Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to Examining, a technology focused podcast that dives deep.
I'm Eric Christiansen.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: And I'm Chris Hans.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: And welcome to another episode of the Examining podcast, the technology focused podcast that dives deep. Good afternoon, Mr.
Professor Emperor Sergeant Hans. How are you?
[00:00:39] Speaker B: I'm good.
[00:00:40] Speaker A: I'm going to try to come up with a more ridiculous title every time. I'm going to run out pretty soon, but sure.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Well, I guess it's. It's kind of fitting for our hundredth episode. I mean, doesn't it feel strange to even say that we've met, we've made it to 100?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: It does feel strange. There are some breaks in between. And we went from like monthly to weekly to not quite weekly. So perhaps not the most consistent podcast in terms of release schedule, but consistent in so far that we're still here.
Yeah.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Maybe bi weekly is our system. Maybe that's where we ended up.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: I think so. But then life happens or. And so on.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: But I think weekly was hard to manage and monthly seemed like too much of a stretch. So maybe bi weekly is where we're going to sit.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: No one's gonna try this.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: We'll try, but. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm reflecting back. Like, you know, when Eric and I, we. We started this podcast in 2020, we were focused in on educational technology. And, you know, at that time, schools, universities moved to online almost overnight. And, you know, people are trying to make decisions about zoom learning management systems, online assessments, microphones, cameras, you know, all sorts of tools. And then we found that the news cycle wasn't as, you know, there wasn't as much going on. And things have changed too. I mean, the. Six years later, the technology has changed and, you know, I don't think that's the. The most interesting issue.
There's, There's a lot of things that are happening, but there's a. You know, just because you have a new tool that makes things a little bit faster. I mean, I, I'm kind of more interested in what happens when we save that time. And I, I think with, with workplaces, that's kind of like the same thing too, is that, you know, how do we fill in the time? And I, I feel like many people are just filling it with more work.
[00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. And, and I think when we did the time and we tried to think about this podcast, I think we were struggling to fill it with more things, and we weren't.
I mean, we never said this, but looking back, maybe we weren't as Happy with what we were filling it with because it was trying to find things to fill. I think we also realized that we'll probably always have people in education who listen because we try to tie it back to that because we're interested. Like our good friend who we've never met, Scott Galloway, but there's also, like, other people who've taken an interest in what we've done that aren't in education. So then it was kind of like, well, from an audience standpoint, it makes sense to broaden it. We can make a bigger tent and tie it back when it's relevant.
I think we also stopped trying to compete with. I mean, there's so many podcasts that go for three hours once a week that cover everything, and that's just not.
That's neither desirable nor possible.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't know. I'm kind of glad the.
The focus that we've. I mean, we're still, you know, looking at technology, but then, you know, looking at things like productivity and AI work, education, you know, finding things that might be interesting, like, I mean, that are interesting to us. But then it's also seems to be interesting for the audience.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: I was thinking about our tagline, like, dives deep, which is true.
Perhaps we'll end up with another rebrand or maybe another tagline. I don't know. I don't really want to change the domain. That's a huge undertaking, I think maybe try to bring meaning to the things we talk about.
A lot of tech stories, I don't know if you've noticed this recently, but they tend to be super surface level because they cover so much content. And, you know, well, something will be in the news. Everybody's talking about it. And like, what does that actually mean? Does it. Does it really matter? Does it have the impact that they say it does? Is this marketing?
We've tried to do that when we talk about AI, like, where is it valuable? Where is this kind of bogus?
It's getting weirder and weirder. We haven't talked about that for a while. Maybe we'll get there today. I'm not sure, but trying to cut through the headlines, so to speak.
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
I mean, that's one of the reasons, like, so other than, you know, kind of reminiscing and reflecting, but that. That was one of the reasons I wanted to discuss Cal Newport's slow productivity for episode 100. And, you know, that's. You actually purchased the book. It came out in March 2024. I think you got some Special swag or something from Cal Newburg too, right?
[00:05:25] Speaker A: Did I. I don't know. Maybe I did.
[00:05:28] Speaker B: Bonus for, for, for going and buying it early on. Being one of the early adopters, I
[00:05:32] Speaker A: might have gotten some sort of like digital goodie or something. I don't think I got anything physical, but that's okay. That plays into my also, my love of also the minimalists. Because I don't want all that crap.
[00:05:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I mean, Newport, he organizes his book around three principles. And so it's do fewer things work at a natural pace and obsess over quality. And you know, I, I look at the argument that I took from this book is kind of broader than those three principles. But I think, you know, knowledge work and there's other things that he kind of talked about too. But I think knowledge work is very good at generating activity. We have things like email teams, Slack zoom, shared documents, project management systems, you have smartphones and now you have generative AI. And each of these tools, it could make an individual activity easier. But then collectively it also can increase the amount of work moving through the system. And so with this book, Slow Productivity, it asks us to pay attention to what gets finished and whether it is any good. And that's why I thought it was an appropriate topic for episode 100.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think so. I really liked this book. I mean, I think I'll continue to read all of Cal Newport's books. I don't know if he has.
