I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions, the show where I answer queries for my readers about work, technology, and the deep life.

Now in the introduction to last Thursday's habit tune-up mini

episode I mentioned that a topic I have been interested in recently is

household productivity. When it comes to productivity systems for the workplace,

we have a lot of big ideas. There's a lot of thinking about this. There's a lot of discussion about how you organize work tasks, how you execute work tasks, how you keep track of work tasks. I don't think we have, as I mentioned in that episode,

enough thinking about the work that happens outside of the office.

The work that's required to run a family, to run a household,

just to have land, to have cars,

all the stuff that requires time and attention, all the stuff that creates a large incoming

flow of often ambiguous tasks.

We don't think enough about that. So that's what I've been trying to do recently.

I'm trying to think through experimentally speaking.

What are some good best practices for managing the lot of stuff that happens outside of work.

All right, so as promised I'm going to share a few ideas.

These are things I've tried before or things that I'm thinking about trying.

So here's my three ideas

for being productive but in stuff that happens outside of work.

One, automation, to the extent that is possible I think is very useful. So what you're trying to avoid, at least this is my philosophy of household work, what you're trying to avoid is having things that exist only in your head.

You know, just knowing in the back of your mind,

we should probably clean the gutters.

Knowing in the back of your mind, you know, this radiator has a leak,

maybe we need to do something about that. Getting that out of your head I think is very

...