Ep. 226: The Productivity Dragon

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2022

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Get your questions answered by Cal!
Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo

- CALL: How do I balance different productivity systems? [5:24]
- How do I deal with a sudden increase in my work responsibilities? [12:29]
- How use the “waiting for” column on my task board when crafting a weekly plan? [18:39]

- If I adopt a natural pace to my work will I lose the race to success? [30:57]
- Should I quit my job to pursue a new business idea? [45:04]
- How do I handle a short period of having too much work? [50:20]
- I’ve lost my will to work. What do I do? [56:28]
- Does Cal get annoyed when people incorrectly cite his ideas? [1:02:56]

Books I Read in November 2022 [1:11:39]

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Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport and this is DeepQuestions, episode 226.
0:22.0	So if you are new, this is a show where I answer questions from my audience and offer
0:27.6	advice about cultivating a deep life in a world increasingly deluged by distraction.
0:35.2	Now I'm here, my deep work HQ, I'm joined by my producer, Jesse. Jesse, I'll tell you what
0:43.6	I am excited about today's episode. Back to basics. Fundamentals, baby. Fundamentals.
0:49.8	We got a block of questions. We got another block of questions. We got the books I read
0:54.2	in November, just bread and butter, straight up advice. Now what we tried to do here was be
1:02.6	a little bit thoughtful about our two question blocks. So question block number one, this
1:06.6	is going to be more work related, a little bit more nitty gritty. Now again, for people
1:12.1	who are new to the show, the reason why we talk about the guts of how you organize yourself
1:20.1	at work, how you plan at work, how you manage task at work. The reason why we talk about
1:23.8	this is not that we have some interest in increasing the rate at which you accomplish
1:28.5	things, increasing the number of things you get done. It's because work has a huge impact
1:33.5	on your ability to escape the shallows and live a deeper life. If your day to day job is
1:42.0	just a reactionary whirlwind of email and slack that you kind of come home from, but it's
1:46.7	still going on, you have to check your phone all day and on the weekend on vacations. It's
1:50.5	all just back and forth, always on, never in control. There's no depth to be found. So
1:57.8	the first step is to have some control over your working life. To have some control over
2:02.9	how things come in, how you handle and how you organize them, not only will that make
2:06.4	your life better, give you more control, but it also is the first step towards making
2:11.1	changes in your working life. Until you control what you're doing now, it's hard to shape
2:15.0	what you want to do in the future. So that's why we get into these nitty gritty details.
	...

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