When did this come out? Is this 2025 or 2024? Do you remember?
[00:07:04] Speaker B: I think it was 2024.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: Does he have a new one? He might have a new book now.
Not sure, but I mean, no, he doesn't. This is, this, this is still the newest book. The previous one was A World Without Email, which I really liked. A lot of his books, I think all of them I've had on Audible and maybe we can touch on physical media. I kind of regret having so much electronic media. But anyways, it was an interesting book.
But you know, I think, I think a lot of his books, this, this, I mean from a mainstream perspective, I don't know about you, but I felt that the, the writing style of the book was a little bit more approachable for a non academic audience than his previous ones.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's always one of the issues. I find his.
Forget how he described. I think he was saying that he's like a mix of Stephen Covey and Malcolm Gladwell. This is how he writes his book.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: Neither of Which I like neither of those. I mean, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a good book, but, like, neither of those people on my favorites list. So I don't know that he should describe himself that way.
He doesn't seem like that at all to me, to be honest.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: But I. I don't know. I think some of his stories, like, I always find it, you know, stepping back, like if, for those that aren't in academia, I find some of his examples. I don't know if they're the. The best to explain whatever concept that he's discussing. But, you know, other than that, like, again, I. I think what I really, you know, I look at, like when he first started talking about busyness as a measure of work, and, you know, I think this was maybe one of Newport's most useful concepts. I really liked what he called. He calls this pseudo productivity.
So, you know, knowledge work is difficult to measure. And, you know, if someone's working in manufacturing, you would go and count how many units are produced. You know, so in a warehouse, you could go and count the orders processed. You know, those measures, they. They might have their own problems, but at least there's some sort of visible output.
You know, the output of, let's say, a professor, a manager, a designer, a researcher, a consultant. It's much harder to count. And so we tend to count activity instead. And so, you know, he's given a number of examples and so on. But, you know, one of the examples that he was talking about, he talks about this person that was in CBS and, you know, became the head of entertainment. And, you know, just in terms of having more people sit in the offices for more hours meant the organization was working harder on its problems. And, you know, that's kind of where we're still, you know, if somebody has eight meetings, if they're responding to teams messages in like two minutes, if their calendar has no open space, if you're sending out emails and so on. And so again, I. I think it's interesting like that, that concept. I really found it useful.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yeah. It's amazing how busyness is, I think, unfairly rewarded, I think is kind of what he's is referring to. Right? Yeah, because it's like, you know, business as a measure of running around telling everybody you're busy. I mean, I have been busy, very busy, and during those times, not wanted to be busy because it's frustrating to be busy with things, you know, you don't need to do.
And he also, I think the book also does a good job of. I Mean, I don't.
We can debate his solutions to things because I think the solutions he's trying to prescribe or the thing, the problems he's trying to prescribe solutions to are difficult to solve. So, I mean, I think that requires some amount of courage to at least propose those solutions. But, you know, he tries to prescribe ways to get kind of out of busyness, even if it means taking on less money, less work, slowing down, specializing and doing less of it.
Because he talks. I mean, it's been a while since I've read it, but he does mention just the problems with the chronic busyness. What it does from a mental health perspective.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, this is a. This is kind of a nice build on.
We've covered his previous book through the World without email. And so I think this is something where he is kind of, you know, he zooms out into the slow productivity. And then it's not just the. The question becomes, if the current system isn't working very well, how should we replace it? And so again, that's where this kind of principles come into play.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: And you already said that all the tenants. Right, so you said, do fewer things work at a natural pace and obsess over quality just to remind people.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I mean, we can work through these like one at a time. But I look at it like a lot of. Yeah, it's just busyness.
I mean, if I look at. In academia, for instance, you know, a professor can spend the entire day answering emails, attending meetings, dealing with administrative requests, updating course materials, responding to students.
And if it's 5pm, that person can legitimately say that they worked all day, but they also have not made any progress on. Let's say they're working on some sort of research article and. Or a research project that they care about or a major improvement that they wanted to make on a course. And, you know, that's the work that, you know, is the easiest for other people to see displaced. That requires a sustained attention. And, you know, this goes back to his. One of his most popular. It was actually one of our most downloaded episodes when we talked about his
[00:13:04] Speaker A: deep work book, Aperture Configure Control, Episode nine. I believe We've, I think, rewound it twice because it's so popular.
So I'll read principle number one, do fewer things. Because there's some interesting nuance to his rule.
