around the world. Again, just because it created the conditions for that monastic way of working. Isn't that cool?

Chad Owen 49:30

Yeah, I love that idea. Although I think with the modern entertainment, that's on planes. Now I've just I'm too distracted visually from someone watching one movie someone is you know, there's like 30 movies going on all at the same time within your field of view. So I'm not sure I could actually do that. I'd have to go into the, into the bathroom or something on the plane to write but then that doesn't sound like

mike parsons 49:58

but it's really powerful. Just to bring everyone back here, are you monastic by modal, rhythmic or journalistic and how you don't do deep work? And if you don't know, that's cool, try one of Ah, try and get yourself away somewhere unusual. Just for a day even take a whole day off or buy mode or set yourself a weekly, monthly, quarterly deep work routine, or do the classic Seinfeld, but just write for 10 minutes a day. I know certainly. I write my journal almost every day now for several years. And it is a big part of how I like to just start my day. The journalistic one I think is a really acquired taste. Because you it's really about No, no pre warning, boom, you have to dive into it. If that works for you, that's all good, but but right here, I think if you can find the moment In 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. So if you've experienced that state of flow, where you've found the right style of deep work for you, I think a lot of the other challenges get become right. You know, they become easier.

Chad Owen 51:21

Yeah. And I, you know, I think my wife's preferred mode is 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, you know, many people get done in a in a week. Yeah, so it's interesting how there's kind of four different routines in which you 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 here's another clip where he's talking about this idea of like, being sure or how the outputs Deep work is really high value work.

Cal Newport 52:04

The second is deep work is necessary to produce things of high value. So that the output you produce when you're in a state of deep work is really your max function. It's at the max of what your current skills and training allows you to do. Whereas worked, it's done in a state of distraction with more fragmented attention is going to be at a fraction of that quality level. You know, 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. It doesn't matter that you wrote 100,000 words, it doesn't matter that you wrote a book, if it's not really good as literary novelist, your your career is sunk so they care a lot about quality. Not surprisingly, if you look at the work habits of literary novelist, you see that all of their energy goes into protecting themselves from the stress And being able to concentrate more intensely. It's among novelist at the vanguard of the work. 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.

mike parsons 53:18

That is such a good analogy. It's such a good case study in people that live and die by their deep work are authors. There it is the book. It's in black and white for everybody to read and to deconstruct into review. So it's imperative that it's of the highest quality and it's this this classic archetype of the lone wolf, a rider who inhabits you know, the peaks of tall mountains in a cabin locked away, that that analogy is, is perfect if we could all be a bit more like those, those writers, those authors, where we dedicate that time Sort of time and intention to producing and thinking,

Chad Owen 54:04

yeah, it's it is very telling. I mean, 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 these routines and practices. You know, he mentioned college young and he's talking about writers here. I almost had my favourite author and I wasn't sure but I do actually think he's my favourite author, Stephen King, in his book on writing describes his, his routine, he writes in Maine, and he does have a writing shed, you know, up until very recently, you know, he typed everything out on a typewriter, surrounded himself with other books, and it was just a writing room for him. So, you know, he could lose himself there for days at times, even though he's, you know, like 100 yards from from his main residence up there, but I'm gonna, yeah, I would love to have a writing shack. But you know, there's a lot of things that need to happen between now and then. But yeah, I think maybe what they need to do is figure out how To find her create my own writing chat, that's great. Well,

mike parsons 55:03

the thoughts do not end there on producing at a higher level. So let's have a listen to this next clip, which gets really into the art of extreme productivity.

Cal Newport 55:16

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 higher 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 well he's also named Brian, it's not you, but it's another Brian 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. He needed some, you know, 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. He said, this is not working. So he put into place some deep work rituals, inspired in part about my riding on the park. So we sort of had a way to really think about it clearly where he took this hour and a half every morning 5am, five to 6:30am 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.

mike parsons 56:23

Wow, well, that that's a

Chad Owen 56:25

that's a 10 x increase. Yeah,

mike parsons 56:26

yeah, it's a really stock case study in the before and after date work. And I think we would probably all find when we compared shallow versus deep work that those numbers kind of match up pretty, pretty closely. And again, 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 in the environment and setting yourself up. Doing everything that Cal says but how your your environment plays such a big part in that, I find that it's almost the path to deep work is becoming so much clearer now because you set the environment in the intention block the time beyond interrupted and go intensely deep for like 234 hours.

Chad Owen 57:25

Yeah, yeah, I still can't get over like the 10 x improvement. He went from one chapter in the year to a chapter one to two chapters every four to five weeks. I think. I think another thing as I kind of think about it, in this next clip touches on it, it sounds like you really need not just not just like an important or high value thing, but it really has to matter to you. You know, you have to I would say you have to bring some passion to it and I'm easily distractible and I want to try and do many different things. And so I think part of maybe What I could do is, is not just be focused when I'm working but focus and choose one thing that I bring into my, you know, containers for deep work. And then maybe that's how I can unlock some of the potential that 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.

