I'm Cal Newport and this is DeepQuestions, episode 165.

I'm here in my deep work HQ and by myself, no Jesse today, it's actually my first time

in a while that I have been recording on my own, I gotta say it's a little lonely. Reminds

me of those pre-vaccine pandemic days where it was always just me by my loan sum up here

in the deep work HQ. So I guess it gives me some appreciation for how good things typically

are. Now here was my plan. My plan for today and my wife talked me out of this and I think

we will all agree once we hear the plan that she was wrong. My plan was that I would

get some of my clothes, stuff them with straw and then position it in Jesse's chair. So

I would have a Jesse Scarecrow and then I could cut back and forth with the camera to

the Jesse Scarecrow and I could do his voice. I would change my voice to do his voice

and we could still have some nice back and forth. I thought it was a good idea. She

talked me out of it. Well I thought we'd get started today with something I haven't done

in recent weeks, but I miss which is a deep dive. The deep dive I want to do today is

on the question, why are we burnt out? Now this deep dive is drawing from a New Yorker

article that I published a couple of weeks ago. It was a New Yorker article where I was

introducing to the New Yorker audience this idea of slow productivity that we have talked

about here on this show, but I was also using this article as an excuse to help refine

my thinking on that topic. Now I opened that article talking about a bill that has been

proposed in the U.S. Congress. It was originally written by a California representative Mark

DeCano and a sense been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. That's 100 different

congressmen and women. And this was a bill that was arguing that the federal work week,

or the federally recognized work week, should go down from 40 hours to 32. I opened my

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