Strive to reduce your obligations to the point where you can easily imagine accomplishing them with time to spare. I think time to spare is interesting.
Leverage this reduced load to more fully embrace and advance the small number of projects that matter most.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:13:45] Speaker A: it's kind of like what the piece of advice my wife always says and I don't remember the original source, but like you kind of will take as long as the time we give ourselves to do something.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And you know this, this first principle, do a fewer things. It might sound incredibly simple but you know, it's probably one of the hardest ones out of his three tenants that he's producing. Because you know what does most, most productivity advice actually teaches you how to do more things. Right. Like so having better calendars, better note taking systems, using AI automation templates, shortcuts, what have you. But the reality is, you know, we can't really eliminate every responsibility. I mean I look at for myself here, right before we started this episode we were chatting about like just the things that we're doing and here I'm like teaching, I do research, I have administrative work, I'm writing, I'm consulting and these are things that have to happen. But it doesn't mean that every project needs active attention every week.
You know, this is where once everything becomes active at the same time, uh, you know that each project it might generate its own meetings, emails, preparation over follow up small decisions but that, that overhead can quickly grow. And this is where you could spend an entire week just servicing projects without actually completing one. And I, I think those that are in project management, you know, you could probably, if you're familiar with that, limiting the work in progress. It's not a new idea. You know, software teams, they've been using this for years. And so it just becomes harder I think to apply it to work that is personal and intellectual. There's always more that we, we can do.
And so you know again like if we look at, and Cal Newport is an academic, but if, if you look at in academia there's always another article that's worth reading. You know, you could always attend another conference, another committee, another research idea, another revision that you can make to a course. There's, there's opportunities to collaborate. So most of these can be worthwhile. And you know the, the problem appears when these worthwhile opportunities exceed the available attention that you have. And so you know, a sophisticated productivity system that can make that overload look organized, but it doesn't really reduce the overall workload.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: No. And one of the things he talks about with the workload, I think you make a good point. Like I think about David Allen's getting things done and I'm Not, I'm not, I'm not throwing shade at any of these productivity things. David Allen's book is excellent, talks about the two minute rule.
It's really useful. Like, I'm not, you know, it's not, it's not that they're not useful. It's just that there's a different, I suppose a different context in which to think about those productivity, those traditional productivity things. And I think Cal has kind of talked. That's his thing. He's deeper, fewer things, better.
But one of the things he says that I noted in this book, and this is one of the things that I remember that, that stuck with me is that my notes to myself are taking on tasks, additional tasks, requires you to think about the administrative overhead of each of those tasks, which people typically don't do. And you and I have talked in the past about it's very easy to say yes. There's that if it's not a hell yes, it's a no. But saying no more often is important because, you know, we take on something, but then we're really bad at estimating all the tasks that have to go around a project to make it happen.
And so, like human beings is track record for being able to do kind of forecast time management isn't very strong.
And I think that, I really like the way that you put it, Chris, because I think it speaks to this. It speaks to that point. It's like you don't understand the beast until you've said yes to it. And it's probably, you know, because we talk about tech. If a project involves new tech, that's probably even doubly the case because there's so many unknowns, things that can go wrong.
We've talked about new technologies versus mature technologies, why you would, you know, early adoption versus sticking with what works. All those things kind of are related to his principle because it's there, there's so many unknowns when saying yes to things. And he talks about like just the administrative overhead from teaching online and zoom overhead during the pandemic, among other things.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I look at it even with, you know, now the rise of generative AI, you know, this is becoming especially interesting because there's a lot of promises with the generative AI that it'll allow us to do more. So, you know, conceivably you can write faster, analyze faster, research faster, create presentations faster, summarize faster, communicate faster.
But, you know, Newport, he has, he raises a good argument. It can be uncomfortable possibility. And what if the Goal isn't doing more, you know how. And you know, again, if AI, if it could cut the task down from like two hours to 20 minutes, there's probably a couple of outcomes. One is that you reclaimed maybe an hour and 40 minutes, or the other is that you just simply added five more tasks.
And I, I think this is where organizations and people are struggling with.
Because, you know, we've been good at, historically, we've been very good at converting efficiency gains into additional expectations. And so if you look at email, email made communication faster, but it didn't result in less communication.
Smartphones gave us access to work from anywhere.
It didn't result in less work. Video conferencing, it eliminated traveling for many meetings, but it didn't result in fewer meetings. And so why would AI produce less work? It might actually produce more.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Well, yeah, he kind of talks about. I'm trying to remember the principle, I think it's called.
If I remind, we'll have to fact check this. I'm very confident that it's called Jevons Paradox.
