Shadowing Practice: How Do I Reverse Brain Rot? - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Not long ago, I published a splashy op-ed for the New York Times.
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It was titled, There's a Good Reason Why You Can't Concentrate.
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Now, it argues that technology is rapidly diminishing our ability to think
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and that this is a major problem for both the individual as well as the success of our society more broadly.
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In it, I propose that the solution is a revolution in cognitive fitness,
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not unlike the physical fitness revolution that emerged in the second half of the 20th century.
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Here's how I conclude the piece.
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I write, My intention is to spur a shift in understanding that can build into a larger revolution.
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I'm done seeding my brain, the core of all that makes me who I am, to the financial interest of a small number of technology billionaires or the short-sighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles.
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It's time to move past fretting about our slide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something about it.
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Now, this essay has made the rounds, and I'm proud of it, but there's one question that I've been asked more than any other by people who read it.
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How do I become more cognitively fit?
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I gave a few ideas in the essay, but people want a more systematic brain fitness routine,
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a sustainable way to push back against the digital forces trying to make us dumber.
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Well, it's Monday, which means it's time for a Monday-advised episode of this show, which seems like the perfect opportunity to dive deeper into this question.
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All right, so here's the plan.
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In the weeks since this piece has come out, I've refined my cognitive fitness program into five different components, and I'm going to go through each of these.
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I'll justify why each makes sense and then give some practical advice for making that component work.
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Now, these five components add up to a basic cognitive fitness plan that I think basically everybody should consider adopting.
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So if you've been feeling like you've literally been losing your mind to technology and you're ready to start taking back control, then this episode is for you.
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As always, I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world.
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And we'll get started right after the music.
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All right, so let's get started with our first component here.
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We'll do a reveal, and it is read every day.
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I think this is a very effective tool.
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In physical fitness, rather, there's a very effective idea is that you need to lay a base of regular activity.
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This is my inspiration here.
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So in physical activity, physical fitness, we might say, for example, you need to walk at least 7,000 to 10,000 steps a day.
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This is associated with all sorts of positive health benefits.
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Well, I think we need a similar base layer of fitness when it comes to cognitive training, and I think that should be reading.
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Reading rewires your brain in a way that literally makes you smarter.
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I want to actually read a quote from my New York Times piece about exactly this effect.
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Making sense of written text exercises our minds in important ways.
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We develop what the cognitive neuroscientist Marianne Wolfe calls deep reading processes
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that rewire and retrain neuronal regions in ways that increase the complexity and nuance of what we're able to understand.
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Deep reading is our species' bridge to insight and novel thought, she writes.
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All right, so what's being said here is that the more time you spend reading, the more you're rewiring your brain to basically harness together different regions that were originally evolved for different purposes,
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but when combined gives you this intellectual superpower, complicated thought, nuanced thoughts that brings more of your brain matter to bear at trying to understand
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and produce original ideas and original understanding.
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But there's another justification for daily reading as well.
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It gives you practice with the fundamental skill of aiming your mind's eye at a desired internal target.
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Now, we're already naturally born to be very good at aiming our attention at a salient external target.
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So if I say, I want you to really pay attention in this basketball game to player number 23, we're very good at that oh, I can fix my attention and just watch that player.
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But when it comes to putting our mind's eye on an internal topic like a thought or an idea, that requires practice.
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That doesn't come naturally.
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Reading is giving you that practice.
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So if we read more, we're going to rewire our brain to be capable of smarter thought,
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and we are getting practice directing our mind's eye in a way that will help us actually take advantage of that wiring.
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All right, so if that's the big idea for the first component, let me give you some practical tips for actually succeeding.
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If you're not a big reader, I think the key is to start with reading things that you are excited to read.
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Do not be snobby early on.
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Do not think, I need to be reading a good book that's going to impress my book club friends, or I need to be reading a big profound book, or otherwise it's a waste of my time.
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Now, the act of decoding the symbols themselves at first is what we want to get used to.
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The act of putting your mind's eye on one target for
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a sustained amount of time is something we want to get used to.
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So pick something you're excited to read.
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It doesn't matter if it's simple or fun or trashy, if it's a romance novel or like a highly emotional Colleen Hoover novel,
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or if you're reading a really trashy genre, adventure fiction, doesn't matter.
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whatever you're excited about coming back to.
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Now, I would start with 15 to 20 pages a day.
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Let me tell you how you hit that target consistently.
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Read with your lunch, read in bed before you go to sleep.
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That'll get you the 15, 20 pages, no problem.
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So it's a good automatic way to get to that base layer.
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Over time, you want to increase those pages, maybe get closer to 30 to 50 pages.
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This might require that you develop a little bit more of a reading habit.
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Oh, like I have some time Before dinner, I'm going to actually sit and read.
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I'm on the subway going to work.
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I'm going to sit to read.
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So as you get more used to reading, it'll be easier to develop a reading habit where you read in more times during your day.
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The final place I want you to get is once you're used to reading, you can aim your mind's eye.
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You're starting to build those connections.
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It's to integrate more what I am going to call hard books.
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So you start with books.
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You're just excited to read.
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So you do it.
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once you're up to this 30 to 50 pages a day and aren't having much trouble hitting it, make one book in three quote-unquote hard.
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And by hard, I think of that as if it's nonfiction, it's presenting sophisticated original ideas or analysis.
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And if it's fiction, it's going to be a more challenging literary genre that is ultimately going to be more rewarding,
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but takes more concentration to understand what's going on, who's who, slower consumption to make better sense of what's actually unfolding.
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folding.
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So you can think of the difficulty of the book you intake, like your mile time, if you're an amateur jogger.
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If you're new to running, you're not going to be like, hey, I'm just going to whip off a 530 mile because I really want to do it.
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You're not going to be able to do it.
