Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger and I'm here with my producer Jason DeFilippo.

What if we got rid of the idea that we needed to somehow try to be smarter or more educated than everyone else, which is very hard by the way?

And instead we shifted to the idea that we needed to be more focused than everyone else.

Sounds equally difficult, but it's actually not. In fact the bar is pretty low here.

My friend Cal Newport, professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of digital minimalism.

Well he thinks that focus is actually the new IQ and I love this because a while back he ran an experiment where people removed social media from their lives and then added the tools back in as needed if they were the most effective tool for the job.

This isn't just a digital detox far from it. This is about working backwards from the things that you value most and then asking for each what is the best way to use technology to support this value well happily missing out on everything else.

So in today's episode we're taking lessons from the amish. We're taking lessons from digital detox. We're taking lessons from people who have done experiments science if you will computer science in a way reverse.

I've used a lot of these principles to great effect. I've given a handful of copies of this book to other friends of mine, especially those in creative or high performance spaces that require maximum focus.

The results were astounding. Today come explore the idea that our greatest competitive advantage may lay simply around decluttering and resetting our focus and we'll get some practical steps to help us make that happen.

So let's Marie Kondo our brain today here with Cal Newport. If you want to know how I managed to book all these great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits which I've worked on for years here.

Check out six minute networking that's a course that's free used to be called level one now it's called six minute networking that's at Jordan Harbinger dot com slash course.

All right here's Cal Newport. One thing that I love about the minimalist idea here is focuses the new IQ is one of the things that you'd said explain that it's counterintuitive and I love that well I mean I think in our modern knowledge economy in particular.

What's the skill that really matters what's the skill that builds value and I think it is the ability to focus so if in the mid 20th century IQ became the big thing we need more engineers we need people who are smart to smart you are the better you're going to do it shifted now.

And now the ability to put sustained attention is what's going to become the scarce ability to think is going to create a lot of value there's various reasons for this but this is the summary pitch is focus is what's going to rule the economy at least that's my idea.

Okay and you're sort of anilot to this is like the key to thriving in this new high tech world that we have is actually using less tech because the tech this high this Archimedes lever that we have is now kind of come full circle and is now weighing us down right it's like resting on our head.

Yeah well I mean if you think about if you believe this premise that sustain concentration produces lots of value now you have to worry what's going to be the enemy to sustain concentration and so it's not technology in general is the technology that has either been designed or incidentally becomes a huge strain on your attention.

So what we know from psychology and this is actually very important discovery and this is something that we only really got to in the last let's say 15 years.

So context switching is what kills you right the context switching is and I remember first hearing about this in law school because it was like I'm taking notes way to got an I am well back to my notes what are we talking about hey there's another I am yes for those of you don't know what I am are a well instant messenger change to the game that did that come before texting yeah right yeah yeah that was early 90s so that was like the first status updates were on there there's yeah it's pre Facebook by by a minute and so.

That's where I finally started to realize when I would read things like context switching or task switching or the whole hey you know you think you're a good multi tasker but you're not yes and then you I remember asking people going.

Hey you know your teacher will go turn that internet off don't use the Wi-Fi we don't even why do we have Wi-Fi in the classroom and of course everyone went I'm a good multi tasker and everyone's grades went and took a total dump.

Well I shifted to so we used to say that so we used to say I'm a good multi tasker and then in the early 2000s the research became kind of clear and there's lots of pop articles that say okay you can't do the simultaneous things the window here the phone and the typing you're talking gibberish you're doing terrible work like we learned okay literal multitasking doesn't work but we're context switching snuck up on us is that people thought they were single tasking this is what's happening now because they only have one thing open for the most part so I'm I'm just looking at my first reading.

...