ABOUT THE BOOK

You can pick up Cal’s ‘How to Become a Straight A Student’ at all good outlets.

“The Unconventional Strategies Real College Students Use to Score High While Studying Less.”

Looking to jumpstart your G.P.A? Most college students believe that straight As can only be achieved through cramming and painful all-nighters. But Cal Newport knows that real straight-A students don’t study harder—they study smarter. A breakthrough approach to acing assignments, from quizzes and exams to essays and papers, How to Become a Straight-A Student reveals the proven study secrets used by real straight-A students across the country. You will learn how to:

• Streamline your study habits to learn more in less time.

• Take smarter notes (Hint: Less is more).

• Provide A+ answers on quizzes and exams.

• Know which reading assignments are critical—and which are not.

• Choose an A-worthy paper topic.

• Write stellar prose without the agony.

A strategic blueprint for success that promises more free time, more fun, and top-tier results, How to Become a Straight-A Student is the only study guide with the insider knowledge and real-world methods to help you master the college system and rise to the top of the class.

TRANSCRIPT

We are experimenting with the benefits of providing transcriptions for our podcasts, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Here’s the show in audio format.

Do you think transcriptions are useful? What do you want to see? How can we improve?

Please send your thoughts to us via hello@moonshots.io.

mike parsons 0:10

Hello, and welcome to the moon shots podcast. It's Episode 61. I'm your co host, . And as always, I'm joined by the man from Brooklyn himself, Mr. Chad. Oh, and

Chad Owen 0:24

good morning and Mike, how are things in Sydney this fine afternoon? I guess it's afternoon there by this point, right.

mike parsons 0:31

We just squeezed into action and I can report back. That having spent the day yesterday in Melbourne, Australia, where it was overcast and rainy. I've returned to my home city, to bathe in sunshine, some spring sunshine. So I feel quite ready to learn and to learn on how we might innovate how we might make breakthrough ideas happen and on I am rather excited about this show because it's one of our favourite authors on one of our favourite topics. So this is like this is a double headed chat. It doesn't get any better than this learning how to learn. I mean, how geeky and meta can you get

Chad Owen 1:17

with that? It's a it's our final our fourth episode, bringing together several different books by our new favourite author Cal Newport. It seems like every, every series of books that we that we profile here becomes our new favourite author of these books are some of Cal's first books that he wrote how to win at college, how to become a straight A student and how to be a high school superstar. And some of you may think, Why in the world are we talking about books written for high school students or college students? But, Mike, I don't know about you, but you know, going through these books and through these clips, you know, I was kind of taken back to school right? back to the basics here.

mike parsons 2:01

Well,

not only was I taken back to basics, it these three books are cows, three books about essentially how to learn are not only incredibly practical breakdowns, on on how you might learn a new skill, devour some new information. For me, Chad, I want to take this chance to kind of almost to pitch you and all of our listeners on why learning is so important. I think I find myself constantly being introduced to new ideas. And I want to know more. Or in the case of the projects that we're working on with clients, we have to master all of these new technologies, new ways of working new consumer trends. And so I feel like learning is a constant in this digital age. I don't think anybody can sit back and say I know enough and so Learning is is is right back in the spotlight in the way in which we work in a knowledge economy. I mean, if if it's knowledge economy, then we need knowledge. We need to be able to break things down and understand how things really work around us. And so I think my pitch for you about learning and the pitch for you are listening to about this show is this is at worst case, this is like a refresher on how to learn. But I can guarantee you there's some great thinking in here that might help you learn better or in I think what, what Cal Newport really office is how to learn quicker and more efficiently, don't you?

Chad Owen 3:38

Yeah, he has some really interesting mental models and frameworks and even formulas about how he thinks about learning. And again, those of you that are still a bit sceptical about you know, going back to high school, so to speak. Often the best innovations come from unexpected places, and I've found that some of my favourite And most impactful learnings have come from unexpected places. So yeah, those of us that might be entrepreneurs with decades of experience, I, there's still some things that we can learn about learning. And everything that Cal talks about in all these books are things that I wish that I had known and done in practice, when I was in high school, just because of how much the skill of learning can compound over time, so I'm really excited to dive into the show.

mike parsons 4:26

Yeah, me too. I think that what's really important is that everyone gets ready to if they will get the cheat the tips, the tricks on acquiring new skills, learning new things. That's what I think we've got an offer for you. And I just want to take one moment, Chad to thank everybody, for hearing the call of the last few shows. We've been saying Come on, guys. We know there's thousands of people listening to the show now, and I've been particularly strong and encouraging everybody to jump into it. Or they're, they're on jump on their iPhone and to review the show and rate the show. And I can tell you now that we now have five, five star reviews on iTunes and over 24 ratings of the show. And I just want to say thank you to Dean to cat to Maria. And I'm going to try and say this correctly, quite man who've all put comments and being just wonderful in their gratitude and thanks for the show. So we we really do appreciate it and if anyone is on a train on a bus, or sitting down listening to show please take a moment to go to your favourite pod catcher. Give us a rating give us a review. It's we really do appreciate it brings new listeners to the show. We're super grateful for that. And Chad, if we want folks to catch up with more information or some of the old shows Where might they go for a little bit of extra moon shots?

Chad Owen 6:04

That would be moon shots.io of course, and you can be like Oliver. And thank you, Oliver. And you can send us an email directly at Hello at moon shots.io There you go.

mike parsons 6:17

So here we have it. You are ready. You are primed you like Mike Chad, let's get into learning. So my question for you Chad is where shall we start?