So that's the economic principle that states that, you know, roughly speaking, that when a technology or resource becomes more efficient or cheaper or easier to use, you know, the total consumption of it goes up, not down. Right. So like it's, there's a lot of friction to sending a postage letter in the mail.
There's no, there's very little friction to sending an email. It's cheaper, it's more efficient, therefore you get more of it. Right.
One of the reasons that he talks in his previous book, A World Without Email, he taught, he compares it to pneumatic tubes.
He talks about the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication and kind of, you know, cheap and easy and efficient meant that we're kind of, again, we get this administrative overhead as a, you know, as a result of those things.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: I also like one of the things that he thinks that he points out because you, you talked about measuring things and the pseudo productivity. Like, you know, the longer you, even if you're tired and you're less efficient, the longer you work on an assembly line, the more widgets you can get done. You can count it, but when you're doing like mental work, it doesn't really work like that. Right. It's not linear. It's like, you know, toiling indefinitely is like, has a diminishing returns in terms of like output. I think that's one of the things he says that the quality just goes down with busyness.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I, I think that's where like, you know, I guess we're kind of moving into the second principle, which is working at a natural pace. But you know, there's some of the examples that he talks about in the book, like there's people like Jane Austin or Georgia o' Keefe that have shown significant creative work often is developed over longer periods and under conditions that allowed the work to vary in intensity. And so, you know, the, the book is explicit that these lives cannot simply be copied into modern office.
So he's extracting these principles, rather suggesting that everyone should be able to work like a 19th century novelist.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: That's fair. And, and I'll, like I did at the first principle, I'll read his quote from principle number two, just so people hear like what he says. So he says, don't rush your most important work.
Allow it instead to unfold along a sustainable timeline.
So sustainable timeline could be relative, depending on your area and stuff like that, with variations in intensity in settings conducive to brilliance. So the variations in intensity and in settings conducive to brilliance, I think are the key parts there. Because of course you can't, you can be super intense when you have a bunch of ideas, but it's not, it's not like a linear flow, it's not a constant flow of creativity.
And I think the settings thing is very important.
Yeah, you don't have to go to a secluded lake to do this, even though some writers did.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But, you know, see, that's where like, I, I think with knowledge work, quite often there's this assumption that you have, have to be consistent for output. So every day, every week, every month.
And, but that's not really how difficult intellectual work happens. Sometimes you can make enormous progress in, let's say, two hours. Sometimes you spend two days thinking about a, a problem and you don't have much to show for it.
You know, there might be an idea that needs to sit for a while.
You know, sometimes you need to read, sometimes you need to go and talk to somebody.
You know, sometimes you need to do absolutely nothing related to the problem and then come back. And, and I think that's difficult to put into some sort of productivity dashboard. And, but this is where again, he talks about like what you were saying, like the variation of that piece of work. So he calls this like seasonal work. So not everybody, or not everything needs to operate at maximum intensity all the time. There can be periods of intense work followed by slower periods. And if you think about like for us, like as those that are in academia, there's actually theoretically some of this is built in, you know, so you have semesters that have rhythm, there are teaching periods, you have reading weeks, you got exam periods, there's research periods. So you got the summer.
And I think the problem is that we're increasingly managed to fill every period. So.
And the quieter periods become opportunities to catch up on everything that you couldn't do during the busy periods. So it really isn't a slow period.
[00:25:14] Speaker A: He has some interesting targets for simplifying your workday or strategies. He says he has two suggestions.
First, reduce all the number of tasks in your schedule. And I've heard him speak before, that's not always doable, but sometimes if you can batch them, I mean, depending on how you define reduce, there's. There's often a way to do that. And his second principle is just reduce the number of appointments in your calendar. So he said that no more than half the hours in a day can be dedicated to meetings or calls.
Yeah, so I mean like some days that you have to have 50%, but 50, his argument is that 50% would be like the top end.
Like that would be the max, at least on average probably. I mean, I'm sure that there's like an exception stay or something like that. But I think he kind of. He doesn't give a lot of cheats. He doesn't give a lot of room for exceptions because I think. Because he's big about consistency and habit. Right. Which I. Which I kind of admire. I mean, I appreciate that.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: I mean, you did make. There was one little tactic that he suggested. Like if, let's say if you had to go and add a meeting to your schedule, then you're going to also add appear the same equivalent time for you to go and work on whatever project that you're, you know, one of those buckets. The main things that you're working on.
[00:26:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree with that.
I'm seeing if there's anything else here from working at a natural pace.
I have tons of notes in this book.
While I'm stalling to look through things, I can give an example I actually stole.
I used to take notes. Oh, I do take notes and put them in Apple notes. And I have a whole.
I should probably return to knowledge management at some point.
