The Incredible Value of Deep Work, Instead of Distraction – with Cal Newport

Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.7 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2016

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

#42: Your most valuable asset isn’t your house, car or retirement portfolio. It’s your attention. Most knowledge workers spend their day frantically hopping between meetings, emails, phone calls and social media. But that’s not the best way to stand out in the modern economy. Emails are necessary, says author and professor Cal Newport. They’ll keep you from getting fired. But they won’t get you promoted. In fact, his Deep Work Hypothesis states that the ability to do deep work is becoming more rare, yet at the same time, more valuable. That means if you can train your mind to resist the common distractions we all face, you’ll become more valuable in the workplace, whether you’re self-employed or traditionally employed. The problem, however, is that most of us are intimidated by deep work. We welcome distractions from difficult tasks that take a toll on our brain power. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/cal-newport/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me say that you can
0:06.4	afford anything but not everything.
0:09.2	And that's true not just of your money but also your time, energy, focus, attention,
0:13.8	any scarce resource within your life.
0:16.2	My name is Paula Pan.
0:17.2	I'm the host of the Afford Anything Podcast.
0:19.6	And today I am thrilled to introduce you to one of my favorite authors, Cal Newport.
0:25.5	Cal is a computer science professor at Georgetown University who also writes books on the side.
0:31.0	And his books are some of the most profound works I have ever come across on performance
0:38.3	psychology.
0:39.3	Cal in this upcoming interview talks about how to allocate the most valuable resource
0:45.4	of them all, your attention.
0:49.0	As you are about to hear, Cal describes the problem that the modern knowledge worker
0:53.0	faces.
0:54.2	We don't have a lot of structure or overhead to our workflow.
0:58.2	It's not, here's the process you do or here's your expertise or here's your create value.
1:01.9	Instead, we all have an email inbox.
1:04.7	It's hooked up to our names and we just sort of figure things out by sending messages back
1:08.6	and forth and just sort of an ad hoc on demand fashion.
1:12.3	This is unprecedented in the history of knowledge work.
1:15.2	Never before has there been a time when the modern skilled worker has been expected to monitor
1:21.1	their inbox rather than push themselves to their abilities as a craftsman who can produce
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.