Chad Owen 6:25

We found some really good clips of an interview with cow and then cow kind of delivering some of the content himself. But if our listeners weren't already convinced by by your arguments, like we're going to hear from cow about why it's so important to develop good study skills and how many of us were doing it so wrong when we were

Unknown Speaker 6:46

younger? For those who don't know Cal's background this is you can Phi Beta Kappa Dartmouth MIT PhD now teaching at Computer Science at Georgetown. This isn't the slackers manual. This is perform at your peak and really achieve all you're capable of achieving manual and do so again without having to grind simply by having the systems in place to allow that right. Yeah, but

Unknown Speaker 7:10

it is kind of a slackers manual in the sense that the people who follow these techniques those who just did on their own or those who came along later and followed the book is just significantly less grinding work than the average peer. So it will I mean, this is my warning. It will make you feel like a slacker if you use these techniques, because there is a staggering amount of inefficiency. And students study skills that never get in your life or you're going to find something which there's so much inefficiency and and you can get so much gain from so little tactics, but at college it's the absolute largest inefficiency I've ever observed. As you know, an author and entrepreneur and academic that you can be in the top 5% of your class, while studying less than most your class with relatively common sense study overhauls. That's just how inefficient most people are. So if you're a student, take advantage of the sweet spot that you're currently in. That's genius. So to be a peak performer while being a slacker simultaneously from the from your own self perception and from how the world views you potentially. And it's cool too, because in deep work you actually frame that in the sense of deep work is now simultaneously more rare and more valuable. So the inefficiencies in the college marketplace if you will, of getting good grades is so

Unknown Speaker 8:29

ridiculous. That you can literally show up in the top 5% performance wise while being in the bottom 5%. slacker wise if you take the time to systematically optimise your study habits, this is great.

mike parsons 8:45

The inefficiency You know, I think one of the reasons chat a lot of people don't really know so much or don't have depth in their knowledge and understanding is that they they study and learn things very inefficiently. I think there's a huge opportunity and what cows talking about here. I think if we have a desire for mastery, then we have to embrace learning. And I think that rather than what happens in work so much, a lot of people can talk about things like oh, yeah, I know about design thinking. But as soon as you actually talk to him, you realise they have a very shallow understanding of that given practice. I think that a lot of these problems stem from the fact why people don't learn or they don't know enough about something. Why they have the absence of mastery is because the way they approach study is so inefficient, they think it's all about reading a book, writing out all the notes, rote learning. And actually what we're going to discover on this show, is there's so many better ways to approach learning and I think cows got a lot of great ideas for

Chad Owen 9:56

us what I heard in this clip, so my gift You know, put your consultant hat on, like if you're going into an environment or an industry that has a lot of efficiencies, like, what is it like begging for?

mike parsons 10:09

That has a lot of inefficiencies you say, yeah, yeah, you're looking at how might I disrupt this? How might I do this in a radically better, more efficient way?

Chad Owen 10:18

Yeah, exactly. Like that's where disruption and innovation is like burst is in those inefficient environments. And so again, it was just really fun for me to think because I never really thought about my academic experience in that way. And I wish I could have been that slacker that was able to study in a way and get results without maybe having to put in so much time. But cow has what I think is a really fantastic method for that knowledge transfer. And that practice and like that development of mastery that you were talking about. And so we're just going to dive straight into we've got, I think, three really great clips here. around this idea of active recall,

Unknown Speaker 11:04

tell us about the number one way to learn. And kind of the worst way to learn. juxtaposed in the book.

Unknown Speaker 11:13

Yeah, if you only remember two things from this book or from this interview, one is work produced as time multiplied by focus and the other is active recall is everything. When it comes to learning any type of material, in my opinion, the only activity that really matters is trying to replicate the information from scratch without looking at your notes as if you were a lecturer in a class. If you can do that, you know it. If you can't do that, you don't know it. It's brutal. It's intense. It's also incredibly efficient. It's the most efficient possible way to learn. The opposite of active recall is passive recall, which is where you're reading over information again, and again. This is the cliche and I highlighted my textbook. How many times can I read the highlighted paragraphs on my textbook before Dropped asleep in the middle of the night. That is by far one of the least efficient possible ways you can learn. Active recall is the only game in town. Any other activity, throw it out of your study skills arsenal.

mike parsons 12:11

So the crazy thing is Chad, I use active Rico, which I'll share with you in a bit. But I had no idea. That's what it was I it was not a formal method that I had learned. It was just organic. And here's the thing. I'll give you a quick example of how I use active recall. And I think it demonstrates in a really practical way, what can you post talking about? I want you to imagine that later after this show. I'm about to give a big keynote talk big audience on a big topic, get them really excited, share with him some new ideas. My measure of readiness right now would be my ability, in shorthand in note form, to write out the 10 or 15 main points that I'm going to make throughout the talk. So it would have to be coming straight out of my mind, I just be should be able to write it naturally down. This active recall of my subject matter is the way I judge my readiness to teach something or to give a keynote, if I still require the aiding and the prompting of a PowerPoint slide, that tells me I really don't know the content that well. And here's the thing. If you use active recall, which is the ability to remember a subject to learn a subject so well that you can almost just teach it without any aids and just comes out of your mind naturally, you are much more ready to adapt to your environment. For example, if you walk into a meeting to talk about design thinking and you really know it, you can approach it from many different points of view because you know, the base theory and method So well, it's when we've used that passive Rico. It's just what we call rote learning. So if you if you if you don't just get a simple question and answer structure to test your learning, if it has to be dynamic and agile, I like it, it should be in life, then you stumble, then because you're like, all I forget what comes next. I don't really know the subject matter. I think what cow is suggesting here is that if you want to learn something, you should be able to teach something. Because through the art of teaching something you are forced to know the content holy, fully and completely and very different to that traditional highlight something and wrote learn it.

Chad Owen 14:45

And it's not just be able to teach it, it's to be able to recall it from nothing, you know, which is very important. And yeah, and I can attest to the fact that my view you don't need PowerPoints when you are instructing or facilitating or teaching a room and it's funny because now I'm putting two and two together of like, Oh, that's right my process works

mike parsons 15:09

but but but it's but it's doing the hard work before the event or before the meeting or whatever it is. It's about doing the hard work to truly know and i think i think actually counts even got some thinking here that helps us to move beyond it. And I wanted to ask you, Chad right now that you're seeing that how you framing how you want to learn, are you already starting to see new or new areas? Or is this a reminded to have best to

Chad Owen 15:42

learn the parallels that I'm drawing for myself and the biggest shifts that I need to make if I really want to embody what cows cows proposing, I mean, I would love to adopt everything from Digital minimalism and so good they can't ignore you And deep work, right? Like I just like, it's like a whole life transformation here. But this passive recall, I also kind of draw parallels to just the enormous amounts of content that is available to us and that we consume. There's What is it like 800 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute now. So it's, you know, if we had all the time in the universe, we couldn't watch everything that was up on YouTube. But I think this passive consumption of content or in the case of a student, you know, the passive highlighting and rereading and rereading of materials is not activating the right parts of the brain, you know, where we can store the memories and be able to recall them. And so I'm an avid consumer of podcasts and videos and books and everything. And so I think the shift that I need to make is into the into the active teaching mode. So I'm going to dial down the amount of content That I consume and really dial up the amount of conversations and teaching that I'm doing. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, you've probably seen, you know, the results of that I'm all of a sudden popping up producing content, even though I'm kind of sworn off social media, but I think it's really because I want to embody this active recall and teaching approach that that cow has been advocating for over a decade now. Yeah,

mike parsons 17:24

yeah. So So let's jump into this next clip because it talks right to that. And and it really is cow talking about how we can replicate the knowledge and the information that we have really from scratch as if we were teaching it.