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But on the other hand, if you're continuing to train and you're running more and you're building up your endurance, then you can see that mile time coming down.
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That's the way to think about hard books.
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The more you read and the more sophistication you begin to interleave in, the more ease you'll have with tackling more and more difficult books.
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And so where you want to end up here is this, a solid amount of reading every day, one out of three books hard.
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One little addendum I'll add to
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that is you should feel free to reduce the daily page count if you're reading a very hard book.
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So what matters there is the slow contemplation, not the raw pages at that point.
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All right, let's get back to the show.
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All right, so that is component number one of five of our plan for cognitive fitness.
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Let's go to component number two.
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Don't avoid writing.
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Now, here's something I've learned.
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Most people don't like writing.
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They avoid it if they can.
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And now that we've introduced generative AI tools
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that are capable of doing more and more of especially like the low stakes everyday writing for you, many people are writing less than ever before.
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What I'm suggesting here is that you consider rejecting this trend in your own life
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and seeking out as many opportunities to write as possible.
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Now, to be clear, I understand why people don't like writing.
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This is not a moral failure.
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It's actually a physiological reality, a rational response to a physiological reality.
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I want to read a quote I wrote in a New
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Yorker piece I published a couple years ago about what happens in the brain when you write.
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All right, so here's what I wrote.
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Writing is hard.
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It requires us to use multiple parts of the brain in an improbable symphony of high-strain effort.
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Our hippocampus summons relevant facts.
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The prefrontal cortex tries to organize them.
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A brain region known as Broca's area helps us narrate in a familiar inner voice.
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Our verbal memory stores and manipulates the narration as we transfer to the page.
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Meanwhile, our brain recruits our spatial working memory, which evolved to track our location in physical space, to orient our words within a whole.
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So this is why we feel resistance to writing.
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We basically have to orchestrate many, many regions of our brain to work together in a way that they weren't evolved to do.
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It's hard, and we feel strain.
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But here's the thing, that sense of strain or difficulty
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that you experience when you face the blank page serves a useful purpose from a perspective of cognitive fitness.
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If we think of reading as helping to rewire your brain in a way that makes it capable of smarter thoughts,
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then writing we can think about is an activity that actually then makes use of those capabilities.
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It makes your brain more capable.
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It takes those yoked together regions of your brain, reverses the flow, and says, let's use this to produce original thoughts.
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We wired these to understand complicated thoughts.
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Now we can use them to produce original thoughts.
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So if we want to follow the fitness analogy we've been using here, reading is sort of like building a cardiovascular base and getting your body used to activity.
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You know, I jog, I walk every day, I stretch, I'm no longer inactive.
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Writing is like the intense gym workout.
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You need that base to be able to go to the gym and do a hard workout without just ripping every muscle,
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but it's that hard workout that's actually going to then grow demonstrable strength.
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So writing creates more strain and resistance than reading.
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It's harder, but it gives us a lot of cognitive strength.
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And if you think about that way, I think it makes more sense.
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Like you can walk and do steps and maybe even get in light runs every day.
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So you should be reading every day.
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Writing is like your gym workout.
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You want to seek out writing, but also recognize that it's going to require more concentration.
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It's harder.
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It's a harder thing, but we get the bigger gains from it.
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So I want you to change your mindset about writing.
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instead of thinking of that strain of facing the blank page to write that group email as an intolerable feeling, like I would do anything to get away from this.
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Instead, think of that strain you feel when facing the blank page, like the burn of a muscle in the gym.
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If you're working out, you learn to retrain your brain to say, ooh, I like that feeling.
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That means I'm about to get stronger.
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Yeah, it's hard in the moment, but I'm going to feel good afterwards and I'm going to get stronger.
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That's how I want you to think about the strain of writing.
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Do not flee it.
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Do not say, Gen AI will do this, and somehow this will make me more productive, as if that's really the bottleneck to your value production is how quickly you write the occasional email.
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It's just you fleeing the strain.
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Don't.
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You want to get that muscle stronger.
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All right, so here's some practical tips.
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Your self-perception matters.
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So you say, hey, I'm someone who likes to write.
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Just keep telling yourself that.
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Make that part of your identity.
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When our group at work is like, hey, who wants to send this message to the client?
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You be the one who says, I can do it.
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I can write it.
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I like writing.
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I'm good at writing.
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I don't mind doing it.
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Two, study technique when you read.
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Hey, why was this article good?
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What's the author they're doing here?
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Why is this flowing so well?
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Oh, look at this rhythm.
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Look at this switching back and forth between A and B.
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Look at this integration of quotes.
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It's like quote, sentence, quote, explanation, callback.
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Begin looking for, analyzing, understanding, and appreciate the art of writing in your reading.
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What you're doing there is you're pulling out techniques that you can then utilize in your own writing.
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It's going to make your own writing feel better.
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Use journaling or if you have a newsletter or whatever it is, but have some way that you are writing regularly, but also doing it in a way that forces you to structure your thoughts.
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That's why I like journaling or maybe if you're publishing a small newsletter, these activities force you to not just write words,
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but to use the writing to organize your thoughts, to take something that seems kind of clear in your head and have that feedback loop of like, how do I express this clearly on words?
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Oh, it wasn't as clear as I thought in my head.
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And that feedback makes me clarify it.
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And then the writing helps me again.
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and you get much more complicated thoughts out of it.
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You have to practice structuring your thoughts with text.
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You need something that you're doing semi-regularly that does force you to do that.
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It really could even be if you're reading interesting books, just taking notes in a Word file somewhere about the core ideas from each chapter as you read it.
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Even that internal exercise alone can help you make sense of thoughts
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and add much more structure to the thoughts that are in your head.
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I also want you psychologically to acclimatize to the 10-minute rule.
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So the hardest part about writing is the first 10 minutes.
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That's the part where you feel the peak intolerable seeming resistance because, again, remember that symphony of brain regions I talked about earlier.
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You have to coordinate a lot of your brain together before you can effectively start producing words.
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That takes time.
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That could take 10 minutes.
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So until all of those areas are successfully connected together and firing together, the writing is going to feel really bad.
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But then once they are, it gets easier.
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So if you're used to that, oh, the first 10 minutes are going to stink and then it's going to feel better.
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It feels much more tolerable.
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Like I know how this movie plays out.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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This is really hard.
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I'm writing nonsense, but it's going to get better once I get to the other side of that 10 minutes.
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So really acclimatize yourself to that.
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And I think you're going to find writing to be less demanding.
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All right.
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So we've got two components of my cognitive fitness routine.
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Let's bring up the big board again.
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it's time for component number three here comes the big reveal go on thinking walks alright here's what I mean by that
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Jesse's amused by my tape I think it's dramatic Jesse what do you think
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I kind of like it alright those who are listening don't know you're missing a real
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I would say and Jesse tell me if I'm correct me
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if I'm wrong here avatar caliber effects we are deploying in this episode right now
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Just that's what I want you to imagine is actually happening on the screen.
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All right, let's keep going.
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What do I mean by a thinking walk?
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I want you to go for a walk several times a week.
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Do not bring your phone.
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If you have to have your phone, have it buried in a bag.
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Put on the ringer and put a headphone in your ear so if it rings, you'll hear it.
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So you're not checking it.
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It's actually going to be a pain to get it out.
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On the walk, I want you to think about something important to you.
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It could be professional.
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It could be personal.
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It could be a problem you need to solve.
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It could be something you're working through or maybe you're brainstorming or daydreaming about something you're excited about, but a solitary target that you're turning your mind towards.
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The key is to get practice on this walk of turning your intention inwards
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and making sense of some sort of information or yourself.
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That there's exterior distractions around and you're able to turn your intention internally
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and actually operate in an internal world of abstract thoughts.
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Now, in an age of constant algorithmically optimized diversion, we're sort of losing our comfort with this type of self-reflection.
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And I really think this is a problem from a cognitive fitness standpoint.
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Self-reflection is where you make sense of your life.
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It's where you develop your sense of self.
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It's where your best ideas come from.
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And it's very cognitively demanding because, again, we love to look at the tiger.
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We have a hard time turning inward.
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So it requires practice, and thinking walks are a great way to do it.
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I really think we underestimate now what we're losing when we don't spend time with our own thoughts.
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There's a famous book, for example, it was published back in 1948.
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It was called The Seven Story Mountain.
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It's the autobiography of Thomas Merton, who goes from being a sort of a drift academic in New York to a Trappist monk down in Kentucky.
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If you read this book, and I reread it recently, I have a first edition of it, his transformation from this unhappy academic to a monk.
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It's all about self-reflection.
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He dramatizes throughout this memoir his thoughts, his engagement with his thoughts, his dialogue with himself.
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It's all discernment.
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It's all exploration of what is going on inside his own head.
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Let me read you a quote from the book.
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This is a key scene when Merton gets this big feeling of inspiration from reading a Gerard Manly Hopkins poem.
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Hopkins is a sort of Jesuit poet and thinker.
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And he turns inward to try to make sense of this feeling and has a big revelation.
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All right.
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So let me read from the book here.
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Suddenly I couldn't bear it no longer and got into my raincoat
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and started down the stairs to walk to the local Catholic parish.
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And then everything inside me began to sing, to sing with peace.
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Later while walking the late night streets after a particularly debaucherous night, a crystal clear thought emerges.
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I'm going to be a priest.
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Now I'm adding there, there's a little bit of the quotes from the book, and some of that is my own summary of it.
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But basically what I'm capturing here is there's these key scenes
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in the book where he's reacting to the strong feeling from a poem, goes walking, thinking about it, thinks about it the next night after a hard night of partying,
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introspecting, turning his attention inwards and realizing, I think I need to be a priest.
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That's self-reflection.
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That's discernment.
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But it's not just about understand yourself.
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It's also about cognitive fitness.
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If you can turn your mind inward and keep it on a target, not only does it make your own life better, it makes your brain stronger for almost any type of purpose.
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All right, so here's some practical tips.
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These walks can be short at first.
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Maybe you do like one long one each week, like on the weekend, but otherwise these can be like relatively short walks.
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I'm just going around the block.
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Just get used to that rhythm.
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As As I mentioned before, if you absolutely have to bring your phone, put it in a place where you can't do a quick check, right?
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Because your short-term motivation system is always measuring the cost of various activities towards the benefit.
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So if the phone is in your pocket, it's saying we can pick that up and look at it.
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That's very low friction to do, but we're almost certainly going to get a reward for doing that.
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The reward wins over the cost.
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Let's do it.
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But if the phone is in the bottom of your bag, it's like actually the cost of having to stop
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and open the bag and go in and get it that might outweigh the reward of what we see on like TikTok.
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So actually I'm not going to generate a sense of motivation to do it.
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So it's easier to avoid distraction if you make the distraction less available.
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I think the gold standard is just don't have your phone, but if you do make it less accessible, it can also help if at the end of these walks, you journal your insights.
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So it forces you through this exercise of like, let me try to structure and make clear
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in a physical artifact what it was that I was wrestling with inside my mind.
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That's a feedback function that over time clarifies your internal thinking.
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So you need to think about what did I figure out on this walk?
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And when you write it down, you're like, oh, maybe that's not as clear as I thought.
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And that's going to actually help you get more cognitive fitness out of this actual exercise.
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All right, we're making good progress here.
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Let's go back up to the big board.
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It's time for our fourth item.
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The fourth component of my cognitive fitness routine, plug in your phone.
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You may have heard me talk about this before, but I think it's absolutely vital, so I actually want to emphasize it.
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When you're at home, do not have your phone with you.
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Keep it plugged in.
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I suggest keeping it plugged in in the kitchen.
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You can put on the ringer, so if someone calls, you can go look for it.
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You can go in there to check in on messages or to look things up.
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If you're waiting for someone to text you about something important and you worry about missing it, tell them, hey, my phone's in the other room,
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so call when you're ready and I'll hear the ring and then I'll know to come see what's going on.
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The key is to spend hours each day in your house without your phone there as a constant companion.
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Now, this might seem weird at first.
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Like, why am I artificially not holding on to my phone?
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But actually, the weird thing is always having your phone with you.
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I call this the constant companion model of phone usage, and it's not intrinsic to the device.
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This is actually an idea I've been writing about for a while now, that the original idea for a smartphone was not to be something you have on you at all times.
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That actually evolved later
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after the advent of the Apple App Store
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and the discovery by the social media companies that if people keep their phone with them at all times, they can exponentially increase the amount of engagement they get.
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So the constant companion model of using your phone is not some deterministic inevitability of having a smartphone.
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It's a business model based on fracking your attention.
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So the weird thing is actually having the phone with you at all time, not keeping it plugged in while you're in your house.
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So this is one of the best ways to fight back against this.
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Now, why does this matter?
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Because it gives you lots of practice doing things without that constant short-term motivation ping of pick up the phone, pick up the phone, pick up the phone,
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you don't realize the extent to
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which you're battling against your short-term motivation system with every single thing you do when the phone is with you.
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People report when they run this technique
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that it feels like a weight has been lifted off of their brain
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or they've been given some sort of highly potent synthetic Adderall.
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Because without that constant battle against your short-term motivation system to pick up your phone, you focused effortlessly.
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you get clarity you didn't have before.
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Every show you watch, conversations at the table, reading a book, doing chores, doing all these things without
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that temptation to pick up the phone completely changes your experience of what it can be like in the world, and that makes your mind much stronger.
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This is a great way to build up cognitive fitness.
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So here's some practical tips about it.
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If you want to listen to a podcast like mine during chores, use AirPods.
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If your house is large enough that you're going to another floor and the AirPods can't reach to where your phone is, then you can bring the phone to whatever floor you're on and plug it in somewhere there, but don't put it on your person.
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Train people who are used to texting you and getting rapid responses
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that you don't have the phone on your person when you're in your house.
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So if it's in the evening or the morning, they might have to call if they want to get your attention.
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And of course, the other advanced tip here is make the phone itself less desirable by taking off any app
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that makes money from your engagement, any social app, for example, take that off your phone.
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And this will give you a sort of diluted simulation of the phone plugged in effect
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when you're away from the house and the phone might be with you.
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The less interesting the phone is, the less strongly your short-term motivation system fights to try to get you to pick it up,
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and you get more training and practice just keeping your focus on whatever you happen to be doing.
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So it's a great way to pick up cognitive fitness.
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I sort of think of this as the stop smoking analogy.
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That's like the right analogy here.
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Spend a lot of time each day without your phone.
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It's like if you're trying to get stronger, Yeah, I think you should stop smoking.
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That sort of background activity that over time is making everything else harder.
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That's how I think about this.
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All right, we're down to our fifth and final piece of my cognitive fitness components.
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Let's give the big reveal.
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Learn a hard skill.
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This is the final component of my plan.
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Master a skill that requires you to focus to get better, but that also gives you clear rewards.
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You get a clear signal that, oh, I am getting better.
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So I have to focus to get better, but then I get a clear reward when I do.
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I think athletic pursuits fall into this, golf or tennis or pickleball or whatever it is.
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As you work harder on this skill, you get a clear reward of, oh, I'm getting better shots or I'm scoring more points.
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I think musical pursuits are obvious as well.
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Oh, I can play this song that's hard and it's cool and I couldn't play it before.
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I'm clearly getting better.
385
Artistic crafts or pursuits, you can see the same thing oh, I'm better at knitting and you can see it because the sweater is more impressive.
386
So I think this is a great way to build up skills.
387
Now, actually, last week I had the author Brad Stolberg on the show
388
to talk about how building a disciplined practice can make you less distractible, right?
389
So, for example, he uses weightlifting, powerlifting as a centering force for his own cognitive life.
390
And so that's part of it, right?
391
If you're learning a hard skill, it builds up a sense of discipline so you can resist distractions easier, but there's other cognitive fitness advantages here as well.
392
One of the big ones, I think, is it helps train your long-term motivation system that when we focus on something hard,
393
over time we get really meaningful rewards.
394
The more your long-term motivation system can get involved in the game, the more of these sort of hard-won meaningful rewards that you introduce into your life,
395
the more primacy your long-term motivation system gets over the short-term system.
396
The long-term system can swap it, right?
397
So if the short-term system is pick up your phone, pick up your phone, you know what can squash that?
398
The long-term system can come in and say, no, we're going to keep practicing the guitar because I have learned the rewards of mastering these songs are great.
399
And it's much bigger than the reward of seeing something interesting on TikTok.
400
So I can just turn down the volume on that short-term motivation system, and you're much easily able to keep your attention focused.
401
So the more experiences you give your long-term motivation system of successfully reaping long-term rewards,
402
the more you have the ability to modulate the influence of the short-term system.
403
And in other scenarios as well, that short-term system no longer is going to have as much of a bite.
404
The other cognitive fitness advantage of learning a hard skill is just practice focusing.
405
You know, it's hard to say, let me just sit down and focus just to practice it.
406
But if I have a reason to do it, I'm trying to learn this chord and then I learn it and then it sounds better, it's easier to sustain your concentration.
407
But that is just practice, again, with aiming your mind's eye, which a lot of cognitive fitness comes back to this facility with blocking out noise, modulating your short-term motivation system,
408
sustaining focus on a target of your choice.
