Cal Newport: Deep Work, Focus, Productivity, Email, and Social Media

Lex Fridman (01:15.480)

As a side note, let me say that deep work

Cal Newport (01:17.440)

or long periods of deep, focused thinking

Lex Fridman (01:20.760)

have been something I've been chasing more and more

Cal Newport (01:22.800)

over the past few years.

Lex Fridman (01:24.520)

Deep work is hard, but is ultimately the thing

Cal Newport (01:28.040)

that makes life so damn amazing.

Lex Fridman (01:30.920)

The ability to create things you're passionate about

Cal Newport (01:33.760)

in a flow state where the distractions of the world

Lex Fridman (01:36.400)

just fade away.

Cal Newport (01:37.920)

Social media, yes, reading the comments,

Lex Fridman (01:41.520)

yes, I still read the comments,

Cal Newport (01:43.480)

is a source of joy for me in strict moderation.

Lex Fridman (01:46.920)

Too much takes away the focused mind

Lex Fridman (01:49.200)

and too little, at least I think,

Lex Fridman (01:51.520)

takes away all of the fun.

Cal Newport (01:53.720)

We need both, the focus and the fun.

Lex Fridman (01:56.920)

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,

Cal Newport (01:59.280)

review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,

Lex Fridman (02:02.720)

support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter

Cal Newport (02:06.040)

at Lex Friedman if you can only figure out

Lex Fridman (02:08.720)

how to spell that.

Lex Fridman (02:10.080)

And now, here's my conversation with Cal Newport.

Lex Fridman (02:15.080)

What is deep work?

Cal Newport (02:16.600)

Let's start with a big question.

Lex Fridman (02:18.920)

So I mean, it's my term for when you're focusing

Cal Newport (02:21.720)

without distraction on a cognitively demanding task,

Lex Fridman (02:25.800)

which is something we've all done,

Lex Fridman (02:28.440)

but we had never really given it a name necessarily

Lex Fridman (02:31.640)

that was separate from other type of work.

Lex Fridman (02:33.440)

And so I gave it a name and said,

Lex Fridman (02:36.520)

let's compare that to other types of efforts

Cal Newport (02:38.440)

you might do while you're working

Lex Fridman (02:40.640)

and see that the deep work efforts actually have

Cal Newport (02:43.440)

a huge benefit that we might be underestimating.

Lex Fridman (02:45.800)

What does it mean to work deeply on something?

Cal Newport (02:49.280)

I had been calling it hard focus in my writing before that.

Lex Fridman (02:54.280)

Well, so the context you would understand,

Lex Fridman (02:55.640)

I was in the theory group in CSAIL at MIT, right?

Lex Fridman (02:58.320)

So I was surrounded at the time

Cal Newport (02:59.920)

when I was coming up with these ideas

Lex Fridman (03:01.760)

by these professional theoreticians.

Lex Fridman (03:03.440)

And that's like a murderer's row of thinkers there, right?

Lex Fridman (03:06.840)

I mean, it's like Turing Award, Turing Award,

Cal Newport (03:08.880)

MacArthur, Turing Award.

Lex Fridman (03:10.040)

I mean, you know the crew, right?

Cal Newport (03:12.640)

Theoretical computer science.

Lex Fridman (03:13.840)

Theoretical computer science, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (03:15.840)

So I'm in the theory group, right?

Lex Fridman (03:18.080)

Doing theoretical computer science and I publish a book.

Lex Fridman (03:21.360)

So I was in this milieu where I was being exposed to people

Lex Fridman (03:25.400)

where focus was their tier one skill.

Lex Fridman (03:27.680)

Like that's what you would talk about, right?

Lex Fridman (03:29.040)

Like how intensely I can focus.

Cal Newport (03:31.480)

That was the key skill.

Lex Fridman (03:33.360)

It's like your 440 time or something

Lex Fridman (03:34.800)

if you were an athlete, right?

Lex Fridman (03:37.120)

So this is something that people actually,

Lex Fridman (03:39.080)

the theory folks are thinking about?

Lex Fridman (03:41.680)

Oh yeah. Really?

Lex Fridman (03:43.000)

Like they're openly discussing like, how do you focus?

Lex Fridman (03:45.840)

I mean, I don't know if they would quantify it,

Lex Fridman (03:48.480)

but focus was the tier one skill.

Lex Fridman (03:51.520)

So you would come in, here would be a typical day.

Cal Newport (03:53.680)

You'd come in and Eric DeMain would be sitting

Lex Fridman (03:56.440)

in front of a whiteboard, right?

Cal Newport (03:58.320)

With a whole group of visitors

Lex Fridman (04:00.160)

who had come to work with them.

Lex Fridman (04:01.280)

And maybe they projected like a grid on there

Lex Fridman (04:03.640)

because they're working on some graph theory problem.

Cal Newport (04:06.400)

You go to lunch, you go to the gym, you come back,

Lex Fridman (04:10.000)

they're sitting there staring at the same whiteboard, right?

Cal Newport (04:12.960)

Like that's the tier one skill.

Lex Fridman (04:14.240)

This is the difference between different disciplines.

Cal Newport (04:16.120)

Like I often feel for many reasons, like a fraud,

Lex Fridman (04:20.640)

but I definitely feel like a fraud when I hang out

Cal Newport (04:22.760)

with like either mathematicians or physicists.

Lex Fridman (04:25.440)

It's like, it feels like they're doing the legit work

Cal Newport (04:29.000)

because when you talk closer in computer science,

Lex Fridman (04:31.240)

you get to programming or like machine learning,

Cal Newport (04:33.840)

like the experimental machine learning

Lex Fridman (04:38.440)

or like just the engineering version of it.

Cal Newport (04:41.120)

It feels like you're gone so far away

Lex Fridman (04:44.560)

from what's required to solve something fundamental

Cal Newport (04:47.880)

about this universe.

Lex Fridman (04:49.000)

It feels like you're just like cheating your way

Cal Newport (04:51.160)

into like some kind of trick to figure out

Lex Fridman (04:53.560)

how to solve a problem in this one particular case.

Cal Newport (04:56.200)

That's how it feels.

Lex Fridman (04:59.160)

I'd be interested to hear what you think about that

Cal Newport (05:02.840)

because programming doesn't always feel

Lex Fridman (05:07.080)

like you need to think deeply to work deeply,

Lex Fridman (05:11.480)

but sometimes it does.

Lex Fridman (05:12.880)

So it's a weird dance.

Lex Fridman (05:14.400)

For sure code does, right?

Lex Fridman (05:15.840)

I mean, especially if you're coming up

Cal Newport (05:17.640)

with original algorithmic designs,

Lex Fridman (05:20.760)

I think it's a great example of deep work.

Cal Newport (05:22.800)

I mean, yeah, the hardcore theoreticians,

Lex Fridman (05:25.080)

they push it to an extreme.

Cal Newport (05:26.520)

I mean, I think it's like knowing

Lex Fridman (05:29.080)

that athletic endeavor is good

Lex Fridman (05:31.160)

and then hanging out with a Olympic athlete,

Lex Fridman (05:33.840)

you're like, oh, I see that's what it is.

Cal Newport (05:35.760)

Now for the grad students like me,

Lex Fridman (05:37.200)

we're not anywhere near that level,

Lex Fridman (05:38.800)

but the faculty in that group,

Lex Fridman (05:41.640)

these were the cognitive Olympic athletes.

Lex Fridman (05:44.720)

But coding I think is a classic example of deep work

Lex Fridman (05:48.160)

because I got this problem I wanna solve,

Cal Newport (05:50.960)

I have all of these tools

Lex Fridman (05:52.320)

and I have to combine them somehow creatively

Lex Fridman (05:55.880)

and on the fly.

Lex Fridman (05:56.720)

But so basically I had been exposed to that.

Lex Fridman (05:59.000)

So I was used to this notion when I was in grad school

Lex Fridman (06:00.920)

and I was writing my blog, I'd write about hard focus.

Cal Newport (06:03.560)

That was the term I used.

Lex Fridman (06:05.120)

Then I published this book,

Lex Fridman (06:06.640)

So Good They Can't Ignore You, which came out in 2012.

Lex Fridman (06:09.480)

So like right as I began as a professor.

Lex Fridman (06:12.240)

And that book had this notion of skill

Lex Fridman (06:14.720)

being really important for career satisfaction,

Cal Newport (06:16.600)

that it's not just following your passion.

Lex Fridman (06:19.440)

You have to actually really get good at something

Lex Fridman (06:21.120)

and then you use that skills as leverage.

Lex Fridman (06:22.600)

And there was this big followup question to that book

Lex Fridman (06:24.480)

of, okay, well, how do I get really good at things?

Lex Fridman (06:27.160)

And then I look back to my grad school experience,

Cal Newport (06:29.080)

I was like, huh, there was this focus thing

Lex Fridman (06:31.600)

that we used to do.

Lex Fridman (06:32.440)

And I wonder how generally applicable that is

Lex Fridman (06:35.480)

into the knowledge sector.

Lex Fridman (06:36.360)

And so as I started thinking about it, it became clear,

Lex Fridman (06:39.240)

there's this interesting storyline that emerged

Cal Newport (06:41.040)

that, okay, actually undistracted concentration

Lex Fridman (06:43.240)

is not just important for esoteric theoreticians,

Cal Newport (06:46.360)

it's important here, it's important here,

Lex Fridman (06:47.520)

it's important here.

Lex Fridman (06:48.800)

And that involved into the deep work hypothesis,

Lex Fridman (06:51.240)

which is across the whole knowledge work sector.

Cal Newport (06:55.280)

Focus is very important

Lex Fridman (06:56.600)

and we've accidentally created circumstances

Cal Newport (06:58.600)

where we just don't do a lot of it.

Lex Fridman (07:00.560)

So focus is the sort of prerequisite for basically,

Cal Newport (07:03.680)

you say knowledge work,

Lex Fridman (07:04.520)

but basically any kind of skill acquisition,

Cal Newport (07:07.040)

any kind of major effort in this world.

Lex Fridman (07:09.320)

Can we break that apart a little bit?

Cal Newport (07:11.640)

Yeah, so a key aspect of focus is not just

Lex Fridman (07:15.760)

that you're concentrating hard on something,

Lex Fridman (07:17.840)

but you do it without distraction.

Lex Fridman (07:20.080)

So a big theme of my work is that context shifting

Cal Newport (07:24.720)

kills the human capacity to think.

Lex Fridman (07:27.000)

So if I change what I'm paying attention to

Cal Newport (07:29.520)

to something different, really, even if it's brief

Lex Fridman (07:32.000)

and then try to bring it back to the main thing I'm doing,

Cal Newport (07:34.240)

that causes a huge cognitive pile up

Lex Fridman (07:36.000)

that makes it very hard to think clearly.