Unknown Speaker 17:41

One of the most exciting thing because I read your book after reading a few books on the kind of that more classic science and what the research shows on this stuff. You're in terms of lab work, Visa v your research with these top performing non grinding students. And they call it of course, the fluency illusion, which is what everybody does, they reread the So yeah, I recognise that it's I'm fluent in that. And it's an illusion. So your point, and I want to have you say it again, because it was so perfect. I want to make sure everyone gets it is you need to quiz and recall the material, shut the book, get rid of your notes. Can you describe for us again, what you need to be able to do to pass the standard of knowing it?

Unknown Speaker 18:19

Yeah, so the only activity that matters is can you replicate the information from scratch without looking at any notes, as if lecture in a class and that that final piece is important, that means it's not just replicating from scratch a solution, but you're able to annotate what you're doing in a competent and convincing manner. So a lot of this means going to be speaking out loud, and you're going to get some weird looks, which is another reason why you probably want to study someplace isolated, because it does make you look a little bit crazy. But this this applies across all types of material. So you know, I was a computer science major and an art history minor. So I got a lot of practice on two very different types of material, but practising concepts from art history. I would be lecturing I would just lecture out loud, just as if I was talking to a class. And when I was practising, say, a math problem for computer science, I would be I love just a white piece of printer paper, replicating the proofer idea of writing it from scratch on that blank piece of paper, and explaining every step as if I was at a chalkboard. Okay, so why are we able to go from here to here or really just simplifying terms and you know, here, we're applying this, whatever, whatever, right? So it's not just, you can regurgitate an answer. But if we put you in front of a classroom, people would understand what you're saying. So it's annotating as you replicate the answer without looking at any notes. Again, it's really hard in terms of mental energy you're consuming per minute of work, but it works. So well used to talk about this with with studying for art history. Is it ingrained material so efficiently and so fast that you do it once you know, you never have to go back to it so it's very efficient, that I would find myself days later on an essay exam and I could remember Sort of word for word, the right sort of ideas or observations to put here because there's something about teaching something out loud from scratch that ingrains it in your neurons much more effectively than almost any other activity I've ever studied.

Unknown Speaker 20:11

Yeah,

mike parsons 20:12

this is really powerful that the act of without a sitting there taking people through an idea incompletion, versus that dependency. I think a lot of people have in business on the PowerPoint slide prompting the idea. You know, we always talk about don't read from the slides when you when you're teaching people how to present, but this is this is really it. And if you can shift from passive recall to this active recall, I think you will find that the as Ken was saying, the knowledge is really, really deep inside you. And there it is so true. When you present your work without aids, that process Does hardwire it. It writes it into your human database so deeply that you'll never really forget it. And actually, in this this next clip, what what he actually does what he does is he talks about how you actually some of the keys to active recall. But Chad, before we get to that clip, I just wanted to ask you, if you were going to practice this active raychel right now, what would be some of the tests? Let's say you had to learn about artificial intelligence, for example, how would you think about exercises or things to do to stimulate this active recall of the content and the information that you're going to learn

Chad Owen 21:44

cow almost like glosses over this fact, but when he's talking about learning all the content for art history, he said that he only like delivered this lecture to no one once and he was able to recall it. Word for word weeks later on the exam, like when I heard that I was like, floored that this process is so effective that this is how you become the slacker is you just you read and you learn and you deliver this lecture to no one. And all of a sudden you have learned and will retain all that information. I think, for me what I'm doing now, as of, you know, October 2019, is I'm learning something and then I'm immediately sitting down and recording a podcast about it. Perfect. Perfect. So in a way I'm like, I mean, I'm in an empty conference room and an empty office building at 1030 at night. And I think you and and i doing this podcast is like part of us, in graining the learnings from all the entrepreneurs and companies and authors. So it's funny because I think for me now I'm drawing the connection to Hey, actually, I'm starting to put this into practice to the art of podcasting, which is Really exciting and fun.

mike parsons 23:01

Yeah. And then I think to build on that, if the work that you're doing together with me and all of our colleagues on clients requires the same material, it gets reinforced, but then you're able to apply practical learnings of seeing it being applied in the real world. And it informs what you read, you read some more you podcast, the more you do, you apply it in the workplace more. And then it becomes this, this huge amount of momentum and expertise, like the body of expertise you have from thinking it through sharing it teaching, mentoring, applying it, that is where I think mastery really lays Yeah, but before we get too excited about that, there are a few key things to active Rico. So let's have a listen to what the master himself county about has to say about active Rico.

Unknown Speaker 23:55

Key with active recall is so dependent on the type of material that You form different types of questions to do the act of recall. And so I get into this in the book that you know, you you're an art history class, you're going to be forming these question evidence conclusion clusters, you can test yourself on if you're in a math class, you're actually gathering a lot of math problems that you're going to practice with. But in all cases, in the end, it all comes down to you trying to answer problems from scratch. But the nice thing about it is it has this winnowing effect. So you go through all the problems that you need to know if you get it right. Once you give a convincing lecture, check it off, you never have to go back to it again, because of the ultra efficiency of this method of locking things in. So that means the next time through, you're just looking at the the problems that you didn't check off that time. Oh, and now you get most of those. Okay, now the next time through, it's an even smaller number. So you have this, this very sort of geometric progression of reduction of the amount of material you need to study because once you do this, once you know it, most people to do passive recall, linearly scan everything as many times as possible. So it means that you are you're spending much less time on the thing. You need the most help on and a lot too much time on the stuff that you know too well and it's an incredibly inefficient actual, you know allocation of your cognitive resources.

Chad Owen 25:09

I love this like compounding effect of this ultra efficient way of studying in that the more the more you do it the quicker you are to learn so like for me this you know, it kind of sounds like a superpower

mike parsons 25:28

just don't go near any crypto kryptonite and you'll be fine.

