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.

I'm recording this on Sunday.

So just a couple days ago on Friday,

I hosted a fun event.

So we had what was essentially a live taping of this podcast for people who had pre-ordered my time block planner. We held it on Friday. People would ask

questions with a focus on time blocking or productivity geekery in general and then I answered them on the fly. We used

a zoom my publisher set it up. We had something like 800 people show up for that

event and though it was, so it's not like I was actually seeing people,

just knowing that 800 people were there live and seeing the chat really have a lot of energetic back and forth going back. It reminded me of something that I don't think I realize which is I do miss

doing stuff in person related to my books. I don't think of myself as someone who does a lot of

events. I know authors who do a lot of events, who do a lot of speaking for example.

They'll do 50 engagements a year,

100 engagements a year, some of the more hardcore ones,

and I'm not one of those type of authors,

but I do, I'm realizing a fair amount of events.

There's rarely a month ago by where I don't drive or fly somewhere and have an audience of my readers to talk with the meat afterwards and so it was nice. It was nice to be

able to be with virtually some of you guys out there who listen to this podcast and are interested in these

topics. Just a quick technical note if you're one of the many people who

pre-ordered the time block planner, sent in your information,

got the link for this Zoom event sent to you, but we're unable to attend.

So I think we had something like 2,000 people actually sign up and of

...