Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World with Cal Newport
The Unmistakable Creative Podcast
Srinivas Rao
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2016
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Cal Newport, Georgetown professor, and author of of So Good They Can’t Ignore, and Deep Work joins us to talk about how to produce work of real of value while training your ability to focus.
HIGHLIGHTS
- How positive serendipity pays dividends going forward
- Exposing yourself to positive randomness
- The issues with “follow your passion”
- The role of engagement, craftsmanship
- Why deliberate practice is the byproduct of hard work
- Applying systematic thinking to our work
- The 3 keys to becoming a straight A student
- The increasing value of deep
- Training your capacity for deep work,
- The danger of giving into distraction even when we’re not trying to get work done
- 3 Types of deep work philosophies
- Scheduling time for deep work in your life
- The pitfalls that can cause you to fail at incorporating these practices into your life
- The importance of confident, competent focus on your energy
- Moving beyond the any benefit mindset
Quotes
Just like a professional athlete is worried about they’re diet, I’m worried about sources of distraction.
If you can replicate something yourself, you can understand it so much better than if you just consumed it.
We put the cart before the horse when it comes passion.
You don’t follow passion, passion follows you.
Both our personal and professional lives are increasingly built around these sources of distraction. From a cognitive perspective, that’s like being an athlete who smokes.
Books and Resources
So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Deep Work
How to Become a Straight-A Student
Cal Newport is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, who specializes in the theory of distributed algorithms. He previously earned his Ph.D. from MIT in 2009 and graduated from Dartmouth College in 2004.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So even if you say, well, I'm not trying to do deep work now, I'm in line at the supermarket. |
| 0:05.0 | So I'm bored. Let me look at some things. |
| 0:08.0 | That actually affects your deep work the next morning or the next day when you actually want to do it. |
| 0:12.0 | So there's this whole notion of passive |
| 0:14.0 | training where you basically are embracing boredom, where you give your mind plenty of practice in actually resisting the urge for distraction, being bored, being present. |
| 0:26.8 | That actually has the same sort of ramifications on your ability to focus down the line, just like |
| 0:31.4 | my previous example of smoking having to do on |
| 0:33.6 | cardiovascular fitness. So you know if you're smoking outside of your practice as a |
| 0:37.7 | professional athlete when you get to your actual game you're going to struggle. |
| 0:41.9 | I think it's the same thing that if your |
| 0:43.2 | life, your attention constantly is shifting towards things that are novel |
| 0:46.0 | and interesting. If you can't tolerate boredom, it's going to be very hard when it |
| 0:49.6 | comes time to focus for you to actually do it. So we have sort of this active, let me get my mind better at resisting distraction. |
| 1:02.0 | I'm Srini Rao and this is the unmistakable Creative Podcast where you get a window into the |
| 1:07.1 | stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds who started movements, |
| 1:11.5 | built thriving businesses, written best-selling books, and created |
| 1:14.6 | insanely interesting art. |
| 1:16.1 | For more, check out our 500 episode archive at unmistakable Creative.com. Come. Book your train tickets on Uber and get 10% back in Uber credits to spend on your next train |
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