Chad Owen 25:33

No, but I think again reflecting on and you and I recording this podcast and other you know courses that you and I are creating together. It's it's really I have noticed that when I have either talked on this podcast or different podcast or delivered a you know a lunch and learn or training that I don't have to go back as much or even at at all. I just I think this fact that cows reiterating here, both from academic studies and his own experience and experience with with his students is if you recall from memory and deliver a lecture, you only have to do it once for your brain to remember it. And again, I'm just like really fascinated at the superpower that our brains have to learn in this way. Um, but it's very different from the traditional way because I do remember slogging through like specifically US history I just like I was reading and rereading that textbook. Yeah. And just kind of muddling my way through that that class. If only I had fallen the I had had, how to be a straight A student back then. I know but

mike parsons 26:41

it's not too late for us or our listeners because but what we've established is the first big idea from Cal Newport which is this thought of active record, don't have passive record, make sure is active, make sure that you're able to write out share, present, teach Mental your work in an unaided way. And the whole aim is to quiz yourself to ask different questions of the body of work and to be able to produce those answers from from memory. And to make sure that I think our little secret sauce from Channel Mike is be applying it, whether it's in podcasts, in videos in talks, lunch and learns mentoring, applying it in the work that you do, and really try and apply it in many different ways naturally, and intuitively. And I think what you'll find is that you need to net net spend a lot less time to achieve mastery. So I think halfway through the show, Chad, I think that's already a pretty big idea that we can all work on. From cow.

Chad Owen 27:49

Yeah, he said it was like the one thing one of the two things that you that you take away.

mike parsons 27:55

Yeah, yeah. I mean, how I mean, that's already exciting, but I think The best news

Chad Owen 28:00

Chad is the second half of the show, we got a whole lot of tips, tricks, and hacks that can help you make this active recall approach a reality. And without having to spend too much time on it. That's like the other great part. Cows very mindful of time and how I think we as humans don't have a good conception of time, right, your time to time, the same period of time can pass really quick or really short. Oftentimes, when we're in a flow state, you know, we don't realise how much we've been working in, but we're making so much progress. So I love how he brings time into this equation. It was pretty quick. But in our second clip, he talks about this time invested in intensity of focus formula, yes, as being really important that often students just throw more time at it when actually you can get just as much leverage out of the intensity of focus. So yeah, we've got lots of tips. And hacks from cow on, on how to optimise your learning so that you can learn faster and retain things better. This first one is near and dear to me because it mirrors a technique that I've been using probably for almost 10 years now. And it's about breaking up the time chunks in which you're working. So here's here's Cal talking about his his preferred and recommended way of breaking up your work.

Unknown Speaker 29:26

My recommendation in that book was you go 15 minutes, 10 minute break, 15 minutes, 10 minute break. That's roughly the right ratio. The only caveat that I feel like I need to add now 10 years later, because of the way technologies have advanced is Be very careful about the break. In other words, you take the 10 minute break to give your mind some time to refresh and relax because it's very intense if you're doing high intensity studies, very intense, but just make sure in that break, you don't do something that can wrench your attention away and put you into a different type of world. That has its own obligations. So if you, you know, jump into an email inbox, I guess if you're a college student, it would be more like maybe like a social media feed or on the Snapchat, it throws you into a whole different mindset of like social interactions, for example, you're gonna have a hard time coming back. So when you take your 10 minute break, do something that's not going to completely change your context. calm your mind down, go for a little walk, get some water, look out the window, but but keep your attention pretty pretty much under wraps.

Unknown Speaker 30:29

Okay, so then I love this, this idea that don't blow your brain up is how I like to describe it. So when you're focused intensely, don't then go jack yourself up with more of the brain stimulating you know, social feed and kind of hyper dopamine rich, non restorative time what what would be a tip in terms of what should we do during those 10 minutes?

Unknown Speaker 30:53

Well, it's helpful to keep in mind that for like most of my college experience, which is what I was drawing from and writing this book, that's what Really before an age of laptops, right, so you weren't you weren't even have a laptop with you when you were studying this was sort of before like Wi Fi and laptops and it was before not even before smartphones, but it was before cell phones. So you know, for most of my college experience, you have a cell phone or a laptop. So just think back. What would Cal do or be able to do in this situation 10 years ago and like okay, well he wouldn't have a cell phone the look at anyone and have a laptop with you know, email or the internet on it because you have to go downstairs to the lobby of the biomedical and wait for the public computer if you want to look at the Internet and then everyone can see what you're looking at. So what would be left the cow in that situation? And basically anything that would answer you can answer that question for as a fine break. So for me that often meant I'm going to go fill up my water bottle at the water fountain or like sometimes I look at the books. on the shelf above me. I always like to play bookshelf lot. I mean, I'm a nerd. I'm an academic but you know, bookshelf lottery, like What's this, you know, just pull something off and look at it. It's stuff that's not going to blow up your brand. And just give you a little bit of a breather?

mike parsons 32:02

Yeah, I just think we can take so much from the structure. You mentioned the Pomodoro Technique, but this 15 minutes on 10 minutes off. And I think if if you just imagine Chad, that you could spend half a day once a week, doing, like, say three hours in a row 50 on 10 off key imagine how much master you could acquire over the course of a year.

Chad Owen 32:30

No, I can't imagine it's too much for me.

mike parsons 32:36

But my point here is how many of us make that plan that time and stick to that time? I mean, yes, it should be 50 on and 10 off. I think that's pretty clear. But how often do we just go to go to meetings and and and spring between deliverable? When are we taking the time for that deep work of assigning 15 minutes of just total focus 10 off, then another 50. I mean, if what I can produce in that three hours is so much.

Chad Owen 33:08

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I had an epic productive Friday, last Friday, I think because even before my butt hit the chair, I set my my time timer, I do 25 minutes, and five, just out of habit. But sometimes if I'm in a better state of flow, I'll do 5010 like Cal suggests that habit. It's, it's like every time you get to the end, and you're like, ooh, I did well, and I want to do more, and you can't you just keep going in. Yeah, like you said, you get to the end of the three hours. And you can't even accomplish more in those three hours. And maybe you had the previous two or three days even sometimes, I know, I know.

mike parsons 33:49

The The, the key thing here is make the time stick to it. But we've got so so so many more, and I want to Tips like we've got to come to I think you touched on a little bit this idea of how much time and how much focus you put into into that learning and around that cows got this great idea. So let's have a listen to him talking about and then this is in reference to time and focus, spacing it out.