Lex Fridman (07:38.080)

So even if you think, okay, look, I'm writing this code

Lex Fridman (07:40.360)

or I'm writing this essay and I'm not multitasking

Lex Fridman (07:43.600)

and all my windows are closed

Lex Fridman (07:45.080)

and I have no notifications on,

Lex Fridman (07:47.080)

but every five or six minutes you quickly check

Lex Fridman (07:50.120)

like an inbox or your phone,

Lex Fridman (07:51.880)

that initiates a context shift in your brain, right?

Lex Fridman (07:54.200)

We're gonna start to suppress some neural networks,

Cal Newport (07:55.920)

we're gonna try to amplify some others.

Lex Fridman (07:57.400)

It's a pretty complicated process actually.

Cal Newport (07:59.240)

There's a sort of neurological cascade that happens.

Lex Fridman (08:02.240)

You rip yourself away from that halfway through

Lex Fridman (08:04.400)

and go back to what you're doing

Lex Fridman (08:05.480)

and now it's trying to switch back to the original thing

Cal Newport (08:07.120)

even though it's also your brain's in the process

Lex Fridman (08:08.760)

of switching to these emails

Lex Fridman (08:09.920)

and trying to understand those contexts.

Lex Fridman (08:11.720)

And as a result, your ability to think clearly

Cal Newport (08:14.600)

just goes really down.

Lex Fridman (08:16.400)

And it's fatiguing too.

Cal Newport (08:17.320)

I mean, you do this long enough and you get midday

Lex Fridman (08:19.440)

and you're like, okay, I can't think anymore.

Cal Newport (08:22.080)

You've exhausted yourself.

Lex Fridman (08:23.240)

Is there some kind of perfect number of minutes,

Lex Fridman (08:27.920)

would you say?

Lex Fridman (08:28.880)

So we're talking about focusing on a particular task

Cal Newport (08:32.320)

for one minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes.

Lex Fridman (08:37.240)

Is it possible to kind of context switch

Lex Fridman (08:40.160)

while maintaining deep focus every 20 minutes or so?

Lex Fridman (08:44.280)

So if you're thinking of like this,

Cal Newport (08:46.600)

again, maybe it's a selfish kind of perspective,

Lex Fridman (08:48.720)

but if you think about programming,

Cal Newport (08:51.440)

you're focused on a particular design of a little bit,

Lex Fridman (08:53.680)

maybe a small scale on a particular function

Cal Newport (08:55.920)

or large scale on a system.

Lex Fridman (08:59.560)

And then the shift of focus happens like this,

Cal Newport (09:02.840)

which is like, wait a minute,

Lex Fridman (09:04.960)

is there a library that can achieve this little task

Lex Fridman (09:07.440)

or something like that?

Lex Fridman (09:08.280)

And then you have to look it up.

Cal Newport (09:10.200)

This is the danger zone.

Lex Fridman (09:11.480)

You go to the internets.

Lex Fridman (09:13.040)

And so you have to, now it is a kind of context switch

Lex Fridman (09:17.040)

because as opposed to thinking about the particular problem,

Cal Newport (09:20.000)

you now have switch thinking about like consuming

Lex Fridman (09:25.000)

and integrating knowledge that's out there

Cal Newport (09:27.880)

that can plug into your solution to a particular problem.

Lex Fridman (09:31.120)

It definitely feels like a context switch,

Lex Fridman (09:33.520)

but is that a really bad thing to do?

Lex Fridman (09:35.960)

So should you be setting it aside always

Lex Fridman (09:38.480)

and really trying to as much as possible go deep

Lex Fridman (09:42.120)

and stay there for like a really long period of time?

Cal Newport (09:45.920)

Well, I mean, I think if you're looking up a library

Lex Fridman (09:48.640)

that's relevant to what you're doing, that's probably okay.

Lex Fridman (09:51.320)

And I don't know that I would count that

Lex Fridman (09:52.440)

as a full context shift because the semantic networks

Lex Fridman (09:56.120)

involved are relatively similar, right?

Lex Fridman (09:58.000)

You're thinking about this type of solution.

Cal Newport (10:00.520)

You're thinking about coding.

Lex Fridman (10:01.600)

You're thinking about this type of functions.

Cal Newport (10:03.560)

Where you're really gonna get hit

Lex Fridman (10:04.600)

is if you switch your context

Cal Newport (10:06.000)

to something that's different.

Lex Fridman (10:08.000)

And if there's unresolved obligations.

Lex Fridman (10:09.800)

So really the worst possible thing you could do

Lex Fridman (10:11.680)

would be to look at like an email inbox, right?

Cal Newport (10:14.320)

Cause here's 20 emails.

Lex Fridman (10:16.000)

I can't answer most of these right now.

Cal Newport (10:18.000)

They're completely different.

Lex Fridman (10:19.520)

Like the context of these emails,

Cal Newport (10:21.160)

like, okay, there's a grant funding issue

Lex Fridman (10:22.760)

or something like this.

Cal Newport (10:23.600)

It's very different than the coding I'm doing.

Lex Fridman (10:25.520)

And I'm leaving it unresolved.

Lex Fridman (10:27.200)

So like someone needs something from me

Lex Fridman (10:29.200)

and I'm gonna try to pull my attention back.

Cal Newport (10:30.680)

The second worst would be something

Lex Fridman (10:31.840)

that's emotionally arousing.

Lex Fridman (10:33.360)

So if you're like, let me just glance over at Twitter.

Lex Fridman (10:35.160)

I'm sure it's nice and calm and peaceful over there, right?

Cal Newport (10:37.520)

That could be devastating

Lex Fridman (10:38.560)

because you're gonna expose yourself

Cal Newport (10:39.800)

to something that's emotionally arousing.

Lex Fridman (10:41.560)

That's gonna completely mess up the cognitive plateau there.

Lex Fridman (10:43.920)

And then when you come back to,

Lex Fridman (10:45.040)

okay, let me try to code again.

Cal Newport (10:46.920)

It's really difficult.

Lex Fridman (10:47.840)

So it's both the information and the emotion.

Cal Newport (10:50.120)

Yeah, both can be killers if what you're trying to do.

Lex Fridman (10:53.440)

So I would recommend at least an hour at a time

Cal Newport (10:55.960)

because it could take up to 20 minutes

Lex Fridman (10:57.600)

to completely clear out the residue

Cal Newport (10:59.320)

from whatever it was you were thinking about before.

Lex Fridman (11:02.680)

So if you're coding for 30 minutes,

Cal Newport (11:04.040)

you might only be getting 10 or 15 minutes

Lex Fridman (11:05.720)

of actual sort of peak lacks going on there, right?

Lex Fridman (11:08.880)

So an hour at least you get a good 40, 45 minutes plus.

Lex Fridman (11:11.840)

I'm partial to 90 minutes as a really good chunk.

Cal Newport (11:15.560)

We can get a lot done.

Lex Fridman (11:16.960)

But just before you get exhausted,

Cal Newport (11:18.640)

you can sort of pull back a little bit.

Lex Fridman (11:21.200)

Yeah, and one of the beautiful,

Cal Newport (11:23.880)

people can read about it in your book, Deep Work.

Lex Fridman (11:27.440)

And I know this has been out for a long time

Lex Fridman (11:29.520)

and people are probably familiar with many of the concepts,

Lex Fridman (11:31.920)

but it's still pretty profound

Lex Fridman (11:33.800)

and it has stayed with me for a long time.

Lex Fridman (11:36.880)

There's something about adding the terms to it

Cal Newport (11:39.360)

that actually solidifies the concepts.

Lex Fridman (11:42.120)

Like words matter, it's pretty cool.

Lex Fridman (11:44.320)

And just for me, sort of as a comment,

Lex Fridman (11:47.600)

there's, it's a struggle and it's very difficult

Cal Newport (11:52.640)

to maintain focus for a prolonged period of time.

Lex Fridman (11:56.120)

But the days on which I'm able to accomplish

Cal Newport (11:59.320)

several hours of that kind of work, I'm happy.

Lex Fridman (12:03.320)

So forget being productive and all that.

Cal Newport (12:05.520)

I'm just satisfied with my life.

Lex Fridman (12:07.840)

I feel fulfilled, it's like joyful.

Lex Fridman (12:11.520)

And then I can be, I'm less of a dick

Lex Fridman (12:14.400)

to other people in my life afterwards.

Cal Newport (12:16.600)

It's a beautiful thing.

Lex Fridman (12:19.120)

And I find the opposite when I don't do that kind of thing,

Cal Newport (12:23.800)

I'm much more irritable.

Lex Fridman (12:25.480)

Like I feel like I didn't accomplish anything

Lex Fridman (12:27.320)

and there's this stress that then the negative emotion

Lex Fridman (12:30.120)

builds up to where you're no longer able

Cal Newport (12:32.040)

to sort of enjoy the hell out of this amazing life.

Lex Fridman (12:35.480)

So in that sense, Deep Work has been a source

Cal Newport (12:37.880)

of a lot of happiness.

Lex Fridman (12:39.640)

I'd love to ask you, how do you,

Cal Newport (12:42.280)

again, you cover this in the book,

Lex Fridman (12:43.480)

but how do you integrate Deep Work into your life?

Lex Fridman (12:46.480)

What are different scheduling strategies

Lex Fridman (12:48.560)

that you would recommend just at a high level?

Lex Fridman (12:51.160)

What are different ideas there?

Lex Fridman (12:52.560)

Well, I mean, I'm a big fan of time blocking, right?

Lex Fridman (12:55.280)

So if you're facing your workday,

Lex Fridman (12:58.480)

don't allow like your inbox or a to do list

Cal Newport (13:02.080)

to sort of drive you.

Lex Fridman (13:02.920)

Don't just come into your day and think,

Lex Fridman (13:04.080)

what do I wanna do next?

Lex Fridman (13:05.840)

I mean, I'm a big planner saying,

Cal Newport (13:06.800)

here's the time available, let me make a plan for it.

Lex Fridman (13:11.480)

So I have a meeting here, I have an appointment here,

Lex Fridman (13:13.400)

here's what's left, what do I actually wanna do with it?

Lex Fridman (13:15.400)

So in this half hour, I'm gonna work on this.

Cal Newport (13:17.960)

For this 90 minute block, I'm gonna work on that.

Lex Fridman (13:19.680)

And during this hour, I'm gonna try to fit this in.

Lex Fridman (13:21.320)

And then actually I have this half hour gap

Lex Fridman (13:22.680)

between two meetings.

Lex Fridman (13:23.520)

So why don't I take advantage of that

Lex Fridman (13:24.680)

to go run five errands,

Cal Newport (13:25.800)

I can kind of batch those together.

Lex Fridman (13:27.720)

But blocking out in advance,

Cal Newport (13:30.120)

this is what I wanna do with the time available.

Lex Fridman (13:32.480)

I mean, I find that's much more effective.

Cal Newport (13:33.760)

Now, once you're doing this,

Lex Fridman (13:34.600)

once you're in a discipline of time blocking,

Cal Newport (13:36.320)

it's much easier to actually see,

Lex Fridman (13:37.800)

this is where I want, for example, the Deep Work.