That would be useful. I've kind of simplified it, but one of the things I took from Cal Newport is just how you take notes while you read a book. First of all, my books can never be resold because I Write in them, which some librarians probably think is a sacrilege. And having been a librarian for over a decade, I get it. But you just shade in the top corner of the page that's relevant, like a little triangle at the edge, and then that tells you that there's something on the page to return to. So when you're skimming through a physical book, you can do that.
He has some good ideas, like small seasonality. Like, seasonality can be smaller timescales, like just no meetings on a Monday, for instance, or kind of making regular times once a month. He gives the example of going to see, like, a matinee movie. I mean, it doesn't have to be that. It could be whatever's doable. Right. These are just examples. Or, like, actual, like, scheduling a rest project.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: We don't think. To schedule breaks.
I think that's a good point.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely.
You know, I think another thing where, you know, he. There's the. The problem of autonomy. And this is one place that I. I think you could push back on Newport a bit. You know, slow productivity is a lot easier if you can control your schedule. You know, sure. This is a real constraint. A tenured professor or a writer or somebody who runs their own company, they have considerable discretion over when work gets done. But a junior employee or a customer service worker, a nurse, middle manager, I mean, they. They might not have that kind of autonomy. And so, yeah, it's.
It really depends on the circumstances.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and he's honest about that to some degree. I mean, like.
But I also think he's right that there's a lot more flexibility in people's schedules. Like, even if it's not as flexible as one of those professions that stands out on the long tail, people might have a lot more flexibility than they realize just by cutting the number of useless tasks that they do in a day anyways. Right.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: Is there anything you want to say? I mean, one of the things you talk about, like, work at a natural pace and reduce things, reduce time.
I mean, you mentioned AI.
Actually, I've tried to. I've tried.
I'll have to talk about this at some point when I'm ready. I'm not yet. And I don't have a computer. I don't have, like, a DJI Spark. You know, I don't have, like, a framework desktop. If anybody wants to give me 5,000 bucks, that would be very helpful. So I could just run everything local.
So I don't. I can't do this through a local agent. System. But I actually typically try to use AI to actually reduce the number of things I do. Like for instance, I have all these newsletters I subscribe to, I get articles, I download stuff, I don't have time to read this stuff. And often I don't know that I should.
And so that I have a ME MD file that goes into every Claude project and you know, some of my personal instructions and I have a custom project for prioritizing what I read. And I've said to it like, I don't have a lot of time, I need to read. These are my priorities, this is what I'm interested in. These are my goals. This is about me.
So every so often I'll just drop in a, I'll tell it, I'll be like, go to this folder that I keep. And I have a bunch of stuff I've saved. Which ones can I read, which ones are maybes, which ones can I skip?
And it's ruthless like I told it to be. I was like, just which of these are redundant? It usually holds out two or three that it's like, these are really good or the rest of them you can skip.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: It's good.
[00:30:55] Speaker A: And I'm happier with that because I can spend more time reading those better. I don't feel this pressure to read things. I mean, I also deleted Pocket and all these like article saving services because I found it was just like overwhelming.
So that's one way to, you know, having you can actually direct AI to be like, what can I cut?
[00:31:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Should we talk about obsess over quality or do you want to continue with this principle?
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Just one other thing I think, speaking to what you just brought up, I think there's a bit of like a productivity guilt. I mean there's another like psychological part that I think is important. You know, a lot of us, they, we feel guilty when we're not producing something. And so, you know, you can finish a significant piece of work. And instead of thinking, oh, that was good, I'm done for the today, you think, okay, well what, what else can I get done? You know, and this is kind of like the, the system that we've created where you're completing work creates room for more work and there really isn't any kind of finish line. And so it's very different than physical forms of work. You know, if the shift ends, the store closes, you know, the job is complete. But this is where with knowledge, work doesn't naturally stop and there's always something more that you can do another Email revision idea project, you know, student message improvement. And so I think that's where like the working at a natural pace, it requires you to decide when enough is enough.
And I think that's surprisingly difficult.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: It is.
It's an interesting way to put it. I'm trying to think of someone outside of our industry, works in some business.
I would say a couple of things to that. I would say one is that if you have a mindset that there's like always room for improvement and revision and it's like a never ending cycle, it kind of takes.
I mean, I suppose this depends on your personality type. It's taken me a long time to kind of get over perfectionism but I realized that it's never going to be perfect.
And actually things get better in revisions if I leave more space between them, I actually tend to make more progress. So that's, if you think about it that way, that's one way I get out of that guilt.
However, I can also see people feeling more guilty, especially if they work for themselves.
I don't think you should work feel guilty if you've done what you've been paid to do and you've done it in a reasonable time and you did a quality job. I think like you can't expect to be.
I don't think you should have your employer extract everything from you. I don't think that's fair.
But I could definitely see if you have your own business and you work for yourself.