Unknown Speaker 34:22

But can you talk to us about the importance of spacing out or studying time?

Unknown Speaker 34:27

Yeah, I mean, so. So this, this is probably relevant on different scales. So so on on one scale, there's the notion of when you're actually controlling your time in advance what you're, what you're really avoiding is these really long, monolithic blocks, you know, eight hours starting the evening going to the early morning hours of all trying to learn one thing as you get more and more exhausted, which has this very negative feedback loop because as you get more exhausted, your intensity of focus goes down, which means your rate of learning goes down because of our work produced formula. Then increases the amount of time you need to learn to work and is that makes you work longer, and then your intensity drops even more. And it's this sort of very negative feedback cycle. And so what's more efficient from the standpoint is that you have these more spread out in the day and in the week, intense burst because once you get by doing that is a much larger average intensity level, which means that when you sum this all up, what you need in that total hours worked section or category of that formula is much less so there is it's a little bit paradoxical, but sort of breaking stuff up spreading it out, actually means you're reducing the amount of time even though it feels a little bit less aggressive or intuitive than just what's power. You know, let's let's clear the schedule. Let's wait till night and let's just power all the way through things.

Chad Owen 35:46

This is like a smack my forehead moment, Mike.

Well, how many times have you gotten to the end of the week? where you're like, Oh, no. I have to get everything done on Friday night. And, and you spend not eight hours, not 10 hours, you spend 14 hours. On a Friday, you go in super early, right? You hit the gym at 5:30am. You're in the office by like 615 630 with your cup of coffee, and you just go all, you know, all the way through to 10pm on Friday. And by the end, you're you're you see you might have started at like a 10 or 11. In terms of energy. You end that evening at like a one. And I think that

mike parsons 36:32

counts here. Are you going to the minus as I think, because you're like I have to get the workout but I'm totally spent.

Chad Owen 36:39

Yeah. And so the brains and what Cal is pointing to is rather than spend 14 hours where you might be working at peak performance at a 10 for the first two or three hours. But by the end of the day, you're just not being productive at home. And so his thing is always work at a 10 in terms of energy. density and just space it out such that you can maintain that intensity because you and I have had really great and productive work days at work weeks, but I would say like three hours is probably my max yet operating at kind of peak efficiency and then it goes downhill quite quickly.

mike parsons 37:18

Yeah, and, and a big part of that is is my effort to avoid meetings between nine and midday. Because if I can largely protect that, that means at least there's a couple of one or two really good hours and and in the best case scenario, I will just stay at home an entire morning and I've probably got one of those on Monday I have to produce quite a significant piece of work and I know that, you know, get up early, hit the gym, come back and bash at work for about three hours and then go to the office. But in a perfect world. Here's a really interesting insight around spacing it out. If I've planned my work well enough, I will do that same process on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So I've had three days out of a week, where I've dedicated the morning completely to this piece of work. And then on the Tuesday and Thursday, for example, that can be full of meetings and calls and everything like that. But that would be the perfect weight because I've had I've let the the thinking sort of process a bit in the background or in the subconscious. And then I come back to it on the Wednesday dive meetings on Thursday, Friday come back to it, that would actually might be my ultimate spacing it out. What about you?

Chad Owen 38:38

Yeah, I use a, I use a framework where I have kind of, I call them focus and buffer days, the focus days would be like your Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, the buffer days are kind of Yeah, where you stack up all your meetings. Sometimes I even will go forward a week or two in my calendar and just put an all day event that says I'm busy. That no one else can schedule anytime. On those days like you when, you know on that Monday or Wednesday when you just really want to be undistracted and and make that, that that progress.

mike parsons 39:14

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. The next really important idea that cow has for us is is really around experimentation and the funny thing is that I am sensing something that I need to develop which is more diversity and how I learn and more experimentation with how I learn. I think it's such an important thing we sort of we find ourselves getting into a patent or a habit and not changing and sometimes we might find ourselves not even really, really doing the work. So let's let's have a listen to Cal Newport. Now let's have a look. Listen to him talking about pseudo work and this whole idea of experimentation.

Unknown Speaker 40:03

pseudo work, as you called it, versus real work. Can you talk to us about that?

Unknown Speaker 40:08

That was probably my first sort of embryonic encounter with what became the concept of deep work. And in the context of a straight A student, it was just the simple formula that seemed to be more or less correct, the more I observed, pop non grind students in the formula was, the total amount of work produced is a function of time spent multiplied by your intensity of focus. And it's a rough, not, it's not an actual equation. But the point in using that multiplication is to show that they have the same relative relationship. If you wanted to double your amount of work, you could double the amount of time you spent, but it could be equivalent to double the intensity of focus. And this is something I had observed leverage to great advantage by a lot of the really elite level study or so that was observing in school, they could bump up that intensity of focus much easier and they could follow But the amount of time they had to spend That's awesome. And then the result of that was you mentioned something funny of like you got so good at this that you were so you know, ready for the finals that you didn't even need to go study yet you didn't want to make your roommates feel bad he'd go pretend to go study while they're pulling their all nighters. So that idea that intensity, when we jack that up allows us to paradoxically get so much more done in so much less time. Right? Yeah, you know, it's funny, it was just on Tuesday, I was talking to a Georgetown student who was reading straight and using the strategies and he commiserated on exactly that point because he has the same problem. Now. He says, I feel bad during finals period, because everyone has this grim face on like, here comes the slog, you know, it's 48 hours without sleep, and he was ready. But the you know, the thing I like to emphasise from my own story was, I started school, not a good study or so my first year of school, my grades were fine, not great. And then I launched a systematic series of self experimentation in the fall of my sophomore year where I said, I'm going to very systematically experiment with different ways to handle the main academic tasks on my plate. After that semester, I got a thorough in every semester until I graduated. And I did not there's no possible mechanism that would have made me much smarter in the summer between my freshman year and my sophomore year. So really, the only independent variable that changed between those two years was my study habits. So you know, sometimes people say, Well, you got all these good grades, but how much of that's really your study skills versus maybe you were just, you know, born really smart or something like this, but I have that self imposed experiment that is really the skills that make a huge difference. I mean, it really can make a huge difference in the amount of time it requires to get really high grades.

Chad Owen 42:50

That's story from cow really sold it to me.