Unknown Speaker 58:26

Fourth big idea is an awesome one. It's one thing to say, Hey, quit distracting yourself in shallow Ville, right? That's not that inspiring though. That's a avoidance behaviour quit doing that. What you really want to do is discover what you're just 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 challenging yet feasible, that you're really fired up about it will have a huge positive impact in your life. What is it identify that get one Really excited about it. Right? This is awesome. Then you commit to that you see what you're gonna 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 nodes out, that's a much more effective strategy, then saying, Oh, I'm going to eliminate all these distractions. Let it be crowded out by your passion for doing something great.

mike parsons 59:26

Wow, well, this this touches a lot upon purpose and fulfilment that Sinek 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 fulfilment, fulfilment and your commitment. But part of this is also I think, touching on this, this intense focus that comes up, just 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? Yeah,

Chad Owen 1:00:05

yeah, I mean, as I was teeing up the clip it was kind of coming together in my mind of Hmm, maybe maybe it is that big hairy audacious goal to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins that's missing for me to to apply myself towards I mean, I can think of many in my head right now I just need to choose one does right? I can do yeah.

mike parsons 1:00:30

And and often you know, picking that one can be tough in itself. And I think as we all try and do more date work, I would just pick up something and go with it. Try it you know,

Chad Owen 1:00:43

yeah, yeah, actually I'm the the call to action in the Find your why episode 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 your routines for deep work is I'm going to put on the spot mic and ask you what yours is. I have a feeling yours in mind might be a bit similar. But I'm curious, you know, what's that one? What's that one thing that you're going to put in to your deep work?

mike parsons 1:01:13

And are you talking about like, what projects? What effort? Or Yeah, or the goal?

Chad Owen 1:01:20

Yeah, yeah, I like the six to 12 month thing where you're like, yeah, that's awesome. If we can, if I could do that.

mike parsons 1:01:27

Well, certainly, to build off the 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 work, cumulatively over time, this would be a tonne of syllabus worked, it would be created. So what I what I really got to do is invest that three hours integrating these innovation courses. I mean, I deeply enjoy the work. I like the challenge of it. It makes my I mean, you know, there's this saying, Chad that if you want to learn something you should teach it.

Chad Owen 1:02:14

Yep. So yeah, absolutely. So you're you're kind of doing either it's like dual dual pay off.

mike parsons 1:02:21

Sorry. Now, what about you? It what comes to mind? Chad? I mean, you don't have to have all the answers, but is there some things that are floating around that? That, you know, I know,

Unknown Speaker 1:02:33

um,

Chad Owen 1:02:34

I had a really great conversation with, with someone that I've worked with in the past, and we're talking about the medium of podcasts and podcasting, audio, you know, narratives and, you know, 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, you know, a mini master of the medium and having experimented in lots of different ways, shapes and forms, both for work and in my personal life, I think that's something that I'd really like to turn my attention to, like, No, I think it's probably pretty easy to say like, Oh, you know, like, I want to write a book or I want to like, I was trying to come up with something that wasn't maybe as so quick and easy. Mm hmm. I feel like I could I could do well, if I can carve out the the time and do the deep work.

mike parsons 1:03:34

Absolutely. Well, 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 too. Let's hold ourselves accountable. Let's make sure we've we've done that first session of deep work before we record the next show together. You know how busy I am right now.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:58

Making this real hard

mike parsons 1:03:58

on My gosh, the excuses they've begun already. Shadow and yeah, well 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 also includes the ability to turn it off. And the last clip for this show is once again, this expert break down done on cows book. And this thought is really, really tasty. So let's get into the idea of shut down is complete.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:42

The fifth big idea is shut down complete. Cal talks about the fact that we need to create containers for our creativity. And he's amazing. He doesn't work past five o'clock or 530 or something like that. And he doesn't work on weekends. Yet 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 kind of juxtapose another professor who complains about how Oh, you need to work so hard, and I'm just my whole life is kind of taken up by all these shallow things, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Cal says, Look, when you get serious about stuff like this, and you commit to being super productive efficiently, you need to do things like and one of the ways to do that is to create limits where you're just done. And he has a great idea of shut down complete end your day. So for him, it's at five or 530, I do something similar. I'll finish his story and I'll share mine. He goes through his little routine at the end of the day. He checks his email one last time and you make sure nothing urgent is sitting in there. He addresses anything urgent, right? And then he looks at what he wanted to get done today, but he didn't know what tomorrow is going to look like and what he can push into tomorrow.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:58