There's the, the accountability piece is a bit more challenging because it's kind of like who do you, I mean you're only, you're, you know, you only can explain it to yourself. Right. So how do you get over that?
[00:33:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: And you run your own business. I don't. So you can speak to that better than I can.
[00:33:57] Speaker B: But you know, see this is where I'll, I'll tell you even just from many, you know, when I was in industry working as a banker, I remember one of the things that I guess some of the, the reasons for the success of our team, like I, I remember people, they would keep working and especially if it's like a Friday, one of the things that I would always tell my, my team is, you know, the work's always going to be there, there's always going to be work and at some point we just got to go and you know, wind things down and stop and you should be happy with what you've done and you know, pick it up again, you know, if Monday rolls around or what have you Right. There's again like you how you mentioned like even taking that break in between a revision it gives you, it's not like you're, you're completely turning everything off. You still, I mean just the way this is probably why I don't know if AI will ever get to especially on the creative side like to what human beings can do. But you know, we're still, we're constantly thinking we're you know, digesting things and, and that's where some of the, the most advances are probably going to come is in that off time right. When you're a little bit more relaxed or what have you.
So. But yeah, I mean I, I do think if, if you follow his, I mean we'll go to the, the final principle. But if you can go and narrow down. I'm looking at, even for myself like there's only so many hours in the day so I got to go and narrow down how many actual projects I can work on. And so I have like maybe three buckets. And then with that there's, I have to. Things happen in life. You got to work at a natural pace. And I mean even going back to when I was. Again I look at my experience being a banker and I could, I could tell you. And I think this goes for pretty much any type of industry or depending on the, the type of work but like for knowledge work, realistically you're probably only if it, if you have an eight hour day there's only probably two hours of solid pro productive time that you're going to have where you crank out most of your output usually.
Yeah. And it's. Yeah like the 8020 rule or you know, if you want to go and even if you want to just talk about like that deep work kind of side of things. I mean it's, and this is where I, I think it's interesting especially since the pandemic like you know, it accelerated the option for going and doing, you know, remote work and, and so on and so forth and now we're seeing a lot of people are getting forced back into the office.
But that's not going to necessarily make people more productive.
There's a lot of lax time. Right. I mean, you know, chit chatting, coming in the water cooler, talk. You know, there's a. Just because you're physically there doesn't mean you're doing anything right. So. And that's where like I, I looked at it like I don't want to be working from like 6 until like 6 at night or whatever. And so I Had to go and be very judicious with my time and where, where I saw the most value. And again, even meetings I, A lot of maybe, you know, this is where you do have control over how you're going to schedule meetings, how those meetings are run.
I mean, how many meetings are in your calendar that are just scheduled in advance for the sake of meeting? Because those are the only, the, the only times that everybody is available. And then all you do is just chit chat and catch up and then there's no takeaways, nobody's taking any kind of deliverables or what have you. And so again, I think it goes back to, even if you look at some of the other Cal Newport kind of methodology in terms of his books, like maybe there's just one goal, one thing that you want to get off your plate for the day. And as long as that happens, that's great.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's fine.
I wonder too if there's a fear of maybe this is going too far away with what from what he said and me trying to interpret it. But I wonder if there's just.
People feel a little bit more surveilled in their work.
Work these days, so they're, they're more hesitant to say iterate or make a mistake or accept that things aren't perfect because things are more competitive. I don't know.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, this may be a night. Nice segue to his next. His other principle of obsessing over quality. And I, I think this really becomes really important when, as you know, generative AI improves. But I think this is out of the three principles, this is probably my favorite because it changes the objective. Instead of how much I'm producing, you're actually asking how good is the thing that I produced? And that's a very different standard.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: So I'll do one last official reading of the Cal Newport book, just so we're consistent. So obsess over quality. He defines it as assess over the quality of what you produce. Even if this means missing opportunities in the short term, leverage the value of these results to gain more and more freedom in your efforts over the long run. You notice he doesn't say money.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: Because, you know, having now worked, now moving to part time from full time, I don't really miss. Well, we'll see. Maybe my mind will change, but I don't really miss so much money.
Its freedom is much more important.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean it's. And he does give some examples where people have turned away work and you know, to get more of that time so that they can focus in on more of that quality of life, but then also being able to go and produce more meaningful quality work.
You know, But I think this is again, if I look at, especially with this introduction of generative AI, the AI makes quantity cheap, right? So, you know, it's. The average content is now that's generated through AI. Like you can go and generate a report in seconds, presentation, email, proposal, blog post.