Just because it's interesting, because he says, you know, if you looked at a student when they first say College and they were already really high performing. You could say, Oh, well, like they're just smart. But he only made, you know, kind of good grades his freshman year. And then the only thing he changed was his study habits for his final three years. And the four point O's kind of speak for themselves there. But I just love that he was willing to do this self experiment on himself. And so what I'm taking away is, hey, maybe you were, you know, as a precursor, talking about this mic, but I think you and I and listeners can take away that maybe we should experiment with how we're learning and how we're teaching. Yeah. Because while we may not be in school, but you know, it could have dramatic effects in our professional and personal lives.

mike parsons 43:46

Yeah. And, and I think if you're looking for a simple tip on how you might move to that active recall, is take a subject that you're learning we would, I was using a sitting example earlier artificial intelligence. Let's imagine that I was giving you advice. As you're trying to, you know, master and understand artificial intelligence, I would say, read a tonne, take some notes. And then the first thing you should do is write a news article or a blog on, you know, the five most important things to know about artificial intelligence and sit down and write that article, even if you're not ready to publish. The point here is it's setting yourself an experiment or a test that makes you recall the things that you've just learned. I would give that as a great tip for experimentation. I wonder, Chad, do you have a different sort of test? for active recall for me if I was learning something, what would you do and what would you recommend to me?

Chad Owen 44:55

I was trying to think of how to make it like a simple daily practice and The first thing that came to mind was, you know, Cal shares the story of talking to himself in the library stacks. Well, what if we were to talk to ourselves in the shower? Right? So it's, you know, it's like an enclosed safe space. So maybe our partners might think we're weird if they're walking by the bathroom. But, you know, like, that could be an interesting experiment to try. So it's like, think back on something that you learned the previous day, and then just teach it to yourself in the shower. That could be that could be an interesting experiment. My wife is away this weekend. So I can do it without worrying about anyone ever hearing although my dog,

Unknown Speaker 45:40

my dog might as

mike parsons 45:42

well I think any of those suggestions are just simple acts of active recall, to test yourself to see how much you really know know something, and I think the the thing that we come back to apart from using Active Record And making, you know, good uses of time, like 15 minutes on 10 minutes off. I think there's like rounding out the sort of hacks and practical advice. There's a really big thing to cows advice for us and the learnings that we can take from him, which is about planning the activity itself. Because I think it's very easy to either be distracted, or to allow other things to get into your calendar. So let's have a listen now to Cal Newport really helping us learn by planning daily tasks.

Unknown Speaker 46:37

So let's talk about planning your day. I'm a big believer that the morning is the right time to make a plan right? Not the night before because the night before you don't know what you're going to be doing. Are you going to be out late? Are you going to be at a movie or a party? It's not a consistent time to make a plan but the morning you know, you're going to wake up and you know you're going to eat breakfast every morning. And that's the right time to look at your day ahead and plan what you're going to do. Now I think a big mistake that students make often is that they use a to do list where they just list out, oh, here's all the things in the perfect world that I would want to get done today. I don't believe in to do list because you're ignoring both how much time you actually have free during the day, you're also ignoring how long those tasks are actually going to take. And if you don't actually acknowledge those two pieces of information, it's impossible to make a good plan. So I recommend instead doing what I call time blocking, actually take a sheet of paper, write out the different hours of the day on that paper. block out all the hours that you know you have obligations, like classes or meetings or meals, for example, and then look at what you have left those free blocks of the blocks of time you actually have for doing work during the day. Now you can make your plan by taking those free blocks and assigning specific work to them. And doing so in a realistic manner. Don't take your problem set for a math class that you know deep down is going to take you a few hours to complete. Don't put that in a 30 minute Block, make sure that you actually have three hours of time for it and so on. So your plan should conclude with you actually having a schedule for your day where you've assigned specific tasks, the specific blocks of time that you know is going to be free. To me that's a quality schedule that you can actually use to get through a day in an effective manner.

Chad Owen 48:18

Sounds a little familiar, huh?

Unknown Speaker 48:22

Oh my gosh, like

Chad Owen 48:24

this. This is the seed of the idea. Yeah, that he that he put into deep work, the first book that we brought to the podcast,

mike parsons 48:31

much like scenic, you can start to see how all the books kind of tie together as a body of work on how they see the world. But you know, Chad, the thing that was coming to my mind as I was listening to that clip, is it's like bachelor email, look at social media as infrequently as humanly possible. And if it's not planned in your agenda, you have to have the show. If it's not in the agenda, it's not happening. Because I mean, every day when I go through my To Do List, I'm confronted with things that didn't get into the agenda. Like other things, push them out. And I think it's don't it's so true. You if you want to plan a huge deep work session, you gotta go in and you talked about it earlier in the show, you gotta go put it in, and you gotta lock it off, and you gotta stick to it.

Chad Owen 49:18

Yeah, I will. I don't do it enough. I mean, I don't actually go into my calendar programme, and block this time out. I really need to get back into that habit. But a secondary benefit that I loved when I had been doing it consistently, is it really helps you look back and see the work that you have been able to do. Yeah, so for me, I think there's a couple of different modes or contexts that that I'm in when I'm doing my work. So there's, like, I don't really have labels for them. But you know, there's there's the I need to generate ideas and content and And in create mode. And then there's the I need to be really highly focused and kind of in more analytical and dissecting kind of mode. And then there's like a very passive, passive mode. And so those are the three kind of modes that I find myself working in, and I try to map those modes to my energy levels. And I think cow gets into this much, much deeper and deeper work. But it's like, I want to be sure that like you, I'm a morning person. So like, if I know that I have to be kind of on fire and produce that I need to block out that time in the morning. And then the lower energy activities I push into the afternoon, so that I can do my emails and my phone calls and my status updates and all that later. Hmm.

mike parsons 50:46

Why do you think I'm a bit like you? I am sometimes good at blocking out time and planning it and so forth. And then as a habit falls away, I don't know what is it? Do we get too busy? Do we just watch We, it's such a powerful thing, and I loved your idea of being able to look back and say, How did I spend my time? Like that? I mean, that's Yeah, if you don't measure it, like you kind of prove it, but why do we kind of we stay disciplined for a while and then we kind of drift off? Why

Chad Owen 51:13

does that happen? For me? I think it's because I don't have a daily ritual. I love how he talked about just do it in the morning, you know, you're gonna do something for breakfast, like whatever you wake up, you brush your teeth, and then block out your time. I often I'm, I'm a bit of a batcher. So like, I'll take a lot of similar tasks. And I'll and I'll try and do them all at once. But I think maybe I've been trying to bash my calendaring as well. So I just need to like not try to plan a week or a month into the future, and maybe just be focused on just the day ahead. So maybe you and I can hold each other accountable to wake up in the morning and block out our day. So that we're sure that we're committing that time that we need to do the most important work.

mike parsons 51:57

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, the last thought we have around hacks, tips and tricks is really a nod whether you talk about pomodoro, or getting things done, or the myriad of structural task based management tools. This this last clip in this bunch of hacks is cow talking about how you can really see the role for this sort of task management approach and some of the tools you might use to do it. So let's have a listen to Cal Newport talking about getting things done.

Unknown Speaker 52:36

So the other piece of Time management is actually managing corralling all the obligations in your life. Our goal here is to make sure that you're not keeping track of obligations only in your head, which can be a source of stress. We also want to make sure that you're not forgetting different obligations in your life. So this idea that you don't keep any obligations in your head is not something unique to the students. I study this I actually an idea that's been around for a long time, even in the world of business. There's a guy named David Allen, who introduced us to the world of business, and many of the top executives in the world follow the same idea. So how do you make this happen? Well, I have a simple suggestion for you. Keep a small notebook with you in your bag, all day long. Throughout the day, if something pops up, that's a new obligation in your life, you agreed to meet someone for a study group meeting the next day, whatever it is, you write it down in the notebook right away. So in this point, it's out of your head, it's written down somewhere. And that's half the battle. If your mind doesn't believe that, you're going to later go back and look at what's in that notebook. It's not going to forget it, it's going to feel like it needs to keep reviewing this thought so you don't forget it. So the second half of the battle here is when you're planning your day each morning, one of the things you have to do is take out this notebook. Go through everything you wrote down in there, and transfer it on to some sort of master list where all of your obligations are written down and organised by Type. So you write down those obligations on your master list. You look over all those obligations so that you can be sure that nothing's going to be forgotten that you check this every day. And then when you're planning your day, you can take some of the tasks and obligations off this list and put them into your plan. If you do this, your mind will trust that as soon as you write down something on that notebook that it's going to get captured and it's going to get reviewed. And therefore it can release its worries about it and release that stress. And also you can be sure that it's not going to be forgotten it'll eventually get done.

Chad Owen 54:32

And this is this is kind of the Getting Things Done David Allen one inbox one capture to rule them all. process. So how do you Chad? How do you make your How do you capture those?

mike parsons 54:49

That lineage of things that come up during the day? How do you do it?

Chad Owen 54:52

Oh, I i've been digging out on productivity questions like that ever since I discovered the original book, getting things done. Right, David Allen, it was probably I don't know when the book was published, but I think I discovered it in 2005 2006. Maybe I've probably tried 100 different methods. The current, I'm not even joking. The current method that's really working for me is I just asked myself this question in the morning, and it kind of directs my focus for the day. So I asked myself, What three things Am I procrastinating most on right now. And then I list those three things. And then those are the only three things that I'm doing that day. So if it's an obligation, it goes straight into my calendar, so if I know that it's a meeting, you know, it's got a time and a place that goes into my calendar. But for everything else, I just asked myself that question, hey, what am I procrastinating most on? And that's actually been insanely effective at getting me to do the things that I actually need to be doing.

mike parsons 55:52

That's super that's super, yeah, I have very much a thing of delivering Creating or making one high value deliverable and in my mind is a meaningful piece of work. So today, I'm going to be in good shape because I've only got to lunchtime and I've already produced a podcast great tick. But I actually decided to do that once a day, every single day at work and it sort of compounds. And I only choose one, one high value deliverable because sometimes it's really hard for me to make the time to actually deliver on something and when I don't do it in my to do list application, which manages all my to do's I actually reschedule it to the following day and I don't mark it as having being done and that that ritual really helps me. But more over I think there's one other thing I just want to mention here chat is I when I discovered task lists, and I've now kind of migrated into using the to do is that the biggest thing is I instantly A new to do's new tasks to the list. So I don't have the terrible feeling I used to have before task list, which was, oh my gosh, it's the end of the day did I remember everything and that that terrible feeling of going? I forgot, right? And it causes this sort of stress doesn't it? When you're trying to like remember everything in your mind. So I feel such relief of just adding things instantly to my task list. And it's once it's in there. I know. I'll come back to the test as many times throughout the day, and I'm managing my productivity. Well, with that, that stress of trying to remember everything.

Chad Owen 57:37

Yeah, I've gone back and forth with with lists and no lists and mind maps and lists of lists, organised lists of lists and outlines. And I think for me, it's been about simplifying, I'd love your idea of just what you I pick three things you chose one, you're like, I'm just going to ship this one thing, and then my day is a success. I think there's a lot that we can learn from that but the the important thing that cow is talking about is the thing that happens in your brain when you've written it down somewhere you know, it's been captured and therefore that can clear space for other things in your brain. I do heavily use Evernote as kind of my external brain. So all of those like thoughts and call notes and you know, everything else just gets dumped into there as as again, like an external brain and repository for all of those things so that I can kind of clear up my mental ram for more important things.

Unknown Speaker 58:35

Yeah,

mike parsons 58:36

exactly. Exactly. Well, my gosh, Chad, I mean, we we've crashed probably two or three really big ideas from all of this. work from Cal Newport on how to learn how to be a great student. We've got active recall, making sure you can can if you want to learn something you should be able to teach get up and without a dist. tell that story and there's a whole bunch of techniques to that. There's certainly a big job around managing time splitting between deep work and a break, planning your day planning your week planning your tasks. There's a whole lot of things that need to come together to be a great learner, who some things are going to change. But we got we got one more thought from cow, don't we? Chad, we got one more.

Chad Owen 59:24

Yeah, we had probably five or six more super practical tips that we could, that we could go on and on with. But there was an interesting clip from cow talking about the kind of romantic idea of a scholar and as kind of like a true nerd and academic, it was just too good of a clip to pass up. But it's also an inspiration and and reminder for us that it's like really never too late to start learning how to learn better, so that again, we can kind of get those compound gains and returns on our learning.