Right and he's complete

Unknown Speaker 1:06:00

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, I'm gonna go enjoy his family. 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 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 Coyle, 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 tonne of energy to your craft. And the only way you can do that sustainably is to honour the rest phase. You got to know how to shut down. Jim Laura said we need to train recovery. It's as important as that Anything else? Shut down complete is a way to train recovery. So you're consistent. Right. Dan Coyle 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, 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. Same thing. If you go 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, shut down complete. For me, it's digital sense that the sun goes down. check in on the day. See what I did that I'm excited about and proud of what I might not have gotten to what's on the list for tomorrow. And then boom, turn it off. It's done.

mike parsons 1:07:51

Turn it off. It's done. How good is that shadow and

Chad Owen 1:07:55

yeah, I it's funny because I was trying to see if I have a similar I do not say shut down complete, although maybe I should i think i think i do this well, I come into the office I do all 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. But as I was thinking like that's kind of my my shutdown ritual is once that monitor goes off, pick up my backpack and grab the dog and head out the door. And then I'm kind of you know, done for my work for the day. I'm curious if you have a similar ritual,

mike parsons 1:08:42

only in as much that I don't take my iPhone into the bedroom. I'm I only read on my Kindle. I do know Netflix in bed. I am I am engineering my body to completely turn off when I sleep. It's a bit hard for me because of times With, with Europe to really flick the switch in the evenings, similar in the mornings, because of the US. But I'll tell you one area that I'm very aware of this Sunday is a great example. I've been really busy the past two weeks and you know, my I've got plans this evening. I have sporting rugby for the entire day tomorrow on Saturday. And so I have a very clear thing that Sunday I'm going to be like a hermit. 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 work day. No email, no calls Nothing. I'm just going to detox. And that is crucial for me to be good next week, my Sunday needs to be a total downer.

Chad Owen 1:10:08

Yeah, I'm actually hoping for some of that tomorrow afternoon, my sister's 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, to do that, by I love. I love the verbalization of it. And yeah, there's something interesting about that. I'm kind of curious if maybe that's something that I that I could do.

mike parsons 1:10:32

Yeah. It's almost like a positive affirmation, saying, you know, yeah, there's that whole science behind saying positive affirmations out loud to reinforce them.

Chad Owen 1:10:42

Yeah, yeah. And, like the shutdown complete. It's also like, almost like a sigh like, ah, I got it done. You know, it's like, yeah, it's like a small celebration. I, I like that idea. I'm gonna experiment with that. I just hope my co workers here We work on some kind of strange robot, Android.

mike parsons 1:11:06

I'm sure they see you as a normal two legged human being. But what a nice thought for us to wrap up this first of our county pilot series, this idea are shut down complete. It's a little bit unexpected for for such an intense deep work episode. But I find that what we've really, really done when we look at this whole narrative of how we might spend this high productive high mastery time is it's really about quality, not quantity. And that's my big take cap 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 deeper back into your routine?

Chad Owen 1:11:53

Yeah, there's so much I'm taking away, you know, find that that big, hairy audacious goal that you're really proud of 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 functions working that way. I mean, it's it's all just so cool and reaffirming to me, I can't wait to start putting it back into practice.

mike parsons 1:12:25

Nice. Nice. Well, 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 super smart, practical, sage like advice for succeeding in this digital age of interruption. And too many notifications. Too many interruptions if you will. So there you have it. That was deep work. Now the 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 complement to that lofty, purpose driven world that we're in with Simon Sinek now we're getting almost into the very practical toolkit if you will of making it a reality every single day.

Chad Owen 1:13:28

Yeah, yeah, I'm really excited to go I've read all of Kaos other books as well and I can't wait to go back and revisit them. I feel like incorporating the ideas from all of these kind of building on the foundation of what you and I uncovered with Simon like, we're kind of building up these superpowers. I feel like hmm,

mike parsons 1:13:52

and what's 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 mean, I found cow. He's much more pragmatic in his tone, but he's equally comfortable with his subject matter, don't you think?

Chad Owen 1:14:19

Yeah, while while Simon brings maybe more engaging stories or narratives into his work, I think cow brings some irrefutable science and an evidence for and it's Yeah, it's interesting how they're, you know, they're very convicted in their ideas, but they kind of back them up in different ways. So yeah, it's it's been very interesting to compare and contrast the two.

mike parsons 1:14:48

Absolutely. Well, there you have it, Chad, thank you for being part of this first of four. deep dives into the world of coun Newport deep work seemed like it was The perfect thing. It was like just what you needed to hear about right, Joe?

Chad Owen 1:15:03

Yeah, exactly. I've got a few plane rides ahead of me. So maybe I can turn those into deep work sessions.

mike parsons 1:15:12

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. 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.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai