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My New Task System, Deep Work With Kids, and Finding Purpose in Distracted Times | DEEP QUESTIONS

Metadata

  • Author: Deep Questions with Cal Newport
  • Full Title: My New Task System, Deep Work With Kids, and Finding Purpose in Distracted Times | DEEP QUESTIONS
  • Category: #Type/Highlight/Podcast
  • URL: https://www.airr.io/episode/5ee6d7109070069bd377b8f4

Highlights

  • is caused by too many days in a row of high stress. In the work context, Stress is almost always created by not having enough time to get things done. It’s deadline driven, so you have a report that you promised by tomorrow, and you don’t have what you need to get it done. Or you have a book manuscript due on Monday, and you still have 30,000 words to go. That’s what gets that stress reaction going. You get that stress reaction going enough, your body’s gonna burn out. So how do you do lots of things without burning out? You do him in a way that avoids the stress reaction that means you spread it out. You give yourself more enough time. You don’t do too many things in parallel. Maybe you finish one project before doing the next, but you make steady progress every day. Work, work, work, work, work I always used to tell the students I gave advice to writing. A paper is not stressful. Writing a paper when it’s due in 12 hours is so if you are working Ah lot, but very rarely under time pressure or very rarely putting too much on your plate to actually get done when it needs to get done, you’re not gonna be stressed out. So you just repeat that formula day after day, week after week in a lock. It’s done right. So I’m (TimeĀ 0:00:34)
  • Note: What Cal is really saying here is that someoneā€™s not prioritizing effectively. Stress is the downstream impact of a lack of Ruth is probably tired position and being productive with your time. Be more productive and prioritize effectively and youā€™re reduce burn out since you wonā€™t be stressed.
  • did it might. My inbox was going to kill me. You cannot cannot run such a complex system with so many different types of demands. Ongoing conversations, ambiguous request information to be learned. This cannot execute as just messages in a single overfilled, non differentiated general purpose in box that was never gonna work. (TimeĀ 0:14:33)
  • Note: You have to find a system and tool that works for you - Trello is one example
  • All of the information related to that builds up on the digital card, so there’s no searching around to get the various pieces. This structuring makes a big difference. Cannot emphasize enough how hard is it is to do almost any nontrivial role when all of the information about that role exist in some combination of your head (TimeĀ 0:16:27)
  • Note: Getting structure and context into one place
  • and administrators at colleges. They’re just overburdened and just trying to get stuff off their plate. They’re not over sweating it. If you say no, if you want a strategy to make that easier, used a quota strategy where you say, Well, look, I have a quota for how many committees I could do per semester have a quota for how many peer reviews I could do a semester. I have these quotas I set up to make sure that I still have enough time left to do the work I need to get tenure. And you know what? I’ve already hit my quota on that for the semester, some unable to say yes to this particular request. This method works really well because, man, it is hard to push back on that. It is very hard to say, I don’t care about your quota. I would rather you do this for me, then actually get the work you need to do for 10 year. No one is going to say that it works like a charm. You lose this ability once you get 10 year, I can tell you that from the other side of this equation, but that’s a good way to do it. But Caroline really just say no. Say no more often. People are not over sweating what Caroline did yesterday, they said, Okay, she can’t do it. Who else can I ask? They forgotten about it four minutes later. Protect your time more fiercely than you do the feelings of others. It is the right equation. Trust me, (TimeĀ 0:19:07)
  • Note: This is how you say ā€œnoā€ objectively
  • So the core idea of digital minimalism is that technology is best when you deploy it carefully to amplify things. You really care about that if you instead approach technology without this care and just say, Hey, that could be interesting. That seems whatever. Why don’t I just try this? That it has the potential of really having an outsized influence on your time and attention. So if you use technology very intentionally, you can get huge value out of it. If you’re casual about it, it can actually make your life much worse. When has this lesson bid? More clear than during the Cove in 19 Pandemic Right? There are certain uses for technology in this pandemic that are very intentional and are incredible value producing right, the ability to zoom with family members and friends that know what’s going on in your community to know. Hey, on the list. Serve. We just happen to be early in the pandemic. There’s a neighbor down the street. They’re worried they’re sick. They had been traveling to someone have one of those oxygen meters you can put on your finger because their doctor says they need one of their hard to get right now. You know what? Yeah, someone had him. They got it over to him, right? This type of intentional use of technology to amplify the things that really matter like connection to our friends and to our community shows the power of technology. On the other hand, has there ever been a time where the attention economy has reached mawr psychological damage than during this pandemic? If you’re one of the people or no one of the people, that’s just glued online news, and it’s just so relentlessly dire that it just Fritz is out. Your brain makes you despair. You’re doing genuflection of the spare every morning to your CNN dot com feed or Social media. (TimeĀ 0:28:48)
  • Note: Use technology wisely. Even social media
  • How do we still find ways to carve out meaningful deep work? Mike, you need more structure for how you communicate with your clients. Ah, lot of people in client facing services think that what their clients want is accessibility. It’s not quite true. Clients want clarity, clarity Trump’s accessibility if they know how to reach you and are sure that they’re gonna get a timely response, the answer does not have to be. They can reach you at any moment. So if you have systems in place for here is how we check in on things. Here’s how you ask questions. Here we make. We make sure you have what you need. You don’t need to be accessible all the (TimeĀ 0:32:03)
  • Note: Set expectations on how people need to reach you and then deliver so they know thatā€™s how to reach you. Say what you mean and deliver only then will you be able control your time