Unknown Speaker 59:59

I wrote this series of blog post after the book came out a few years later called the romantic scholar that that really gets into the psychology of building like a college experience in which you're, you're engaged with the ideas your life has a very reasonable amount of stress in it yet you're still doing impressive things is going to open up impressive options, you're still showing off all your mind has to have but it's this rhythm is so different. It's I work and then, but it's not all day and I had my evenings free and things are spread out and I avoid heart attack semesters and overload days and, and because I control my time and have reasonable schedules, I get really into the subject and I'm going to hear speakers on the thing I'm studying and now I feel much more intrinsically motivated. So you can really craft using these type of ideas as a foundation, but then building off of them. You can craft a really low, good academic college life, a life in which you're learning, you're setting up potential possibilities for yourself, but you're also happy, your stress is low. Your engagement of what you're doing is high This is kind of the standard I want college students to have. I mean just I, I don't like this notion which is increasingly common, especially at elite schools, that college somehow is a thing that you're going to white knuckle and you're going to suffer through like I gotta get through it. It's all about just like can I get through with heavy course loads and grind through and somehow if I do that on the other side, everything will get better. But you know, it doesn't life is just as hard on the other side is colleges inside jobs are just as hard as it is to try to get good grades. So college is the perfect time to start adopting mindsets using the type of ideas you talked about so much on your show where you say I want to craft a good and meaningful and successful but also good in a lot of different aspect lives. That's the time to start that type of crafting and something as simple as well. Let me rethink how I study is a good starting point for for a really long journey that has a lot of important destinations.

mike parsons 1:01:52

I really love that clip Chad because what he what county port is pointing out to us here is learning should Be a joy. And I think you don't have to grind your way through, it's so important to truly get into something and to discover and to explore an idea. And all that shapes and forms, experiment, play with it. And I actually think has given us a complete playbook on how to do it. How do you feel? How is your learning state written being reset by Cal Newport today, Chad,

Chad Owen 1:02:28

you could replace the, you know, word work or profession with college in that last clip, and I think it's as applicable, if not more, I think work should be a joy. And, you know, by applying maybe even just one of the techniques that we've learned here on the show, today, I think in can get us a little bit closer to finding that joy in everyday work. You know, we've got ways of managing our time and schedules, even getting down You know, to the hour by hour basis, how we're how we're creating that intense focus, which will mean that we don't have to maybe spend as much time on on projects if we can up the amount of focus. And we've also got, I think, kind of like the master technique of active recall, if we want to be learning in a very rapid fashion.

mike parsons 1:03:20

Yeah, totally. And I mean, there's almost a whole nother show and learning should not only be a joy, but so should so should work. I feel like that gets us on to the whole subject of where do we go from here we've had four amazing Cal Newport shows. The series is complete to where do we travel next. Chad,

Chad Owen 1:03:41

is always such a hard choice. But I I had suggested that maybe we take a slight break from from diving straight into another author. We've already got at least two other authors queued up with at least another eight books between them. It's October 2019 and there's really just been one story dominating the tech entrepreneurship startup world. And I don't have to tell you it is Mike. Yeah, I'm time coming to you, you know, over the digital airwaves, sitting in one of their conference rooms, if that gives you a better hand. Yes,

mike parsons 1:04:21

I think there has been a wealth of discussion not only about a little company called the week company, or formerly known as we work, but also an equally about the founder and entrepreneur who led this wonderful company. There's been a lot of discussion and we have seen one of the most remarkable turnarounds from good to bad, and literally as we're talking, this company today, has literally less than four weeks before it runs out of money. And yet two months ago was valued at $46 billion.

Chad Owen 1:05:07

Yeah. So I what Mike and I would love to do is kind of wind back the clock, maybe learn what we can about the original business model and the founding of the company, the successes that it's had and maybe some of the missteps along the way, as a bit of a cautionary tale. For us. I'm sure we could probably spend about six hours on the subject but will will distil it down into one hour of of interesting discussion and debate will have to bring up some clips from the Hot or Not show Mike because if I remember correctly, I was I was contrarian Lee quite bullish on wework.

mike parsons 1:05:52

Well, you know, it's funny you say that because I have quite a hypothesis about we work And to we can't

Chad Owen 1:06:03

give it all away here at the end of cows show mine.

mike parsons 1:06:07

But but let's just say this there is a tonne to learn because for all the negativity there it is around the company and around and a Newman the founder. Here's the truth. It's a great product. However there's a big catch to that product. But we'll tell you about that in the next show. But it is a great product so there's still a tonne to learn. There's a tonne we can take out of this, we can take into our own journeys to create new breakthrough

Chad Owen 1:06:36

products. I love that cliffhanger Mike, thank you for closing the show on and with a bit of suspense and tension. I'm I love it. But it's not just the work that we're going to pick up and learn from. We've got the authors Renee Brown, and Jim Collins on the docket which will get us well into the new here and bring some amazing content from some really fantastic books. I haven't read both of their entire catalogues, but I've read most of their books. So I'm really excited to bring those onto the podcast and share them with you. Super.

mike parsons 1:07:15

Well. Listen, Chad, if you wanted, I mean, you could not have got a better reset on how to think about learning, I think what a gift from Cal Newport not only on learning, but how we can strip all the noise away in life and in work and focus on the stuff that we can be our very best selves that so what a great series What a great complementary series, I think to the Simon cynics series. It's been great to share with you. I know it's getting late, but I hope tomorrow morning in New York. Do you feel like you might awaken with a fresh vigour for learning?

Chad Owen 1:07:53

Yeah, I might even be lecturing myself in the shower. We'll see.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:57

You can do it

mike parsons 1:07:58

at full volume of course. Haha because half will be will be out on an adventure. I want to thank you for, for sharing all of your thoughts with me. I'm just loving doing the show with you, Chad. So thank you to you, thank you to our listeners, all that great feedback. Remember, go on to iTunes or whatever pod catcher you're using Stitcher, Google Play Store. Tell us what you think. Write us share it with some friends. We do really appreciate it. If you do want to track us down, you can do so at moonshots. Chad, I think we might be done. I think you might be ready for bedtime. Right?

Chad Owen 1:08:37

Yeah. One last walk with the dog. And Yep, it'll be it'll be Friday. But I hope you have a wonderful rest of the Friday and a great weekend.

mike parsons 1:08:47

Thank you my friend. Thank you, Chad. Thank you to all our listeners. We've come to the end of the Cal Newport learning show the Cal Newport series is complete. Next show we go deep into the world of wework and beyond. Thanks for being with us on this journey. That's a wrap of the moonshots podcast.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai