Ep. 279: Confronting Overload

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Education, Technology, Self-improvement

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2023

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We talk a lot on this show about getting more done, but what’s the best way to handle the inevitable situation in which you have too much to do? Cal walks through a sensible response to the crazy-making reality of overload.Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/3U3sTvoVideo from today’s episode: https://youtube.com/calnewportmediaDeep Dive: Controlling Overload [4:48]- Is building a “second brain” important? [37:53]- How can I bill 40 hours a week without getting overloaded? [43:30]- What book should I buy my department to best increase their work quality? [46:31]- How do I make progress on projects that have lots of overhead? [51:53]- How can my wife deal with her new position and the overload that comes with it? [57:35]- CALL: What is Cal excited to gif this holiday season? [1:06:14]CASE STUDY: Quitting Twitter to build a better life [1:09:55] CAL REACTS: Why did students get dumber starting in 2012? [1:17:31]Links:https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1734436486727254218Thanks to our Sponsors: https://www.ladderlife.com/deephttps://www.blinkist.com/deephttps://www.hensonshaving.com/calThis show is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/deepquestionsThanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, Kieron Rees for slow productivity music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions the show about living and working deeply in a
0:18.1	distracted world. So if you're new here, I'm a computer science professor and digital theorist who writes
0:29.8	about the way that technology impacts how we live how we work how we relate to each other
0:34.1	here on this show I give concrete advice for taking action on the types of big ideas
0:41.9	I write about I'm here in my deep work HQ joined as always by my producer
0:47.4	Jesse. Jesse who today is keeping an extra close eye on the time because immediately following this
0:54.8	recording and I'm talking about this is like one hour and 25 minutes from the
0:58.8	current point I have to administer online a final exam to the graduate distributed algorithms
1:08.5	elective that I'm teaching this semester at Georgetown.
1:11.6	Jesse I resisted my initial plan of using today's episode as a final review for the graduate students
1:18.7	in this course, reviewing the intricacies of advanced distributed algorithm theory and I figured maybe we should do a normal show.
1:26.0	I asked earlier if the exam is going to be hard.
1:28.0	Yeah, well and I said no and then I realized actually many of the questions are on papers I wrote, so maybe I have a biased answer.
1:37.0	I started laughing.
1:38.0	You know what this got me think about though, Jesse, is our sort of running challenge to figure out what could we do on this show that
1:46.0	would lose the maximum number of listeners as quickly as possible. So I think lecturing
1:52.4	about the distributed algorithm theory would do pretty well, but I was thinking about it coming in here today.
1:57.5	What could we change this format of the show to that would do even worse than lecturing on distributed algorithm theory.
2:04.3	I have three ideas I wrote down.
2:06.3	Yeah, I see.
2:07.3	I don't even know what the second one means.
2:08.8	Yeah, you will know in a second.
	...

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