And so, you know, at the end of it being able to produce something, it's becoming less valuable. So this is where the ability for you to determine whether that thing is good becomes more valuable. Your judgment matters more. You know, editing subject matter or subject knowledge matters more, taste matters more and
[00:41:00] Speaker A: knowing what comes out, character, what to leave out. That's one of the things I noticed with AI. I mean, it's a great brainstorming tool, but it also, I mean I, it just, it tends to be so incredibly verbose. It's mealy mouthed and wordy and it generates a lot of redundancy because it's not, it doesn't think, it's not a, it's not a being. Despite what they say about escaping and hacking, that's not really true. We can talk about that another time.
It's, it's just, it's just a generator.
It'll generate as many things based on however many tokens you have. Right. Like it's a great starting point, but like I find that like if I've edited something with AI with the focus of applying quality over quantity, it's usually cutting it down dramatically, adding character, adding things that aren't perfect on purpose.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[00:41:51] Speaker A: I'm trying to think of a way where I've tried to do more quality over quantity.
It kind of reminds me of Robert Greene's idea. Well, it's probably not his idea, but it probably doesn't originate with him. But he's the only person I can think of who's mentioned it, which is that always say less than necessary.
His argument is that if you're always talking, it, it projects. And I'm guilty of this. I have been in the past, but we all have. But you know, it projects a position that you can't control yourself. And I think that's one of the reasons why AI can be kind of off putting because it's, it's like it can't control its. Right. Like it's, it just, it generates like more than you ask. It's, there's something about it that's just very Unreserved, that makes.
I, I actually, I, I have no way to prove this, but I suspect that the lengthy complex, plus the tldr, you know, all the hallmarks of AI and its writing and what it generates it off, puts people. Because it's kind of like, it's almost like this neurotic friend.
It doesn't stop.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: And we probably can relate because, you know, at some point of our lives, we've been there. Right. But it's just like, it never changes. It doesn't get any better. And so I find that it's just, it kind of by, it doesn't understand that by providing more detail, it actually reduces clarity in its outputs.
Yeah.
[00:43:26] Speaker B: And, you know, I think that you look at it.
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: A lot of our technology, it works against it because, you know, the technology makes the, the activity more visible.
So, I don't know, you look at like, messages or meetings on calendars and notifications and you know, and I, again, I look back at like, knowledge, work, thing. Thinking is harder for people to see, so is judgment.
And. Yeah. I mean, in terms of like, the quality aspect, like, I'm just looking at, you know, things that I've been, let's say, for instance, I mean, look at both of us. We've been working on redesigning courses or what have you. Nobody sees any of that on the back end. Right. Like, how many hours that we've gone and thought about how the, you know, the delivery is going to change and how you could go and, you know, but it's, it's important work. And that's where, like, again, that judgment comes into place. And, and sometimes the, the most productive decision is actually deciding on what project can wait. So, you know, going. And you know, if, let's say, for instance, I, I know you've, you had all sorts of ambitions in terms of your course design, but one of the things I told you is just take it easy as well, because there's always, there's always going to be room. You know, there's always room for improvement.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: But, you know, it's okay that sometimes things are done early. Right. Like, I leave time for people to ask questions.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Because I don't know what people are going to ask. There's no way for me to know if people are going to be as engaged.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Exactly. And I mean, that's a good point. I, I've even looked at it and here, you know, you're teaching multiple sections of the, the same course, same as me, and depending on the audience, things change. I mean, There's. Even though it's the same content that I have scheduled, even I look at just yesterday, I had to adapt because of the questions that were being asked, the, you know, the feedback and just the input when we're doing the discussion and so on and so forth. And at the end of it, you're almost, you're becoming like an orchestrator. Right. You have to go and, you know, have the movement and you have all these things. I mean, we still have to be prepared. We have all these things in case we have that extra time or whatever. And, you know, you can make that decision of cutting back on certain aspects or that explanation to see and address whatever that is coming forward. And it would be the same, I mean, where this is from a teaching standpoint. But let's say if you're doing some sort of presentation, you know, if you're presenting and, or maybe you're trying to get some investment, you go and present your information and you don't know what kind of questions you could try to anticipate. And I would encourage everybody to try to like, predict what type of questions that would be asked of you and be prepared for those. But you never know. Right. And so, but yeah, again, I, I think, and especially the other thing too, with, with life, things happen. A lot of things can happen. And you really, the only thing that you have in your control is yourself and what you do with your time.
And so, I mean, I, I look at it even, you know, again, this is like our hundredth episode and I was thinking about how, how could we even apply this book to our podcast? And, you know, we started this podcast in 2020.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: It was so complicated when we started. I had like, templates for rundowns. It was, I had all the stuff that I thought you needed to have based on what I read about starting podcasts. Like, how do you document everything?
And I'm going to say about like 90% of that went out the window.
[00:47:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: I mean, some of it's stuck and some of the things that we've stuck to are really good.
