I'd really like to establish a time-blocking routine in my weekly and daily planning, but my seven weeks old son makes it pretty hot.

We can't tell when and for how long he's going to sleep, and he rarely sleeps for more than an hour. I'm Cal Newport and this is a deep questions,

have it tune, mini episode.

The format of these episodes is straightforward.

I take voice questions from my listeners about the particular topic of tuning up their

productivity habits in this moment in which our professional lives are increasingly disrupted.

Speaking of productivity, I should mention earlier this week,

my latest piece for The New Yorker was published.

It was about productivity.

In fact, I believe it is probably the first time in the history of the New Yorker that the phrase

productivity pron was actually printed.

Now if you know what that phrase means, you are part of the tribe.

You are part of the productivity geek tribe and you're probably pretty happy about that.

And if you don't know that phrase then that is probably a good thing.

The idea behind the article is that it was looking at a fundamental question that I had not seen asked before, which is why in office work, and in particular

knowledge work where you're really applying creativity and skill to work together in teams and add information to knowledge,

why is it that productivity is left almost exclusively up to the individual?

If you get a job at an ad agency or a consulting firm or in the administration of a school or the front office of a large industrial company, whatever it is, like standard non-entry-level office style work,

there may be processes in place for certain things, like this is how we requisition new computers here is how you

submit your hours in the time sheet so that we can bill the government this is how you

renew your parking pass you know there's procedures for certain things.

But when it comes to how you actually have work assigned, how you organize your work,

...