Cal Newport – Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and the Key to a Happy Retirement

Financial Independence Podcast

The Mad Fientist

Taxavoidance, Business, Geographicarbitrage, Investing, Tax, Earlyretirement, Travelhacking, Entrepreneurship, Travel, Personalfinance, Stocks, Minimalism, Realestate, Frugality, Retirement, Financialindependence

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2019

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of the Financial Independence Podcast, I’m very excited to introduce author Cal Newport!

I’ve been a huge fan of Cal’s writing for many years so it was a treat to get to talk to him.

We explore many important issues related to early retirement that aren’t often talked about so if you’re thinking about retiring early (or if you already have and are struggling to build the life that you envisioned before leaving work), today’s episode is a must-listen!

Highlights:

Why pursuing your passion is overrated
How to love your job
What is “Focused FIRE” and why it’s likely the best option
How to get good at something valuable
Why you should replace relaxation with difficult, meaningful activity
The importance (and increasing rarity) of deep work
Why skillful management of attention is the key to a good life
How to perform a digital declutter
The importance of high-quality leisure activities
Why technology could be ruining your personal life and how to stop it

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm blind to give you a true finance.
0:05.0	Hey, welcome everyone to the Financial Independence Podcast, the podcast where I get inside the brains of some of the best and brightest to talk about financial independence and early retirement.
0:14.5	On today's show I'm excited to introduce Cow Newport.
0:17.2	I've been a big fan of Cow's for many years now and he's written some amazing books that have helped
0:22.2	me a lot personally in getting things
0:24.4	done that I really want to accomplish.
0:26.7	And I think that's a big challenge for people that do walk away from work early in life because
0:31.0	after you leave your job, the external motivation motivation is gone so then it's up to you
0:34.6	to have the discipline to actually do all the things that you'd hope to do and it's harder
0:39.1	than it seems and Cal's books have been really helpful to me in that regard.
0:43.2	So I was excited to get him on the show because even though he doesn't write about
0:46.8	early retirement specifically, everything that he does write about is applicable to early retirees and it's actually even more important for them.
0:55.0	So without further delay, hey cow, thanks very much for being here.
0:57.4	I really appreciate it.
0:58.4	Brandon, it's my pleasure.
1:00.6	So I've been a big fan of yours for many years now. So this is a real pleasure to talk to you and you have a new book out which I'm always excited when you release something but also part of me I think dies a little bit too because you may not know this but we both graduated in 2004 from college with I assume you have a degree in computer science from your undergrad is that right?
1:22.4	Yeah, that's right. Okay, so we both we both have a degree in computer science from your undergrad? Is that right?
1:23.0	Yeah, that's right.
1:24.0	Okay, so we both graduated in 2004 with a degree in computer science.
1:28.0	And yet you've gone on to,
1:32.0	I don't know, this is going to be a long list, so bear with me, but you went to grad school at MIT, got a PhD in electrical engineering, computer science, then you did a two years postdoc at MIT. You've written six books and you became a professor at Georgetown and you just got tenure.
1:48.6	What's your big congratulations for that.
	...

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