But in terms of preparation and you know, how you. I don't know. I mean, it's simplifying. It made it less. More approachable and therefore more easy to do and perhaps more made the podcast sound more authentic.
[00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, even look at like, we could have decided that success for us meant publishing, I don't know, Every Tuesday at 7am Regardless of whether we had anything useful to discuss. But we didn't do that. And I mean, part of it Was also life happened and things are happening, but we recorded when there's something worth discussing and when our schedules allowed it.
[00:48:00] Speaker A: I had two children since this has started.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[00:48:05] Speaker A: So.
[00:48:06] Speaker B: So, yeah. And. And again, I think at the end of it, we just persevered. And it's taken us six years to get to that episode. 100.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: That's okay.
[00:48:17] Speaker B: The. The podcast has also changed because our interests changed. First, we were, you know, had tech examined during a period when educational technology was the immediate concern. And now we spend more time discussing whether it's artificial intelligence, productivity, technology, work, education, and that that change happened gradually. I think there. There's something to Cal Newport's argument that that fits that experience. You know, a project does not have to maximize output to remain worthwhile.
It needs enough continuity to survive, enough flexibility to remain interesting.
And that seems like a reasonable standard for the next hundred episodes.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Yeah, like, that's a great point. What is a reasonable standard and so much of work are unreasonable standards.
And that's why people get stressed and overwhelmed. Right. It's not like, is this. Can. Can someone stick with this? It reminds me of someone. Yeah. I'm not a. I don't do a lot of advocacy work, but I. I have in the past, but not so much anymore. And they're talking to someone about advocacy, and he's like, the biggest mistake people make when they're, you know, if they work for some not for profit, they do some advocacy campaigns. It's like, it's infinite. It's indefinite. Advocacy continues forever. So what is like a sustainable advocacy? People treat it like, oh, advocacy. Is this, like, one thing that happened? It's like, no, it's like till the. Till time runs out. And so if you think about it that way, it changes kind of the priorities and the targets.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
I mean, even looking back to the other thing, I. I think, you know, going through my recollection of the episodes, but I've noticed that I'm less interested now in whether the technology is impressive. I'm. I think the more useful test is whether it actually improves the work.
And, you know, I think that's probably one of the reasons why people are. Continue listening to us. I mean, we're. We're trying to provide things as opposed to the going through all the hundreds of tools that are out there, what can help people in their workflow.
[00:50:35] Speaker A: Yeah, we've tested a lot of stuff and come to the conclusion that a minority of those things are, like, helpful in the long run. Some are very cool in the short run. They're interesting. And then it's like, nah, that didn't work out so great.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Even another thing, I'll tell you, like, I. I think just in terms of. Right before we started, we were chatting about just even emails and, you know, responding to students or what have you. And sometimes it can be quite a bit, but I think setting forward, like, the expectations, you know, right from the onset, again, I. I do. I. I like that. That term, that pseudo productivity that Newport put forward, because a lot of it, like all this activity, it. It seems like, you know, it's that busyness for the sake of, you know, showing that you're busy and you're producing. But again, I've. I've seen now, I mean, part of it is even like, let's say some days of the week, like when I'm scheduled for teaching, I just practically, I can't respond to emails all throughout the day because I'm scheduled for classes. And so now I've taken it really too hard where I literally go and check my email, like in. At the start of the day somewhere, somewhere midday, and then maybe before the end of the workday, and that's it.
And, you know, I try to get back to things as quickly as I can. I also tell people to make sure, especially for the students, make sure that you identify in the subject line which course you're from, because I'll prioritize those as opposed to other messages. But, you know, again, this is a simple tactic that a lot of people don't maybe think about.
And then I've also found sometimes it's okay, like, you don't need to respond right away. Right. Like, sometimes even the thing gets resolved on its own.
Right.
I thought this was a good book. I think it's pretty simple.
You know, I like this concept of slow productivity. I've literally kind of slowed down my life over the last year. And I think, you know, for me, like, the practical version is very simple.
You know, keep fewer projects active at the same time, protect enough uninterrupted time to finish important work properly, use technology to reduce unnecessary effort without automatically replacing every saved hour with another obligation.
You know, focus on that quality. And I. I think that's enough.
[00:53:10] Speaker A: I agree.
I think it's his best book in many ways.
[00:53:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. That.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: And Deep Work, that would be my.
Because Deep Work was kind of. He's going to be the Deep Work guy forever, but.
And it's also, like, less academically focused. I feel like he's kind of returned to he had a middle part there where the books were less, perhaps wouldn't reach as broad of an audience.
Yeah, well, that's probably a good place to end it then.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: Think about our hundred and first episode.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And let's see what we have planned for the next hundred episodes.
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Sounds good. Take care.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: All right, see you.