409
This is an excellent way to practice that on a regular basis.
410
So we get the three benefits of this one.
411
What we talked about with Brad, in general, you're just more disciplined.
412
One, makes you easier able to resist distractions or diversions.
413
Two, it specifically rewires your long-term motivation system to help you with that.
414
And three, it's a great way to practice sustaining focus on a complicated target for a longer piece of time.
415
Some practical tips here.
416
This needs to be something that you do on a regular schedule, not just when you feel like it.
417
It should be a more disciplined pursuit.
418
It needs some sort of skill component that improves with deliberate practice but then gives you clear indications that you're getting better.
419
That's what's going to help your long-term motivation system learn.
420
There's some sort of coaching you can do here.
421
It helps.
422
Any sort of feedback or coaching from another person can really help you stick with it.
423
All right.
424
So there you have it.
425
I gave you five components for improving your cognitive fitness.
426
This is like a standard exercise routine before your brain.
427
Read every day.
428
Don't avoid writing.
429
Go on thinking walks plug in your phone, and learn a hard skill.
430
This is like the cognitive equivalent of having a reasonable health and fitness routine just to stay in reasonable shape.
431
You don't have to do these five, but you really should be thinking about your cognitive fitness like your physical fitness and health and say, well, here is what I do.
432
Here are my rules.
433
Here are my regular activities.
434
And maybe you customize this to yourself, but what I would like you to avoid is having none, to not be thinking about that at all.
435
Because we live in an environment now with so much digital junk food,
436
so much incentives, digital incentives for mental inactivity that if you're not thinking about it,
437
you're going to end up the cognitive equivalent of being really out of shape and unhealthy.
438
All right, so if you want to go deeper into these ideas, definitely read that New York Times piece.
439
It'll kind of lay out the whole philosophy there.
440
My book, Deep Work, which came out 10 years ago, lays a foundation for a lot of those ideas as well.
441
So check that out.
442
But there you go.
443
Get your brain smarter.
444
So when you incorporate the reading 30 to 50 pages, that can all be books, New York articles, magazines as well.
445
Yeah, I think that's fine.
446
Yeah, I think articles are fine.
447
Make it physical or Kindle, you know, not 50-page equivalent of tweets.
448
Like, well, you know, hey, I scrolled Twitter for three hours.
449
And if I really add up all those words, that's like 50 pages because what you want is
450
that sustained concentration of following the structure of the thoughts and getting lost in the particular piece without changing your cognitive context.
451
Yeah, I think articles are just as good.
452
Books, you read on a Kindle if you want.
453
That's physical.
454
It just uses electricity to change the physical configuration.
455
So there you go.
456
This is all an excuse.
457
You just like the fifth one because it's an excuse to play golf.
458
You're like, I'm just working on my cognitive fitness.
459
It's important.
460
I was thinking about that.
461
Yeah.
462
Effective feedback, your handicap goes up.
463
Is that effective feedback?
464
I don't know.
465
It's feedback.
466
That's for sure.
467
Okay, before we move on to our second segment, I want to take a quick break to hear from some more of our sponsors.
468
We talk a fair amount on this show about AI
469
and long-time listeners know that the AI future I'm most excited about is one in
470
which you use this technology to build custom tools or workflows aimed at specific efforts, automating the shallows so that you can focus on the deep.
471
Well, this is exactly the approach offered by Zapier.
472
With Zapier's AI orchestration platform, you can bring the power of AI to any workflow so that you can do more of what matters.
473
Whether we're talking about an autonomous agent or a customer chatbot or something else, you can orchestrate it with Zapier.
474
Here's an example I thought was really cool.
475
Let's say you're tasked with summarizing customer feedback that gets stored in a spreadsheet.
476
With just a few clicks, you can set up a mini AI agent in Zapier that, at a set time each week, can automatically gather that data from the spreadsheet,
477
summarize it, put it in an email, send it to the people that need to see it.
478
Zapier is for everyone, tech expert or not.
479
This is why teams have already automated over 300 million AI tasks using Zapier.
480
So join the millions of businesses transforming how they work with Zapier and AI.
481
Get started for free by visiting zapier.com slash deep.
482
That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash deep.
483
I also want to talk about our friends at Caldera Lab.
484
Hey, men, you need to start taking better care of your skin.
485
The best way to do this with Caldera Lab.
486
Caldera Lab makes high-performance skin care designed specifically for men's skin.
487
Men's skin is 25% thicker, oiler, and ages differently from women's, which means men need clean formulas engineered for their specific biology.
488
Caldera Lab's three-step regimen is powered by clean,
489
clinically tested ingredients and breakthrough patent-pending technology that delivers visible results.
490
All right, so here's how it works with Caldera Lab.
491
Step one is to use their cleanser, which will clear dirt, oil, sweat, and buildup.
492
Step two, you use their serum, which is clinically proven to reduce wrinkles, firm skin, and improve elasticity.
493
And look, if you're a tired old man like me, it helps reduce the puffiness under your eyes, which is, trust me, something you want to try to do.
494
Step three, you use their moisturizer when you're done, which is lightweight and non-greasy and helps your skin stay healthy.
495
I really hadn't done much with my skin until I got these three products from Caldera Lab.
496
I didn't realize how much I was missing.
497
This is a small habit that produces big results.
498
So go to calderalab.com slash deep and use the code deep for 20% off your first order.
499
All right, let's get back into it.
500
All right, well, you've heard enough from me.
501
Now it's time to hear from you.
502
As is our tradition at the end of the Monday advice episodes, I like to open my inbox and see what you and my audience has to say.
503
So if you have a question, a reaction, or something interesting to share, you can send it over to podcast.caldnewport.com.
504
All right, Jesse, what's our first message we have today?
505
The first message is from a former social media influencer.
506
Oh, interesting.
507
All right, so I'll just call this anonymous because I don't know
508
if they know if I was going to read this or not.
509
During my time in school, I accidentally became an influencer of sorts, which sounds weird, I know, on Instagram and TikTok in the nutrition space.
510
I gained followers, had millions of views, went viral, etc. At first, I was over the moon, but I quickly felt the mental impact of being chronically online.
511
I walked away from the slot machine and stopped posting on the platforms in 2024.
512
My experience with social media and the decrease in my mental health, productivity, original thought, individuality, happiness, etc. really shook me.
513
It's become a topic I'm extremely passionate about.
514
I share my journey on my blog
515
and plan to start a community group here for those looking to leave these addictive platforms.
516
It's definitely isolating being a 25-year-old who's not on social media, but reading your book was a nice reminder of why I chose this path
517
and how I know I'll be happier for it.
518
Thank you again for standing on your beliefs and being a guiding voice in this space.
519
I also find it extremely admirable that you're not on these platforms.
520
You walk the walk.
521
Well, that's great to hear, right, that when this person left their influencer role, they're like, oh, my God, everything is so much clearer.
522
I'm actually happier.
523
I didn't realize how much this is weighing on me.
524
One thing that captured my attention is that she said it's isolating being 25 and not on these platforms.
525
I'm interested in that.
526
I think
527
that is becoming less true as these platforms over the last
528
three years have to their doom followed the TikTok model of breaking away from following people,
529
following friends, choosing who you're trying to get content from, and have instead moved to a model of just we're going to algorithmically show you random short form stuff
530
that will press your internal button.
531
the more these become just abstracted slop entertainment, the smaller the impact becomes on, oh, I don't use these anymore because there's no one to notice it.
532
There's no one that you're talking to on there.
533
There's no one who's following you on there.
534
So no one knows that if you're on there or not, with the exception of like some memes you may or may not know.
535
So hopefully that is, that's becoming easier.
536
All right.
537
What else do we got, Jesse?
538
Our next message is from a writer reacting to your interview with Amy Timberlake.
539
Okay, interesting here.
540
All right, so this is from Anjali Banerjee, who knows Amy Timberlake.
541
So we interviewed the acclaimed children's book author, Amy Timberlake, I think two weeks ago, because we were interested in the idea that she uses a typewriter,
542
which is a slower piece of technology than a computer and has fewer features, but makes her a better writer.
543
We use this as a metaphor about slowing down can actually produce more, and technology doesn't always understand that.
544
It's always about just speeding up.
545
So Anjali Banerjee wrote and said, I wrote stories as a child on a typewriter
546
but switched to the Mac when it first came out and used computers thereafter.
547
But then about seven years ago, I decided that screens notifications were too distracting.
548
So I went to my local typewriter shop and bought an electric typewriter, but I had to keep programming the margins.
549
So I took it back and bought my first completely manual typewriter, a Hermes Rocket, circa 1956.
550
From there, I caught typewriter fever and now own over 100 manual machines.
551
That would be me, Jesse.
552
If I started getting typewriters, this whole office would be full of typewriters everywhere.
553
I'm curating my collection, focusing on keeping typewriters with typefaces
554
that can be easily scanned into Word using OCR apps or unusual models with unusual typefaces.
555
I wrote much of the first draft of my 14th novel on a typewriter, and I posted an image of the typewritten draft of the first paragraphs versus the final version on my blog.
556
Oh, we should look at that.
557
Let's bring this up here, Jesse.
558
This is the blog post.
559
So Anjali Banerjee publishes under the name A.G.
560
Banerjee.
561
And I'm putting this on the screen here.
562
Okay, there we go.
563
So look at that old-fashioned typewriting.
564
And then this is actually an interesting article because she talks about what her final published opening was versus this.
565
So she cut most of this, but she wrote about how this is how she got out all the relevant thoughts.
566
And then she realized what's actually core here.
567
And then she cut a lot to get to the final version of it.
568
But the essay helped her, the typewriter helped her work out, helped her work out those views.
569
So I think that's, I think that's pretty cool.
570
I mean, again, the idea here that this comes back to, it's all about bottlenecks.
571
In fact, I think we might get into this in more detail in an upcoming episode.
572
But it's this idea that there's a lot of steps involved in doing creative or cognitive work.
573
And a lot of the tools we come up with, the digital tools that are supposed to make us more productive, speed up parts of that process.
574
But it's like an assembly line.
575
And what really matters is the bottleneck pieces, right?
576
So if you do the other steps faster, it's just going to pile up work at the bottlenecks.
577
You're still not going to get more actual results out.
578
And often the bottlenecks in cognitive or creative work are not sped up by just having better tools.
579
And in fact, sometimes they require that you step away from tools to be able to actually improve your output there.
580
And I think typewriting is a big piece of this.
581
Like the bottleneck for book writing is often producing really good words.
582
And improving that bottleneck is often not about some tool that makes you go faster, but actually being able to spend more time in a cognitive
583
state where you're more likely to come up with the good things.
584
And so you can have as many AI sped up research database tools as you want.
585
But if that bottleneck stays small, you're still not going to be producing books much faster.
586
So I think that's cool.
587
Also, I didn't realize this, Jesse, it's a good idea that what people do who write on typewriters is they scan it.
588
That was new.
589
So she was saying she finds typewriters that have fonts
590
that can be easily scanned into like Word with an optical character recognition program.
591
So you do it, you type, and then at some point you scan those in a computer and now you're editing on the computer.
592
I kind of like that workflow.
593
Just some insider baseball for the audience.
594
It is incredible how fast you type.
595
Did I type?
596
Yeah, so I was thinking if there was typewriters all around here, it would be kind of loud.
597
It would be loud.
598
I do have a loud keyboard, which I want to say Jesse refuses to use.
599
I like the other one.
600
Oh, the other one's so much worse.
601
You don't like the other one?
602
Okay, so audience.
603
I have a beautiful mechanical typewriter that lets me type at an incredibly fast speed.
604
Very good, springed up.
605
It's loud, but it's a very good mechanical typewriter.
606
And Jesse insists on using the Apple magic where it's like the little flat keys on the rubber gaskets.
607
It's like soft.
608
I don't know.
609
I kind of like it.
610
It's hard to go fast.
611
So the mechanical one, the finger springs back up so you can get back into action a little bit quicker.
612
I think that's if you type a lot faster than I do.
613
Well, we are going to start recording this podcast on wax cylinders.
614
And then we can later like remaster them.
615
See, I'm going to embrace this.
616
So then we can later remaster them into digital.
617
But that way we'll focus more.
618
The other insider baseball is like you not only type fast, but you keep on typing.
619
Like you don't stop typing.
620
I've been writing for a long time.
621
So you're just like, go.
622
I do go.
623
I write a lot and I write fast.
624
Without AI.
625
All right.
626
Do we have any more?
627
We have one more message, right?
628
Yeah, we do.
629
All right.
630
Our final message is a case study of someone putting your advice into practice.
631
All right.
632
Let's see what we got here.
633
This comes from Solomon.
634
And then Solomon says, I run a textile company in Pakistan.
635
I employ about 200 people and it's growing fast.
636
I came across your podcast and then picked up deep work a couple months ago.
637
I want to share what happened because I think you'd find it interesting.
638
I deleted Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter from my phone.
639
Not my accounts, just the apps.
640
If I need them, I can log in on a computer.
641
And that's it.
642
That was the whole intervention.
643
The first few days were rough.
644
I didn't realize how deep the habit was until there was nothing to scroll.
645
I literally asked my wife if I could use her Instagram.
646
Her feed was built for her, though, and I quit after two minutes.
647
A week later, I forgot those apps even existed.
648
My phone usage dropped from 6.5 hours a day to 3.5.
649
That's 90 hours a month I was just handing over to feeds.
650
But the numbers aren't even the main thing.
651
I started sleeping better, started working out again, and this is the one that hit me hardest.
652
I'm actually present with my six-year-old daughter now.
653
More drawing, building, and playing in the last month than the previous four.
654
I didn't need a vacation to be a good dad.
655
I just needed to put down the phone.
656
I wrote about this experience on LinkedIn and it kind of blew up.
657
People messaging me saying they're deleting their apps.
658
Others saying they've been struggling with the same thing for years.
659
Wasn't trying to preach or anything.
660
Just shared what happened.
661
Honestly, your work was the push that started all of it.
662
I'm now doing deep work sessions for most mornings, 60 to 90 minutes, no distractions, still figuring out how best to use them as a CEO.
663
Turns out removing noise doesn't automatically give you clarity.
664
That's a different problem.
665
But even the early sessions have produced some of the best thinking I've done in years.
666
All right.
667
I love that story.
668
I mean, look, if you take the benefits
669
that you get from stopping using social media on your phone and you just listed them abstractly, people would pay huge money for those benefits.
670
If you said, I have a productivity tool that is going to gain you back 90 extra hours, it's going to significantly increase the time with your kids,
671
your ability to work out, you're going to feel better.
672
You're going to produce better thoughts.
673
If I said I had an app that did that or a pill that did that, this would be the like ozempic of intellectual activity.
674
Everyone would be all over it, but it exists.
675
Just stop using social media on your phone.
676
It's just these huge benefits are just sitting there.
677
It's like people in physical fitness are like exercise.
678
If you could put the benefits of semi-regular, moderate exercise into a pill, it would be a blockbuster.
679
Well, it's the same thing.
680
The benefits of not using social media on your phone, especially as like a grown up with kids, are immense.
681
Sometimes you just need a push.
682
You just got to stop it.
683
Just like I said in that New York Times piece, stop with the moderation, stop with the, well, I just use this in this case and I have these apps to control this or that.
684
It's digital ultra processed food.
685
It's digital Doritos.
686
It's digital Oreos.
687
You're a grown up.
688
Don't eat Oreos.
689
Don't eat Doritos, right?
690
We just need to move on from algorithmically curated short form content.
691
It adds no value to your life and you get massive value if you stop using it.
692
So I think that's a great example of what can be gained.
693
So thank you, Solomon, for sending that in.
694
All right.
695
Like we like to do, I want to end our Monday episode by quickly bringing up the speed with what I'm up to.
696
So I read the other day, the book I read last week was The Noonday Devil.
697
This was recommended by one of our listeners.
698
It's written by Jean-Charles Nault in French Forgive me,
699
but I didn't write down the translator's name He's a Benedictine monastic, I believe
700
So it's a religious book It's published by the Ignatius Jesuit Press
701
But it's interesting This is why the listener suggested it to me
702
Because he thought there'd be some overlap With what we've been
703
talking about here with the deep life It's about the Greek term acedia A-C-E-D-E-I-A which you can translate as like spiritual sloth.
704
And it was this really big issue for the early monks, right?
705
This is something that the desert fathers, the original monastics in the Near East deserts of the early common era, they struggled with in their sort of desert monastic cells.
706
St. Thomas Aquinas wrote a lot about this in the medieval period.
707
And then it sort of fell off the radar.
708
And this book is bringing it back.
709
It's saying we should bring this term back because it's really useful.
710
And I did find some interesting.
711
I mean, anytime we have people writing about one of these mental states or productivity issues for 2,000 years, I'm interested.
712
I was like, ooh, I like these older takes.
713
And there's a couple interesting things I'll mention real quick I learned from this book.
714
So this idea of spiritual sloth or acedia, part of the definition is a certain lack of activity, right?
715
So part of it is you could just not do stuff.
716
You just stop doing stuff.
717
And they kept that as a problem.
718
But what was interesting is they said the other way
719
that acedia can show up is essentially busyness for the sake of busyness.
720
Now, the term that the French author uses is confusingly translated as activism
721
because obviously activism has a clear meaning in English of like you are advocating for a cause.
722
But they actually – the author means activism differently here as like pseudo-productivity, busyness for the sake of busyness,
723
being active for the sake of being active without an actual meaningful goal to it.
724
So I thought that was interesting.
725
They're like spiritual sloth, this sort of sense of despair could either lead to I just stop doing things
726
or I'm just doing nonsense all the time to distract myself.
727
And the real cure is meaningful activity aimed at meaningful goals.
728
So that was an interesting book.
729
I mean, these are like religious academic books are not necessarily like the most fun reads, but I got a lot of good information out of it.
730
and otherwise the main thing else that's going on in my
731
life is I'm still trying to figure out I have summer coming up I'll keep you posted
732
but I always have my summer schedule
733
that is how I run my weeks during the summer
734
when I don't have class responsibilities at Georgetown
735
and I am thinking about a shift this year Jesse my traditional summer schedule has been deep work every morning
736
till late morning or lunch
737
and then I would do Tuesday Wednesday Thursday in the afternoons is
738
when I would do other things like podcast recording or meetings or calls, keeping Monday and Fridays open of calendar things, professional calendar things.
739
So I can just like have long days thinking and reading or even just recharge.
740
I'm thinking about switching it to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday as the days with my active afternoons.
741
And then Thursday, Friday leading to the weekend being the days where I don't schedule things on the calendar.
742
And I think that's going to match better our podcasting schedule.
743
You're still going to deep work in the morning, right?
744
Yeah.
745
Deep work every morning.
746
Yeah, that's the gimmick.
747
So anyways, I'll see.
748
Like if you stop doing deep work, nobody's going to listen to the show anymore.
749
It all falls apart.
750
Which, by the way, it's like all the pressure of the internet is...
751
You better keep on doing deep work.
752
I mean, all the pressure of the internet is like, hey, just work on the stuff you do afterwards.
753
But if you don't have anything to talk about, what's the point?
754
Then you just get like obsessive about, I don't know, your thumbnails or something.
755
But like you still actually have to have something to talk about.
756
You got to do deep work with human he said he
757
wanted to do it with you um yes yeah yeah we
758
could do it together he said he wanted to do all right me
759
and human do some deep work do some deep work together um
760
as long as i don't go in the gym it's a
761
strong individual strong individual man they're out there yeah he like set some record on
762
that one uh cameron hayes podcast because like whenever
763
that people come on his podcast he puts him through this gauntlet of exercises
764
and he like carry the boulder up the mountain
765
or something didn't take any breaks i'm not going on cam
766
haines's i'm not going to cam haines's podcast that's like the
767
worst way to get people out of your show like hey
768
come on my podcast have a pretty good audience um you're
769
gonna have to carry a boulder up a mountain yeah then run 10 miles
770
and then lift oh my my equivalent's gonna be like all
771
right i'm gonna make you spend an hour reading in translation
772
a book on a cd that's my equivalent of pushing the boulder up the mountain
773
or we'll do a typing speed challenge It might be strong.
774
But what's your WPM?
775
What's your words for a minute?
776
All right.
777
That's all the time we have for today.
778
Thank you for listening.
779
We got an AI reality check themed episode coming on Thursday and then another advice episode Monday to follow.
780
So we will see you soon.
781
And until then, as always, stay deep.
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Why I’m Able To Focus 70+ Hours Per Week (stay efficient and productive)
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 781 sentences and 9859 words to shadow. The speech runs for 51:33. The speaker talks fast, about 191 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
- cognitive /ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/ (adjective) — Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions.
- fitness /ˈfɪt.nəs/ (noun) — The condition of being fit, suitable or appropriate.
- component /kəmˈpoʊ.nənt/ (noun) — A smaller, self-contained part of a larger entity. Often refers to a manufactured object that is part of a larger device.
- motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — Willingness of action especially in behavior.
- reward /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ (noun) — Something of value given in return for an act.
- podcast /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ (noun) — A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
- skill /skɪl/ (noun) — A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
- feedback /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ (noun) — Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results.
- strain /stɹeɪn/ (noun) — A particular variety of a microbe, virus, or other organism, usually a taxonomically infraspecific one.
- practical /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ (adjective) — Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis.
- routine /ɹuˈtin/ (noun) — A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure.
- productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/ (noun) — The state of being productive, fertile, or efficient.
- meaningful /ˈmiː.nɪŋ.fl̩/ (adjective) — Having meaning, significant.
- complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/ (adjective) — Difficult or convoluted.
- concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/ (noun) — The act, process or ability of concentrating; the process of becoming concentrated, or the state of being concentrated.
Phrasal verbs you will hear
- think about /ˈθɪŋk əˌbaʊt/ (verb) — To ponder.
- talk about (verb) — Used to draw attention to the speaker's characterization of someone or something.
- pick up (verb) — To lift; to grasp and raise.
- look at (verb) — To observe or watch.
- go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
- work out /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ (verb) — To calculate.
- go in (verb) — To become obscured by clouds.
- hear from (verb) — To receive updates or opinions from (someone).
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 226 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, reflection /ɹɪˈflɛkʃən/, intention /ɪnˈtɛnʃn̩/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/
- Long words — get the stress right: motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, productivity /ˌpɹɒdʌkˈtɪvəti/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, concentration /ˌkɑn.sənˈtɹeɪ.ʃən/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like cognitive, fitness, component.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been feeling · we've been using · I've been writing |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if it rings, you'll hear |
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to reading · used to activity |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has made · has come · have trusted |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.