Lex Fridman (13:40.160)

And I can get a handle on the other things

Lex Fridman (13:41.840)

that need to happen and find better places to fit them

Lex Fridman (13:44.920)

so I can prioritize this.

Lex Fridman (13:46.120)

And you're gonna get a lot more of that done

Cal Newport (13:48.560)

than if it's just going through your day

Lex Fridman (13:49.680)

and saying, what's next?

Cal Newport (13:51.400)

I schedule every single day kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (13:53.440)

So as I could try to do in the morning

Cal Newport (13:54.920)

to try to have a plan.

Lex Fridman (13:57.040)

Yeah, so I do a quarterly, weekly, daily planning.

Lex Fridman (14:00.320)

So at the semester or quarterly level,

Lex Fridman (14:02.360)

I have a big picture vision

Cal Newport (14:04.840)

for what I'm trying to get done during the fall,

Lex Fridman (14:06.800)

let's say, or during the winter.

Cal Newport (14:08.640)

Like there's a deadline coming up for academic papers

Lex Fridman (14:11.240)

at the end of the season, here's what I'm working on.

Cal Newport (14:13.480)

I wanna have this many chapters done of a book,

Lex Fridman (14:15.280)

something like this.

Cal Newport (14:16.120)

Like you have the big picture vision

Lex Fridman (14:18.200)

of what you wanna get done.

Cal Newport (14:20.040)

Then weekly, you look at that,

Lex Fridman (14:22.200)

and then you look at your week

Lex Fridman (14:23.920)

and you put together a plan for like,

Lex Fridman (14:25.080)

okay, what's my week gonna look like?

Lex Fridman (14:27.200)

What do I need to do?

Lex Fridman (14:28.320)

How am I gonna make progress on these things?

Cal Newport (14:29.880)

Maybe I need to do an hour every morning

Lex Fridman (14:32.640)

or I see that Monday is my only really empty day.

Lex Fridman (14:34.640)

So that's gonna be the day that I really need to nail

Lex Fridman (14:36.440)

on writing or something like this.

Lex Fridman (14:38.080)

And then every day, you look at your weekly plan

Lex Fridman (14:41.160)

and say, let me block off the actual hours.

Lex Fridman (14:42.760)

So you do that three scales,

Lex Fridman (14:44.760)

the quarterly, down to weekly, down to daily.

Lex Fridman (14:47.880)

And we're talking about actual times of day versus,

Lex Fridman (14:50.840)

so the alternative is what I end up doing a lot,

Lex Fridman (14:55.120)

and I'm not sure it's the best way to do it,

Lex Fridman (14:56.680)

is scheduling the duration of time.

Cal Newport (15:01.760)

This is called the luxury when you don't have any meetings.

Lex Fridman (15:04.560)

I'm like, religiously don't do meetings.

Cal Newport (15:07.880)

All other academics are jealous of you, by the way.

Lex Fridman (15:09.880)

Yeah. I know.

Cal Newport (15:11.560)

No Zoom meetings.

Lex Fridman (15:13.480)

I find those are,

Cal Newport (15:15.360)

that's one of the worst tragedies of the pandemic,

Lex Fridman (15:19.880)

is both the opportunity to,

Cal Newport (15:21.880)

the positive thing is to have more time with your family,

Lex Fridman (15:25.760)

sort of reconnect in many ways.

Lex Fridman (15:27.320)

And that's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (15:29.880)

Be able to remotely sort of not waste time on travel

Lex Fridman (15:34.120)

and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (15:35.200)

The negative is, actually both those things

Cal Newport (15:38.440)

are also sourced from the negative.

Lex Fridman (15:40.400)

But the negative is like,

Cal Newport (15:41.760)

it seems like people have multiplied the number of meetings

Lex Fridman (15:44.280)

because they're so easy to schedule.

Lex Fridman (15:46.240)

And there's nothing more draining to me intellectually,

Lex Fridman (15:50.920)

philosophically, just my spirit is destroyed

Cal Newport (15:55.600)

by even a 10 minute Zoom meeting.

Lex Fridman (15:57.880)

Like, what are we doing here?

Lex Fridman (15:59.760)

What's the meaning of life?

Lex Fridman (16:01.760)

Yeah, I have, every Zoom meeting is,

Cal Newport (16:04.000)

I have an existential crisis, so.

Lex Fridman (16:05.720)

Kierkegaard with the internet connection.

Lex Fridman (16:08.200)

So, what the hell are we talking about?

Lex Fridman (16:13.760)

Oh, so when you don't have meetings,

Cal Newport (16:16.680)

there's a luxury to really allow for certain things

Lex Fridman (16:21.520)

if they need to, like the important things,

Cal Newport (16:25.040)

like deep work sessions to last way longer

Lex Fridman (16:27.960)

than you maybe planned for.

Cal Newport (16:30.800)

I mean, that's my goal is to try to schedule,

Lex Fridman (16:33.280)

the goal is to schedule,

Cal Newport (16:34.560)

to sit and focus for a particular task for an hour

Lex Fridman (16:37.440)

and hope I can keep going and hope I can get lost in it.

Lex Fridman (16:41.920)

And do you find that this is at all an okay way to go

Lex Fridman (16:48.240)

and the time blocking is just something you have to do

Lex Fridman (16:51.800)

to actually be an adult and operate in this real world?

Lex Fridman (16:54.880)

Or is there some magic to the time blocking?

Cal Newport (16:57.960)

Well, I mean, there's magic to the intention.

Lex Fridman (17:01.360)

There's magic to it if you have varied responsibilities.

Lex Fridman (17:05.000)

So I'm often juggling multiple jobs, essentially.

Lex Fridman (17:08.760)

There's academic stuff, there's teaching stuff,

Cal Newport (17:11.120)

there's book stuff, there's the business

Lex Fridman (17:13.520)

surrounding my book stuff.

Lex Fridman (17:16.520)

But I'm of your same mindset.

Lex Fridman (17:18.960)

If a deep work session is going well,

Cal Newport (17:22.200)

you just rock and roll and let it go on.

Lex Fridman (17:24.480)

So like one of the big keys of time block,

Cal Newport (17:26.360)

at least the way I do it,

Lex Fridman (17:27.240)

so I even sell this planner to help people time block,

Cal Newport (17:30.640)

it has many columns because the discipline is,

Lex Fridman (17:32.920)

oh, if your initial schedule changes,

Cal Newport (17:35.920)

you just move over one.

Lex Fridman (17:36.840)

Next time you get a chance, you move over one column

Lex Fridman (17:38.920)

and then you just fix it for the time that's remaining.

Lex Fridman (17:41.240)

So in other words, there's no bonus

Cal Newport (17:43.080)

for I made a schedule and I stuck with it.

Lex Fridman (17:46.280)

Like there's actually,

Lex Fridman (17:47.120)

it's not like you get a prize for it, right?

Lex Fridman (17:48.600)

Like for me, the prize is I have an intentional plan

Cal Newport (17:51.840)

for my time and if I have to change that plan, that's fine.

Lex Fridman (17:54.640)

Like the state I wanna be is basically

Cal Newport (17:56.280)

at any point in the day, I've thought about

Lex Fridman (17:57.840)

what time remains and gave it some thought

Cal Newport (18:00.600)

for what to do because I'll do the same thing,

Lex Fridman (18:02.080)

even though I have a lot more meetings

Lex Fridman (18:04.640)

and other types of things I have to do in my various jobs

Lex Fridman (18:06.920)

and I basically prioritize the deep work

Lex Fridman (18:09.680)

and they get yelled at a lot.

Lex Fridman (18:11.080)

So that's kind of my strategy is like,

Cal Newport (18:12.760)

just be okay, just be okay getting yelled at a lot

Lex Fridman (18:15.560)

because I feel you, if you're rolling, yeah.

Cal Newport (18:18.120)

Well, that's what it is for me, like with writing,

Lex Fridman (18:20.200)

I think it's writing so hard in a certain way

Cal Newport (18:22.120)

that it's, you don't really get on a roll in some sense,

Lex Fridman (18:24.880)

like it's just difficult, but working on proofs,

Cal Newport (18:28.400)

it's very hard to pull yourself away from a proof

Lex Fridman (18:32.320)

if you start to get some traction,

Cal Newport (18:33.880)

just you've been at it for a couple of hours

Lex Fridman (18:35.480)

and you feel the pins and tumblers

Cal Newport (18:37.760)

starting to click together and progress is being made,

Lex Fridman (18:40.480)

it's really hard to pull away from that.

Lex Fridman (18:42.360)

So I'm willing to get yelled at by almost everyone.

Lex Fridman (18:45.160)

Of course, there is also a positive effect

Cal Newport (18:48.520)

to pulling yourself out of it when things are going great

Lex Fridman (18:53.160)

because then you're kind of excited to resume.

Cal Newport (18:55.640)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (18:56.480)

Like stopping on a dead end.

Cal Newport (18:58.600)

That's true.

Lex Fridman (19:03.440)

There's an extra force of procrastination

Cal Newport (19:05.440)

that comes with if you stop on a dead end

Lex Fridman (19:07.560)

to return to the task.

Cal Newport (19:08.920)

Yeah, or a cold start.

Lex Fridman (19:10.840)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (19:11.680)

Whenever I feel like I'm in a stage now,

Lex Fridman (19:13.280)

I submitted a few papers recently.

Lex Fridman (19:15.400)

So now we're sort of starting something up from cold

Lex Fridman (19:18.600)

and it takes way too long to get going

Cal Newport (19:20.520)

because it's very hard to get the motivation

Lex Fridman (19:23.720)

to schedule a time when it's not, yeah, we're in it.

Cal Newport (19:25.840)

Like here's where we are.

Lex Fridman (19:26.840)

We feel like something's about to give here.

Cal Newport (19:28.280)

We need the very early stages where it's just,

Lex Fridman (19:30.600)

I don't know, I'm gonna read hard papers

Lex Fridman (19:32.840)

and it's gonna be hard to understand them

Lex Fridman (19:34.080)

and I'm gonna have no idea how to make progress.

Cal Newport (19:35.600)

It's not motivating.

Lex Fridman (19:38.440)

What about deadlines?

Cal Newport (19:39.680)

Can we, okay, so this is like a therapy session.

Lex Fridman (19:46.200)

It seems like I only get stuff done that has deadlines.

Lex Fridman (19:50.120)

And so one of the implied powerful things

Lex Fridman (19:53.200)

about time blocking is there's a kind of deadline

Cal Newport (19:56.120)

or there's a artificial or real sense of urgency.

Lex Fridman (19:59.880)

Do you think it's possible to get anything done

Cal Newport (1:00:01.600)

to start listening to the body.

Lex Fridman (1:00:03.960)

I wonder if you can do that same kind of,

Cal Newport (1:00:05.960)

I guess that's what meditation a little bit is.

Lex Fridman (1:00:07.920)

A little bit, but yeah, listen to boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:00:10.160)

But so two years ago,

Lex Fridman (1:00:11.040)

I had a book out called Digital Minimalism.

Lex Fridman (1:00:13.560)

And one of the things I was recommending that people do

Lex Fridman (1:00:16.120)

is basically a 30 day fast.

Lex Fridman (1:00:18.320)

But from digital personal entertainment,

Lex Fridman (1:00:20.440)

social media, online videos,

Cal Newport (1:00:21.920)

anything that captures your attention and dispels boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:00:26.400)

And people were thinking like, oh, this is a detox.

Cal Newport (1:00:29.520)

Like, I just wanna teach your body

Lex Fridman (1:00:30.720)

not to need the distraction, this or that.

Lex Fridman (1:00:32.760)

But it really wasn't what I was interested in.

Lex Fridman (1:00:34.320)

I wanted there to be space

Cal Newport (1:00:37.640)

that you could listen to your boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:00:39.400)

Like, okay, I can't just dispel it.

Cal Newport (1:00:41.080)

I can't just look at the screen

Lex Fridman (1:00:42.520)

and revel in it a little bit and start to listen to it

Lex Fridman (1:00:45.120)

and say, what is this really pushing me towards?

Lex Fridman (1:00:48.000)

And you take the new stuff, the new technology off the table

Lex Fridman (1:00:50.800)

and sort of ask, what is this?

Lex Fridman (1:00:52.440)

What am I craving?

Cal Newport (1:00:53.280)

Like, what's the activity equivalent of 2000 calories

Lex Fridman (1:00:56.800)

of meat with a little bit of green beans on the side?

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.320)

And I had 1700 people go through this experiment,

Lex Fridman (1:01:01.600)

like spend 30 days doing this.

Lex Fridman (1:01:03.400)

And it's hard at first,

Lex Fridman (1:01:04.280)

but then they get used to listening to themselves

Lex Fridman (1:01:06.920)

and sort of seeking out,

Lex Fridman (1:01:07.800)

what is this really pushing me towards?

Lex Fridman (1:01:09.680)

And it was pushing people towards connection.

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.240)

It was pushing people towards,

Cal Newport (1:01:13.400)

I just wanna go be around other people.

Lex Fridman (1:01:15.520)

It was pushing people towards high quality

Cal Newport (1:01:18.040)

leisure activities.

Lex Fridman (1:01:19.280)

Like I wanna go do something that's complicated.

Lex Fridman (1:01:21.640)

And it took weeks sometimes for them

Lex Fridman (1:01:23.200)

to get in touch with their boredom,

Lex Fridman (1:01:25.080)

but then it completely rewired how they thought about,

Lex Fridman (1:01:28.720)

what do I wanna do with my time outside of work?

Lex Fridman (1:01:30.720)

And then the idea is when you're done with that,

Lex Fridman (1:01:32.000)

then it was much easier to go back

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.240)

and completely change your digital life

Lex Fridman (1:01:34.880)

because you have alternatives, right?

Cal Newport (1:01:37.360)

You're not just trying to abstain from things you don't like,

Lex Fridman (1:01:39.800)

but that's basically a listening to boredom experiment.

Cal Newport (1:01:42.600)

Like just be there with the boredom

Lex Fridman (1:01:45.000)

and see where it drives you

Cal Newport (1:01:46.240)

when you don't have the digital Cheez Its.

Lex Fridman (1:01:48.720)

Okay, so if I can't do that,

Lex Fridman (1:01:50.840)

where is it gonna drive me?

Lex Fridman (1:01:51.880)

Well, I guess I kinda wanna go to the library,

Cal Newport (1:01:53.800)

which came up a lot, by the way,

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.880)

a lot of people rediscovered the library.

Cal Newport (1:01:57.200)

With physical books.

Lex Fridman (1:01:58.040)

Physical books, so like you can just go borrow them.

Lex Fridman (1:02:00.320)

And there's like low pressure and you can explore

Lex Fridman (1:02:03.040)

and you bring them home and then you read them

Lex Fridman (1:02:04.720)

and you can like sit by the window and read them

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.480)

and it's nice weather outside.

Lex Fridman (1:02:07.520)

And I used to do that 20 years ago,

Lex Fridman (1:02:09.560)

they're listening to boredom.

Lex Fridman (1:02:10.800)

So can you maybe elaborate a little bit

Lex Fridman (1:02:12.800)

on the different experiences that people had

Lex Fridman (1:02:15.400)

when they quit social media for 30 days?

Lex Fridman (1:02:17.640)

Like if you were to recommend that process,

Lex Fridman (1:02:20.560)

what is ultimately the goal?

Lex Fridman (1:02:22.840)

Yeah, digital minimalism,

Cal Newport (1:02:24.520)

that's my philosophy for all this tech.

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.560)

And it's working backwards from what's important.

Lex Fridman (1:02:30.520)

So it's you figure out what you're actually all about,

Lex Fridman (1:02:33.000)

like what you wanna do,

Lex Fridman (1:02:33.960)

what you wanna spend your time doing.

Lex Fridman (1:02:35.720)

And then you can ask, okay,

Cal Newport (1:02:37.480)

is there a place that tech could amplify

Lex Fridman (1:02:38.960)

or support some of these things?

Lex Fridman (1:02:40.000)

And that's how you decide what tech to use.

Lex Fridman (1:02:42.680)

And so the process is,

Cal Newport (1:02:44.120)

let's actually get away from everything,

Lex Fridman (1:02:46.320)

let's be bored for a while,

Cal Newport (1:02:47.640)

let's really spend a month getting really figuring out

Lex Fridman (1:02:49.480)

what do I actually wanna do?

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.880)

What do I wanna spend my time doing?

Lex Fridman (1:02:52.000)

What's important to me?

Lex Fridman (1:02:53.640)

What makes me feel good?

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.520)

And then when you're done,

Cal Newport (1:02:55.360)

you can bring back in tech very strategically

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.960)

to help those things, right?

Lex Fridman (1:02:58.560)

And that was the goal.

Lex Fridman (1:02:59.800)

That turns out to be much more successful

Cal Newport (1:03:01.680)

than when people take a abstention only approach.

Lex Fridman (1:03:05.320)

So if you come out your tech life and say,

Cal Newport (1:03:08.840)

you know, whatever, I look at Instagram too much.

Lex Fridman (1:03:10.720)

Like I don't like how much I'm on Instagram,

Cal Newport (1:03:12.880)

that's a bad thing.

Lex Fridman (1:03:13.800)

I wanna reduce this bad thing.

Lex Fridman (1:03:15.120)

So here's my new thing,

Lex Fridman (1:03:16.320)

I'm gonna spend less time looking at Instagram,

Cal Newport (1:03:18.160)

much less likely to succeed in the longterm.

Lex Fridman (1:03:20.680)

So we're much less likely at trying to reduce

Cal Newport (1:03:23.200)

this sort of amorphous negative

Lex Fridman (1:03:24.480)

because in the moment you're like,

Cal Newport (1:03:25.840)

yeah, but it's not that bad

Lex Fridman (1:03:27.280)

and it would be kind of interesting to look at it now.

Cal Newport (1:03:29.200)

When you're instead controlling behavior

Lex Fridman (1:03:30.880)

because you have a positive that you're aiming towards,

Cal Newport (1:03:32.720)

it's very powerful for people.

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.720)

Like I want my life to be like this,

Cal Newport (1:03:35.920)

here's the role that tech plays in that life.

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.120)

The connection to wanting your life to be like that

Cal Newport (1:03:41.240)

is very, very strong.

Lex Fridman (1:03:42.440)

And then it's much, much easier to say,

Cal Newport (1:03:43.680)

yeah, like using Instagram is not part of my plan

Lex Fridman (1:03:45.760)

for how I have that life.

Lex Fridman (1:03:46.640)

And I really wanna have that life,

Lex Fridman (1:03:47.760)

so of course I'm not gonna use Instagram.

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.000)

So it turns out to be a much more sustainable way

Lex Fridman (1:03:51.760)

to tame what's going on.

Lex Fridman (1:03:53.240)

So if you quit social media for 30 days,

Lex Fridman (1:03:55.320)

you kinda have to do the work.

Cal Newport (1:03:58.080)

You have to do the work.

Lex Fridman (1:03:59.320)

Of thinking like, what am I actually,

Lex Fridman (1:04:01.440)

what makes me happy in terms of these tools

Lex Fridman (1:04:04.320)

that I've previously used

Lex Fridman (1:04:05.600)

and when you try to integrate them back,

Lex Fridman (1:04:08.880)

how can I integrate them to maximize

Lex Fridman (1:04:10.840)

the thing that actually makes me happy?

Lex Fridman (1:04:11.680)

Yeah, or what makes me happy unrelated to technology?

Lex Fridman (1:04:14.480)

Like what do I actually, what do I want my life to be like?

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.240)

Well, maybe what I wanna do is be like outside of nature

Cal Newport (1:04:18.640)

two hours a day and spend a lot more time

Lex Fridman (1:04:20.160)

like helping my community and sacrificing

Cal Newport (1:04:21.960)

on behalf of my connections

Lex Fridman (1:04:23.120)

and then have some sort of intellectually engaging

Cal Newport (1:04:26.440)

leisure activity like I'm reading

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.200)

or trying to read the great books

Lex Fridman (1:04:29.600)

and having more calm and seeing the sunset.

Lex Fridman (1:04:31.640)

Like you create this picture and then you go back

Lex Fridman (1:04:34.800)

and say, well, I still need my Facebook group

Lex Fridman (1:04:36.600)

because that's how I keep up with my cycling group.

Lex Fridman (1:04:39.800)

But Twitter is just, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:04:41.280)

toxic, it's not helping any of these things.

Lex Fridman (1:04:42.800)

And well, I'm an artist,

Lex Fridman (1:04:43.640)

so I kinda need Instagram to get inspiration.

Lex Fridman (1:04:46.280)

But if I know that's why I'm using Instagram,

Lex Fridman (1:04:48.200)

I don't need it on my phone, it's just on my computer

Lex Fridman (1:04:49.960)

and I just follow 10 artists and check it once a week.

Lex Fridman (1:04:51.880)

Like you really can start deploying.

Cal Newport (1:04:54.040)

It was the number one thing

Lex Fridman (1:04:55.000)

that differentiated in that experiment,

Cal Newport (1:04:56.600)

the people who ended up sustainably making changes

Lex Fridman (1:04:59.960)

and getting through the 30 days and those who didn't,

Cal Newport (1:05:02.200)

was the people who did the experimentation

Lex Fridman (1:05:03.920)

and the reflection.

Cal Newport (1:05:04.760)

Like let me try to figure out what's positive.

Lex Fridman (1:05:07.520)

They were much more successful than the people

Cal Newport (1:05:09.200)

that just said, I'm sick of using my phone so much.

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.960)

So I'm just gonna white knuckle it.

Cal Newport (1:05:12.920)

Just 30 days will be good for me.

Lex Fridman (1:05:14.120)

I just gotta get away from it or something.

Cal Newport (1:05:16.560)

It doesn't last.

Lex Fridman (1:05:17.640)

So you don't use social media currently.

Cal Newport (1:05:19.840)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:05:21.080)

Do you find that a lot of people going through this process

Cal Newport (1:05:24.360)

will seek to basically arrive at a similar place

Lex Fridman (1:05:29.400)

to not use social media primarily?

Cal Newport (1:05:30.960)

About half.

Lex Fridman (1:05:32.280)

Right, so about half when they went through this exercise,

Lex Fridman (1:05:34.760)

and these aren't quantified numbers.

Lex Fridman (1:05:36.920)

This is just, they sent me reports and yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:05:40.160)

That's pretty good though, 1700?

Lex Fridman (1:05:42.080)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:05:42.920)

So roughly half probably got rid of social media altogether.

Lex Fridman (1:05:47.240)

Once they did this exercise,

Cal Newport (1:05:48.280)

they realized these things I care about,

Lex Fridman (1:05:50.160)

I don't, social media's not the tools that's really helping.

Cal Newport (1:05:53.640)

The other half kept some,

Lex Fridman (1:05:55.280)

there were some things in their life

Cal Newport (1:05:56.440)

where some social media was useful.

Lex Fridman (1:05:59.080)

But the key thing is if they knew

Lex Fridman (1:06:00.160)

why they were deploying social media,

Lex Fridman (1:06:02.520)

they could put fences around it.

Lex Fridman (1:06:04.400)

So for example, of those half that kept some social media,

Lex Fridman (1:06:07.120)

almost none of them kept it on their phone.

Cal Newport (1:06:09.480)

Oh, interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:06:10.320)

Yeah, you can't optimize if you don't know

Lex Fridman (1:06:12.120)

what the function you're trying to optimize.

Lex Fridman (1:06:13.640)

So it's like this huge hack.

Cal Newport (1:06:14.680)

Like once you know this is why I'm using Twitter,

Lex Fridman (1:06:16.960)

then you can have a lot of rules about how you use Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:06:19.200)

And suddenly you take this cost benefit ratio

Lex Fridman (1:06:21.680)

and it goes like way from the company's advantage

Lex Fridman (1:06:24.160)

and then way over towards your advantage.

Lex Fridman (1:06:25.840)

It's kind of fascinating

Cal Newport (1:06:26.960)

because I've been torn with social media,

Lex Fridman (1:06:29.320)

but I did this kind of process.

Cal Newport (1:06:30.600)

I haven't actually done it for 30 days,

Lex Fridman (1:06:32.280)

which I probably should.

Cal Newport (1:06:33.720)

I'll do it for like a week at a time and regularly

Lex Fridman (1:06:36.120)

and thinking what kind of approach to Twitter works for me.

Cal Newport (1:06:43.200)

I'm distinctly aware of the fact

Lex Fridman (1:06:46.280)

that I really enjoy posting once or twice a day.

Lex Fridman (1:06:51.200)

And at that time checking from the previous post,

Lex Fridman (1:06:54.600)

it makes me feel even when there's like negative comments,

Cal Newport (1:06:59.800)

they go right past me.

Lex Fridman (1:07:01.360)

And when there's positive comments, it makes you smile.

Cal Newport (1:07:03.520)

I feel like love and connection with people,

Lex Fridman (1:07:06.160)

especially with people I know,

Lex Fridman (1:07:07.520)

but even just in general, it's like,

Lex Fridman (1:07:09.040)

it makes me feel like the world is full of awesome people.

Cal Newport (1:07:12.200)

Okay, when you increase that from checking from two to like,

Lex Fridman (1:07:15.800)

I don't know what the threshold is for me,

Lex Fridman (1:07:17.480)

but probably like five or six per day,

Lex Fridman (1:07:19.920)

it starts going to anxiety world.

Cal Newport (1:07:21.960)

Like where negative comments will actually stick

Lex Fridman (1:07:25.640)

to me mentally and positive comments will feel more shallow.

Cal Newport (1:07:33.680)

It's kind of fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:07:34.680)

So I've been trying to, there's been long stretches of time,

Cal Newport (1:07:41.760)

I think December and January where I did just post

Lex Fridman (1:07:44.640)

and check, post and check.

Cal Newport (1:07:46.360)

That makes me really happy.

Lex Fridman (1:07:49.040)

Most of 2020 I did that, it made me really happy.

Cal Newport (1:07:52.520)

Recently I started like, I'll go,

Lex Fridman (1:07:56.040)

you go right back in like a drug addict,

Cal Newport (1:07:57.960)

where you check it like, I don't know what that number is,

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.680)

but that number is high.

Cal Newport (1:08:01.640)

Not good, you don't come out happy.

Lex Fridman (1:08:03.840)

No one comes out of a day full of Twitter

Cal Newport (1:08:06.000)

celebrating humanity.

Lex Fridman (1:08:07.280)

And it's not even,

Cal Newport (1:08:08.720)

cause I'm very fortunate to have a lot of just

Lex Fridman (1:08:11.280)

positivity in the Twitter,

Lex Fridman (1:08:12.880)

but there's just a general anxiety.

Lex Fridman (1:08:16.160)

I wouldn't even say it's,

Cal Newport (1:08:19.840)

it's probably the thing that you're talking about

Lex Fridman (1:08:21.400)

with the contact switching.

Cal Newport (1:08:22.640)

It's almost like an exhaustion.

Lex Fridman (1:08:25.800)

I wouldn't even say it's like a negative feeling.

Cal Newport (1:08:27.920)

It's almost just an exhaustion

Lex Fridman (1:08:29.520)

to where I'm not creating anything beautiful in my life,

Cal Newport (1:08:32.960)

just exhausted.

Lex Fridman (1:08:33.800)

Like an existential exhaustion.

Cal Newport (1:08:35.240)

Existential exhaustion.

Lex Fridman (1:08:36.920)

But I wonder, do you think it's possible to use

Cal Newport (1:08:39.560)

from the people you've seen from yourself

Lex Fridman (1:08:42.240)

to use social media in the way I'm describing moderation?

Lex Fridman (1:08:45.560)

Or is it always going to become?

Lex Fridman (1:08:48.040)

When people do this exercise,

Cal Newport (1:08:49.240)

you get lots of configurations.

Lex Fridman (1:08:52.320)

So for people that have a public presence, for example,

Cal Newport (1:08:56.080)

like what you're doing is not that unusual.

Lex Fridman (1:08:58.840)

Okay, I post one thing a day and my audience likes it

Lex Fridman (1:09:02.200)

and that's kind of it.

Lex Fridman (1:09:04.160)

But you've thought through like, okay,

Cal Newport (1:09:05.760)

this supports something I value,

Lex Fridman (1:09:06.960)

which is like having a sort of informal connection

Cal Newport (1:09:09.440)

with my audience and being exposed to some sort of

Lex Fridman (1:09:13.040)

positive randomness.

Cal Newport (1:09:15.640)

Okay, then you could say if that's my goal,

Lex Fridman (1:09:18.400)

what's the right way to do it?

Cal Newport (1:09:19.240)

Well, I don't need to be on Twitter on my phone all day.

Lex Fridman (1:09:20.760)

Maybe what I do is every day at five,

Cal Newport (1:09:22.680)

I do my post and check on the day.

Lex Fridman (1:09:25.200)

So I have a writer friend, Ryan Holiday,

Cal Newport (1:09:28.800)

who writes about the Stoics a lot.

Lex Fridman (1:09:30.480)

And he has this similar strategy.

Cal Newport (1:09:32.080)

He posts one quote every day usually from a famous Stoic

Lex Fridman (1:09:36.480)

and sometimes from a contemporary figure.

Lex Fridman (1:09:37.640)

And that's just what he does.

Lex Fridman (1:09:38.480)

He just posts it and it's a very positive thing.

Cal Newport (1:09:41.280)

Like his readers really love it

Lex Fridman (1:09:42.560)

because it's just like a dose of inspiration.

Cal Newport (1:09:44.320)

He doesn't spend time.

Lex Fridman (1:09:46.000)

He's never interacting with anyone on social media, right?

Lex Fridman (1:09:48.760)

But that's an example of I figured out

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.000)

what's important to me,

Cal Newport (1:09:51.840)

what's the best way to use tools to amplify it.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.040)

And then you get advantages out of the tools.

Lex Fridman (1:09:56.280)

So I like what you're doing.

Lex Fridman (1:09:57.560)

I looked you up, I looked up your Twitter feed

Cal Newport (1:09:59.280)

before I came over here.

Lex Fridman (1:10:00.520)

I was curious, you're not on there a lot.

Cal Newport (1:10:02.520)

I don't see you yelling at people.

Lex Fridman (1:10:04.000)

Now, do you think social media as a medium

Lex Fridman (1:10:07.600)

changed the cultural standards?

Lex Fridman (1:10:09.120)

And I mean it in a, have you read Neil Postman at all?

Lex Fridman (1:10:11.920)

Have you read like a Amusing Ourselves to Death?

Lex Fridman (1:10:14.040)

He was a social critic, technology critic

Lex Fridman (1:10:17.000)

and wrote a lot about sort of technological determinism.

Lex Fridman (1:10:19.760)

So the ways, which is a really influential idea

Cal Newport (1:10:22.440)

to a lot of my work,

Lex Fridman (1:10:23.280)

which is actually a little out of fashion

Cal Newport (1:10:24.600)

right now in academia.

Lex Fridman (1:10:25.560)

But the ways that the properties

Lex Fridman (1:10:28.120)

and presence of technologies change things about humans

Lex Fridman (1:10:31.160)

in a way that's not really intended

Cal Newport (1:10:32.600)

or planned by the humans themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:10:33.880)

And that book is all about

Lex Fridman (1:10:35.080)

how different communication medium,

Lex Fridman (1:10:38.040)

like fundamentally just changed the way

Cal Newport (1:10:39.320)

the human brain understands and operates.

Lex Fridman (1:10:42.080)

And so he sort of gets into the,

Lex Fridman (1:10:43.400)

what happened when the printed word was widespread

Lex Fridman (1:10:45.680)

and how television changed it.

Lex Fridman (1:10:47.240)

And this was all pre social media.

Lex Fridman (1:10:49.840)

But this is one of these ideas I'm having

Cal Newport (1:10:51.200)

is like what's the degree to which,

Lex Fridman (1:10:52.480)

and I get into it sometimes on my show,

Cal Newport (1:10:54.000)

I get into a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.840)

like the degree to which like Twitter in particular

Cal Newport (1:10:58.040)

just changed the way that people conceptualized

Lex Fridman (1:11:00.160)

what for example, debate and discussion was.

Cal Newport (1:11:03.880)

Like it introduced a rhetorical dunk culture

Lex Fridman (1:11:06.080)

where it's sort of more about tribes

Cal Newport (1:11:08.120)

not giving ground to other tribes.

Lex Fridman (1:11:10.240)

And it's like, it's a complete,

Cal Newport (1:11:12.000)

there's different places and times

Lex Fridman (1:11:14.760)

when that type of discussion was thought of differently.

Cal Newport (1:11:17.800)

Well, yeah, absolutely.

Lex Fridman (1:11:19.200)

But I tend to believe, I don't know what you think,

Cal Newport (1:11:21.200)

that there's the technological solutions.

Lex Fridman (1:11:23.240)

Like there's literally different features in Twitter

Cal Newport (1:11:27.520)

that could completely reverse that.

Lex Fridman (1:11:29.200)

There's so much power in the different choices that are made.

Lex Fridman (1:11:33.280)

And it could still be highly engaging

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.200)

and have very different effects.

Cal Newport (1:11:37.360)

Perhaps more negative or hopefully more positive.

Lex Fridman (1:11:40.240)

Yeah, so I'm trying to pull these two things apart.

Lex Fridman (1:11:42.360)

So there's these two ways social media,

Lex Fridman (1:11:45.200)

let's say could change the experience

Cal Newport (1:11:46.600)

of reading a major newspaper today.

Lex Fridman (1:11:49.120)

One could be a little bit more economic, right?

Lex Fridman (1:11:50.960)

So the internet made it cheaper to get news.

Lex Fridman (1:11:53.360)

The newspapers had to retreat to a paywall model

Cal Newport (1:11:55.360)

because it was the only way they were gonna survive.

Lex Fridman (1:11:56.960)

But once you're in a paywall model,

Cal Newport (1:11:58.240)

then what you really wanna do is make your tribe,

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.360)

which is within the paywall, very, very happy with you.

Lex Fridman (1:12:03.760)

So you wanna work to them.

Lex Fridman (1:12:04.880)

But then there's the sort of determinist point of view,

Cal Newport (1:12:07.480)

which is the properties of Twitter, which were arbitrary.

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.280)

Jack and Evan just, whatever, let's just do it this way.

Cal Newport (1:12:13.840)

Influenced the very way that people now understand

Lex Fridman (1:12:15.720)

and think about the world.

Lex Fridman (1:12:16.760)

So the one influenced the other, I think.

Lex Fridman (1:12:19.520)

They kind of started adjusting together.

Cal Newport (1:12:21.720)

I did this thing, I mean, I'm trying to understand this.

Lex Fridman (1:12:25.000)

Part of the, I've been playing with the entrepreneurial idea.

Cal Newport (1:12:30.320)

That's a very particular dream I've had of a startup.

Lex Fridman (1:12:34.280)

That this is a longer term thing,

Cal Newport (1:12:37.200)

it has to do with artificial intelligence.

Lex Fridman (1:12:39.520)

But more and more, it seems like there's some trajectory

Cal Newport (1:12:43.000)

through creating social media type of technologies.

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.400)

Very different than what people are thinking I'm doing.

Lex Fridman (1:12:49.520)

But it's a kind of challenge to the way the Twitter is done.

Lex Fridman (1:12:55.120)

But it's not obvious what the best mechanisms are

Cal Newport (1:12:58.720)

to still make an exceptionally engaging platform.

Lex Fridman (1:13:01.840)

My clubhouse is very engaging.

Lex Fridman (1:13:03.960)

And not have any other negative effects.

Lex Fridman (1:13:06.520)

For example, there's Chrome extensions

Cal Newport (1:13:08.880)

that allow you to turn off all likes and dislikes

Lex Fridman (1:13:13.600)

and all of that from Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:13:14.960)

So all you're seeing is just the content.

Lex Fridman (1:13:18.200)

On Twitter, that to me creates,

Cal Newport (1:13:21.480)

that's not a compelling experience at all.

Lex Fridman (1:13:23.560)

Because I still need, I would argue,

Cal Newport (1:13:26.880)

I still need the likes to know

Lex Fridman (1:13:28.400)

what's a tweet worth reading.

Cal Newport (1:13:30.400)

Because I don't only have a limited amount of time,

Lex Fridman (1:13:32.160)

so I need to know what's valuable.

Cal Newport (1:13:34.000)

It's like great Yelp reviews on tweets or something.

Lex Fridman (1:13:36.920)

But I've turned off on, for example,

Cal Newport (1:13:40.600)

on my account on YouTube, I wrote a Chrome extension

Lex Fridman (1:13:45.960)

that turns off all likes and dislikes and just views.

Cal Newport (1:13:50.400)

I don't know how many views the video gets and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.000)

Unless it's on my phone.

Lex Fridman (1:13:53.840)

Did you take off the recommendations?

Lex Fridman (1:13:57.640)

No, no.

Cal Newport (1:13:58.480)

On YouTube, some people,

Lex Fridman (1:13:59.480)

distraction for YouTube is a big one for people.

Cal Newport (1:14:02.080)

No, I'm not worried about the distraction

Lex Fridman (1:14:04.040)

because I'm able to control myself on YouTube.

Cal Newport (1:14:06.880)

You don't rabbit hole.

Lex Fridman (1:14:07.840)

No, I don't rabbit hole.

Lex Fridman (1:14:09.000)

So you have to know your demons or your addictions

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.160)

or whatever.

Cal Newport (1:14:12.000)

On YouTube, I'm okay.

Lex Fridman (1:14:13.360)

I don't keep clicking.

Cal Newport (1:14:14.640)

The negative feelings come from seeing the views

Lex Fridman (1:14:19.320)

on stuff you've created.

Cal Newport (1:14:22.080)

Oh, so you don't want to see your views.

Lex Fridman (1:14:24.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:14:24.920)

So I'm just speaking to the things

Lex Fridman (1:14:26.760)

that I'm aware of of myself that are helpful

Lex Fridman (1:14:29.640)

and things that are not helpful emotionally.

Lex Fridman (1:14:31.920)

And I feel like there should be,

Cal Newport (1:14:34.520)

we need to create actually tooling for ourselves.

Lex Fridman (1:14:37.000)

That's not me with JavaScript,

Lex Fridman (1:14:38.800)

but anybody is able to create,

Lex Fridman (1:14:42.280)

sort of control the experience that they have.

Cal Newport (1:14:45.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:14:45.880)

Well, so my big unified theory on social media

Cal Newport (1:14:48.880)

is I'm very bearish on the big platforms

Lex Fridman (1:14:52.440)

having a long future.

Cal Newport (1:14:53.760)

You are.

Lex Fridman (1:14:54.600)

I think the moment of three or four major platforms

Lex Fridman (1:14:57.920)

is not gonna last, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:01.200)

So I don't know.

Cal Newport (1:15:02.240)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.080)

This is just perspective, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.920)

So you can start shorting these stocks on my,

Lex Fridman (1:15:07.000)

don't tell.

Cal Newport (1:15:07.840)

It's not financial advice.

Lex Fridman (1:15:08.680)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (1:15:09.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:15:10.360)

Don't do it Robinhood.

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.200)

So here's, I think the big mistake

Lex Fridman (1:15:12.880)

the major platforms made as when they took out

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.200)

the network effect advantage, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.400)

So the original pitch,

Cal Newport (1:15:20.960)

especially if something like Facebook or Instagram

Lex Fridman (1:15:23.160)

was the people you know are on here, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.440)

So like what you use this for is you can connect to people

Lex Fridman (1:15:28.560)

that you already know.

Cal Newport (1:15:29.760)

This is what makes the network useful.

Lex Fridman (1:15:31.680)

So therefore the value of our network grows quadratically

Cal Newport (1:15:34.760)

with the number of users.

Lex Fridman (1:15:35.800)

And therefore it's such a headstart

Cal Newport (1:15:37.800)

that there's no way that someone else can catch up.

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.360)

But when they shifted and when Facebook took the lead

Cal Newport (1:15:42.680)

of say we're gonna shift towards a newsfeed model,

Lex Fridman (1:15:45.720)

they basically said we're going to try to in the moment

Cal Newport (1:15:48.480)

get more data and get more likes.

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.280)

Like what we're gonna go towards

Cal Newport (1:15:51.320)

is actually just seeing interesting stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:15:54.320)

Like seeing different information.

Lex Fridman (1:15:55.400)

So people took this social internet impulse

Lex Fridman (1:15:58.280)

to connect to people digitally,

Cal Newport (1:15:59.720)

to other tools like group text messages

Lex Fridman (1:16:01.920)

and WhatsApp and stuff like this, right?

Lex Fridman (1:16:03.160)

So you don't think about these tools

Lex Fridman (1:16:04.400)

as oh, this is where I connect with people.

Cal Newport (1:16:06.480)

Once it's just a feed that's kind of interesting,

Lex Fridman (1:16:09.160)

now you're competing with everything else

Cal Newport (1:16:10.800)

that can produce interesting content that's diverting.

Lex Fridman (1:16:13.480)

And I think that is a much fiercer competition

Cal Newport (1:16:16.320)

because now for example, you're going up against podcasts,

Lex Fridman (1:16:18.320)

right?

Cal Newport (1:16:19.160)

I mean like, okay, I guess the Twitter feed

Lex Fridman (1:16:20.720)

is interesting right now,

Lex Fridman (1:16:22.920)

but also a podcast is interesting

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.360)

or something else could be interesting too.

Cal Newport (1:16:25.600)

I think it's a much fiercer competition

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.320)

when there's no more network effects, right?

Lex Fridman (1:16:29.920)

And so my sense is we're gonna see a fragmentation

Lex Fridman (1:16:32.240)

into what I call long tail social media,

Cal Newport (1:16:34.760)

where if I don't need everyone I know to be on a platform,

Lex Fridman (1:16:38.480)

then why not have three or four bespoke platforms I use

Cal Newport (1:16:41.880)

where it's a thousand people and we're all interested

Lex Fridman (1:16:44.880)

in whatever, AI or comedy.

Lex Fridman (1:16:47.880)

And we've perfected this interface

Lex Fridman (1:16:50.080)

and maybe it's like Clubhouse, it's audio or something.

Lex Fridman (1:16:52.080)

And we all pay $2 so that we don't have to worry

Lex Fridman (1:16:54.240)

about attention harvesting.

Lex Fridman (1:16:55.800)

And that's gonna be wildly more entertaining.

Lex Fridman (1:16:57.760)

Like, I mean, I'm thinking about comedians on Twitter.

Cal Newport (1:17:00.600)

It's not the best internet possible format

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.080)

for them expressing themselves and being interesting.

Cal Newport (1:17:06.400)

That you have all these comedians that are trying to like,

Lex Fridman (1:17:08.080)

well, I can do like little clips and little whatever.

Cal Newport (1:17:10.040)

Like, I don't know if there was a long tail social media.

Lex Fridman (1:17:13.000)

I mean, it's really, this is where the comedians are

Lex Fridman (1:17:14.440)

and there's podcasts and the comedians are on podcasts now.

Lex Fridman (1:17:16.480)

So this is my thought is that there's really no,

Cal Newport (1:17:19.440)

there's really no strong advantage

Lex Fridman (1:17:21.200)

to having one large platform that everyone is on.

Cal Newport (1:17:25.920)

If all you're getting from it is,

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.240)

I now have different options for diversion

Lex Fridman (1:17:29.200)

and like uplifting aspirational

Lex Fridman (1:17:31.200)

or whatever types of entertainment,

Cal Newport (1:17:33.320)

that whole thing could fragment.

Lex Fridman (1:17:34.560)

And I think the glue that was holding together

Cal Newport (1:17:36.120)

was network effects.

Lex Fridman (1:17:36.960)

I don't think they realized that when network effects

Cal Newport (1:17:38.680)

have been destabilized,

Lex Fridman (1:17:40.040)

they don't have the centrifugal force anymore

Lex Fridman (1:17:41.960)

and they're spinning faster and faster.

Lex Fridman (1:17:43.360)

But is a Twitter feed really that much more interesting

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.680)

than all of these streaming services?

Lex Fridman (1:17:48.120)

Is it really that much more interesting

Cal Newport (1:17:49.720)

than Clubhouse, is it that much more interesting

Lex Fridman (1:17:52.360)

than podcast?

Cal Newport (1:17:54.000)

I feel like they don't realize

Lex Fridman (1:17:55.760)

how unstable their ground actually is.

Cal Newport (1:17:57.480)

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:17:58.440)

But the thing that makes Twitter and Facebook work,

Cal Newport (1:18:03.840)

I mean, the newsfeed, you're exactly right.

Lex Fridman (1:18:07.120)

Like you can just duplicate the news.

Cal Newport (1:18:08.840)

Like if it's not the social network and it's the newsfeed,

Lex Fridman (1:18:12.800)

then why not have multiple different feeds

Cal Newport (1:18:15.240)

that are more, that are better at satisfying.

Lex Fridman (1:18:17.520)

There's a dopamine gamification that they've figured out.

Cal Newport (1:18:20.600)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:18:21.440)

And so you have to, whatever you create,

Cal Newport (1:18:24.880)

you have to at least provide some pleasure

Lex Fridman (1:18:27.360)

in that same gamification kind of way.

Cal Newport (1:18:29.680)

It doesn't have to have to do with scale

Lex Fridman (1:18:32.200)

of large social networks.

Lex Fridman (1:18:33.280)

But I mean, I guess you're implying that

Lex Fridman (1:18:36.160)

you should be able to design that kind of mechanism

Cal Newport (1:18:39.520)

in other forms.

Lex Fridman (1:18:40.360)

Or people are turning on that gamification.

Cal Newport (1:18:42.640)

I mean, so people are getting wise to it

Lex Fridman (1:18:44.520)

and are getting uncomfortable about it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:18:46.280)

So if I'm offering something, these exist out here.

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.040)

Like sugar.

Cal Newport (1:18:49.880)

People realize sugar's bad for you.

Lex Fridman (1:18:50.720)

Yeah, sugar's great.

Cal Newport (1:18:51.560)

They're gonna stop eating it.

Lex Fridman (1:18:52.400)

Yeah, drinking a lot's great too,

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.240)

but also after a while you realize there's problems.

Lex Fridman (1:18:56.080)

So some of the long tail social media networks

Cal Newport (1:18:58.120)

that are out there that I've looked at,

Lex Fridman (1:18:59.800)

they offer usually like a deeper sense of connection.

Cal Newport (1:19:02.880)

Like it's usually interesting people

Lex Fridman (1:19:04.920)

that you share some affinity

Lex Fridman (1:19:06.160)

and you have these carefully cultivated.

Lex Fridman (1:19:08.160)

I wrote this New Yorker piece a couple of years ago

Cal Newport (1:19:09.920)

about the indie social media movement

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.560)

that really got into some of these different technologies.

Lex Fridman (1:19:14.920)

But I think the technologies are a distraction.

Lex Fridman (1:19:17.000)

We focus too much on Macedon versus whatever.

Cal Newport (1:19:20.480)

Like forget, or Discord.

Lex Fridman (1:19:21.800)

Like actually let's forget the protocols right now.

Cal Newport (1:19:23.480)

It's the idea of, okay.

Lex Fridman (1:19:26.040)

And there's a lot of these long tail social media groups,

Lex Fridman (1:19:28.520)

what people are getting out of it,

Lex Fridman (1:19:29.560)

which I think can outweigh the dopamine gamification

Cal Newport (1:19:32.920)

is strong connection and motivation.

Lex Fridman (1:19:35.160)

Like you're in a group with other guys

Cal Newport (1:19:36.960)

that are all trying to be better dads

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.640)

or something like this.

Lex Fridman (1:19:40.480)

And you talk to them on a regular basis

Lex Fridman (1:19:42.680)

and you're sharing your stories

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.720)

and there's interesting talks.

Lex Fridman (1:19:45.720)

And that's a powerful thing too.

Cal Newport (1:19:47.440)

One interesting thing about scale of Twitter

Lex Fridman (1:19:49.800)

is you have these viral spread of information.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.200)

So sort of Twitter has become a newsmaker in itself.

Lex Fridman (1:19:57.040)

Yeah, I think it's a problem.

Cal Newport (1:19:58.560)

Well, yes, but I wonder what replaces that

Lex Fridman (1:20:01.080)

because then you immediately.

Lex Fridman (1:20:03.520)

Reporting?

Lex Fridman (1:20:04.360)

Well, no.

Cal Newport (1:20:05.200)

Reporters have to do some work again, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:20:07.320)

The problem with reporters and journalism

Cal Newport (1:20:09.720)

is that they're intermediary.

Lex Fridman (1:20:12.360)

They have control.

Cal Newport (1:20:14.080)

I mean, this is the problem in Russia currently

Lex Fridman (1:20:15.960)

is that it creates a shield between the people and the news.

Cal Newport (1:20:22.400)

The interesting thing and the powerful thing about Twitter

Lex Fridman (1:20:25.080)

is that the news originates from the individual

Cal Newport (1:20:28.040)

that's creating the news.

Lex Fridman (1:20:29.000)

Like you have the former president of the United States

Cal Newport (1:20:33.200)

on Twitter creating news.

Lex Fridman (1:20:34.880)

You have Elon Musk creating news.

Cal Newport (1:20:36.760)

You have people announcing stuff on Twitter

Lex Fridman (1:20:39.560)

as opposed to talking to a journalist.

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.440)

And that feels much more genuine

Lex Fridman (1:20:44.000)

and it feels very powerful,

Lex Fridman (1:20:48.320)

but actually coming to realize

Lex Fridman (1:20:49.960)

it doesn't need the social network.

Cal Newport (1:20:53.040)

You can just put that announcement

Lex Fridman (1:20:54.680)

on a YouTube type thing.

Cal Newport (1:20:56.000)

This is what I'm thinking.

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.840)

Right, so this is my point about that

Cal Newport (1:20:58.280)

because that's right.

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.680)

The democratizing power of the internet is fantastic.

Cal Newport (1:21:01.880)

I mean, I'm an old school internet nerd,

Lex Fridman (1:21:03.680)

a guy that was telemeting in the servers

Lex Fridman (1:21:06.440)

and gophering before the World Wide Web was around, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:08.720)

So I'm a huge internet booster.

Lex Fridman (1:21:10.120)

And that's one of its big power.

Lex Fridman (1:21:12.320)

But when you put everything on Twitter,

Cal Newport (1:21:14.400)

I think the fact that you've taken,

Lex Fridman (1:21:16.640)

you homogenized everything, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:18.400)

So everything looks the same,

Lex Fridman (1:21:20.200)

moves with the same low friction is very difficult.

Lex Fridman (1:21:22.760)

You have no what I call distributed curation, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:25.320)

The only curation that really happens,

Cal Newport (1:21:27.080)

there's a little bit with likes and also the algorithm.

Lex Fridman (1:21:29.560)

But if you look back to pre web 2.0 or early web 2.0,

Cal Newport (1:21:33.760)

when a lot of this was happening,

Lex Fridman (1:21:34.760)

let's say on blogs where people own their own servers

Lex Fridman (1:21:37.480)

and you had your different blogs,

Lex Fridman (1:21:39.240)

there was this distributed curation that happened

Cal Newport (1:21:41.400)

where in order for your blog to get on people's radar

Lex Fridman (1:21:45.400)

and this had nothing to do with any gatekeepers

Cal Newport (1:21:47.600)

or legacy media, it was over time you got more links

Lex Fridman (1:21:51.080)

and people respected you

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.080)

and you would hear about this blog over here

Lex Fridman (1:21:53.520)

and there's this whole distributed curation

Lex Fridman (1:21:55.320)

and filtering going on.

Lex Fridman (1:21:56.800)

So if you think like the 2004 presidential election,

Cal Newport (1:22:00.080)

most of the information people are getting from the internet

Lex Fridman (1:22:02.280)

was one of the first big internet news driven elections

Cal Newport (1:22:05.840)

was from, you had like the daily costs and drudge,

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.480)

but there was like blogs that were out there

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.080)

and this was back, Ezra Klein was just running a blog

Lex Fridman (1:22:13.560)

out of his dorm room at this point, right?

Lex Fridman (1:22:16.360)

And you would in a distributed fashion gain credibility

Lex Fridman (1:22:20.800)

because okay, people have paid,

Cal Newport (1:22:22.680)

it's very hard to get people to pay attention to your blog,

Lex Fridman (1:22:24.160)

they're paying attention, they get linked to this kid Ezra

Cal Newport (1:22:26.560)

or whatever, it seems to be really sharp

Lex Fridman (1:22:28.160)

and now people are noticing it

Lex Fridman (1:22:29.840)

and now you have a distributed curation

Lex Fridman (1:22:32.240)

that solves a lot of the problems we see

Cal Newport (1:22:34.200)

when you have a completely homogenized low friction

Lex Fridman (1:22:36.200)

environment like friction where, I mean Twitter,

Cal Newport (1:22:38.400)

where any random conspiracy theory or whatever

Lex Fridman (1:22:41.240)

that people like can just shoot through and spread,

Cal Newport (1:22:44.720)

whereas if you're starting a blog

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.560)

to try to push QAnon or something like that,

Cal Newport (1:22:49.640)

it's probably gonna be a really weird looking blog

Lex Fridman (1:22:51.560)

and you're gonna have a hard time,

Lex Fridman (1:22:52.520)

like it's just never gonna show up on people's radar, right?

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.680)

So everything you've said up until the very last statement,

Cal Newport (1:22:58.800)

I would agree with.

Lex Fridman (1:23:01.000)

This is a topic I don't know a ton about, I guess, QAnon.

Cal Newport (1:23:03.400)

There's, I think, I'll forget QAnon.

Lex Fridman (1:23:07.240)

Yeah, no, we can.

Lex Fridman (1:23:08.080)

But QAnon is, QAnon could be that,

Lex Fridman (1:23:10.040)

I also don't know, I should know more,

Cal Newport (1:23:12.000)

I apologize, I don't know more.

Lex Fridman (1:23:13.720)

I mean, that's a power and the downside,

Cal Newport (1:23:17.280)

you can have, I mean, Hitler could have a blog today

Lex Fridman (1:23:21.720)

and you would have potentially a very large following

Cal Newport (1:23:24.240)

if he's charismatic, if he's as good with words,

Lex Fridman (1:23:28.280)

is able to express the ideas,

Cal Newport (1:23:29.960)

whatever maybe he's able to channel,

Lex Fridman (1:23:32.040)

the frustration, the anger that people have

Cal Newport (1:23:33.720)

about a certain thing.

Lex Fridman (1:23:34.640)

And so I think that's the power of blogs,

Lex Fridman (1:23:37.360)

but it's also the limitation, but that doesn't,

Lex Fridman (1:23:39.760)

we're not trying to solve that.

Cal Newport (1:23:40.600)

You can't solve that, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:23:41.920)

The fundamental problem you're saying is not the problem.

Cal Newport (1:23:45.040)

Your thesis is that there's nothing special

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.160)

about large scale social networks

Cal Newport (1:23:51.080)

that guarantees that they will keep existing.

Lex Fridman (1:23:53.600)

And it's important to remember

Cal Newport (1:23:55.040)

for a lot of the older generation of internet activists

Lex Fridman (1:23:58.280)

or the people who are very pro internet in the early days,

Cal Newport (1:24:01.280)

they were completely flabbergasted

Lex Fridman (1:24:03.960)

by the rise of these platforms.

Cal Newport (1:24:05.600)

Say, why would you take the internet

Lex Fridman (1:24:08.600)

and then build your own version of the internet

Lex Fridman (1:24:11.000)

where you own all the servers?

Lex Fridman (1:24:12.640)

And we built this whole distributed,

Cal Newport (1:24:14.520)

the whole thing, we had open protocols.

Lex Fridman (1:24:16.600)

Everyone anywhere in the world could use the same protocols.

Cal Newport (1:24:18.640)

Your machine can talk to any other machine.

Lex Fridman (1:24:20.000)

It's the most democratic communication system

Cal Newport (1:24:23.320)

that's ever been built.

Lex Fridman (1:24:24.280)

And then these companies came along and said,

Cal Newport (1:24:25.560)

we're gonna build our own,

Lex Fridman (1:24:26.600)

we'll just own all the servers

Lex Fridman (1:24:27.520)

and put them in buildings that we own.

Lex Fridman (1:24:29.160)

And the internet will just be the first mile

Cal Newport (1:24:31.000)

that gets you into our private internet

Lex Fridman (1:24:32.480)

where we owned the whole thing.

Cal Newport (1:24:33.800)

It went completely against the entire motivation

Lex Fridman (1:24:37.920)

of the internet was like, yes,

Cal Newport (1:24:39.160)

it's not gonna be one person owns all the servers

Lex Fridman (1:24:41.320)

and you pay to access them.

Cal Newport (1:24:42.280)

It's any one server that they own

Lex Fridman (1:24:43.880)

could talk to anyone else's server

Cal Newport (1:24:45.120)

because we all agree on a standard set of protocols.

Lex Fridman (1:24:48.440)

And so the old guard of pro internet people

Cal Newport (1:24:51.720)

never understood this move towards

Lex Fridman (1:24:54.000)

let's build private versions of the internet.

Cal Newport (1:24:57.680)

We'll build three or four private internets

Lex Fridman (1:24:59.080)

and that's what we'll all use.

Cal Newport (1:25:00.120)

It was the opposite basically.

Lex Fridman (1:25:01.760)

Well, it's funny enough, I don't know if you follow,

Lex Fridman (1:25:03.400)

but Jack Dorsey is also as a proponent

Lex Fridman (1:25:07.600)

and is helping to fund, create fully distributed

Cal Newport (1:25:11.600)

versions of Twitter, essentially,

Lex Fridman (1:25:13.000)

I think that would potentially destroy Twitter.

Lex Fridman (1:25:15.960)

But I think there might be financial,

Lex Fridman (1:25:19.520)

like business cases to be made there, I'm not sure.

Lex Fridman (1:25:21.920)

But that seems to be another alternative

Lex Fridman (1:25:23.680)

as opposed to creating a bunch of like the long tail,

Cal Newport (1:25:28.680)

creating like the ultimate long tail

Lex Fridman (1:25:31.520)

of like fully distributed.

Cal Newport (1:25:33.240)

Yeah, which is what the internet is.

Lex Fridman (1:25:35.080)

But that's sort of my long,

Cal Newport (1:25:36.280)

when I'm thinking about long tail social media,

Lex Fridman (1:25:37.840)

I'm thinking it's like the tech's not so important.

Lex Fridman (1:25:40.960)

Like there's groups out there, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:42.680)

I know where the tech they use to actually implement

Cal Newport (1:25:45.720)

their digital only social group, whatever,

Lex Fridman (1:25:47.640)

they might use Slack, they might use some combination

Cal Newport (1:25:50.000)

of Zoom or it doesn't matter.

Lex Fridman (1:25:51.040)

I think in the tech world,

Cal Newport (1:25:52.720)

we wanna build the beautiful protocol

Lex Fridman (1:25:54.800)

that okay, everyone's gonna use

Cal Newport (1:25:56.080)

as just a federated server protocol

Lex Fridman (1:25:58.640)

in which we've worked out X, Y, and Z,

Lex Fridman (1:25:59.840)

and no one understands it

Lex Fridman (1:26:00.720)

because then the engineers need it all to make,

Cal Newport (1:26:02.280)

I get it because I'm a nerd like this,

Lex Fridman (1:26:03.480)

like, okay, every standard has to fit with everything else

Lex Fridman (1:26:05.720)

and no one understands what's going on.

Lex Fridman (1:26:07.400)

Meanwhile, you have this group of bike enthusiasts

Cal Newport (1:26:10.520)

that are like, yeah, we'll just jump on to Zoom

Lex Fridman (1:26:12.360)

and have some Slack and put up a blog.

Cal Newport (1:26:14.240)

The tech doesn't really matter.

Lex Fridman (1:26:15.680)

Like we built a world with our own curation,

Cal Newport (1:26:17.640)

our own rules, our own sort of social ecosystem

Lex Fridman (1:26:21.960)

that's generating a lot of value.

Cal Newport (1:26:23.400)

I mean, I don't know if it'll happen.

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.880)

There's a lot of money at stake with obviously these large,

Lex Fridman (1:26:27.280)

but I just think they're more,

Lex Fridman (1:26:29.480)

they're so, I mean, look how quickly

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.840)

Americans left Facebook, right?

Lex Fridman (1:26:33.400)

I mean, Facebook was savvy to buy other properties

Lex Fridman (1:26:35.560)

and to diversify, right?

Lex Fridman (1:26:36.720)

But how quick did that take

Lex Fridman (1:26:37.880)

for just standard Facebook news feed?

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.800)

Everyone under the age of something were using it

Lex Fridman (1:26:42.960)

and no one under a certain age is using it now.

Lex Fridman (1:26:44.520)

It took like four years.

Cal Newport (1:26:45.360)

I mean, this stuff is really.

Lex Fridman (1:26:47.520)

I believe people can leave Facebook overnight.

Cal Newport (1:26:50.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:26:51.760)

Like I think Facebook hasn't actually messed up

Cal Newport (1:26:54.480)

like enough to, there's two things.

Lex Fridman (1:26:57.920)

They haven't messed up enough

Cal Newport (1:26:58.800)

for people to really leave aggressively

Lex Fridman (1:27:00.600)

and there's no good alternative for them to leave.

Cal Newport (1:27:03.880)

I think if good alternatives pop up,

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.200)

it would just immediately happen.

Cal Newport (1:27:07.600)

The stuff is a lot more culturally fragile, I think.

Lex Fridman (1:27:10.280)

I mean, Twitter's having a moment

Cal Newport (1:27:11.440)

because it was feeding a certain type of,

Lex Fridman (1:27:13.200)

I mean, there's a lot of anxieties

Cal Newport (1:27:14.240)

that was in the sort of political sphere anyways

Lex Fridman (1:27:16.480)

that Twitter was working with,

Lex Fridman (1:27:20.240)

but its moment could go to as well.

Lex Fridman (1:27:21.680)

I mean, it's a really arbitrary thing.

Cal Newport (1:27:23.440)

Short little things.

Lex Fridman (1:27:24.920)

I read a Wired article about this earlier in the pandemic.

Cal Newport (1:27:27.480)

This is crazy that the way

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.560)

that we're trying to communicate information

Cal Newport (1:27:31.400)

about the pandemic is all these weird arbitrary rules

Lex Fridman (1:27:34.120)

where people are screenshotting pictures of articles

Cal Newport (1:27:37.120)

that are part of a tweet thread

Lex Fridman (1:27:38.360)

where you say one slash in under it.

Cal Newport (1:27:40.960)

We have the technology guys

Lex Fridman (1:27:43.120)

to really clearly convey long form information to people.

Lex Fridman (1:27:47.120)

Why do we have these?

Lex Fridman (1:27:48.400)

And I know this because it's the gamified dopamine hits,

Lex Fridman (1:27:50.440)

but what a weird medium.

Lex Fridman (1:27:52.320)

There's no reason for us to have to have these threads

Cal Newport (1:27:55.440)

that you have to find and pin with your screenshot.

Lex Fridman (1:27:57.840)

I mean, we have technology

Cal Newport (1:27:58.920)

to communicate better using the internet.

Lex Fridman (1:28:00.480)

I mean, why are epidemiologists having to do tweet threads?

Cal Newport (1:28:05.120)

Because there's mechanisms of publishing

Lex Fridman (1:28:06.960)

that make it easier on Twitter.

Cal Newport (1:28:08.680)

I mean, we're evolving as a species

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.800)

and the internet is a very fresh thing.

Lex Fridman (1:28:12.880)

And so it's kind of interesting to think

Lex Fridman (1:28:16.120)

that as opposed to Twitter,

Cal Newport (1:28:18.400)

this is what Jack also complains about

Lex Fridman (1:28:20.280)

is Twitter's not innovating fast enough.

Lex Fridman (1:28:23.160)

And so it's almost like the people are innovating

Lex Fridman (1:28:26.840)

and thinking about their productive life faster

Cal Newport (1:28:30.360)

than the platforms on which they operate can catch up.

Lex Fridman (1:28:33.680)

And so at the point the gap grows sufficiently,

Cal Newport (1:28:37.480)

they'll jump.

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.520)

A few people, a few innovative folks

Cal Newport (1:28:40.400)

will just create an alternative

Lex Fridman (1:28:42.600)

and perhaps distributed perhaps just many little silos

Lex Fridman (1:28:48.000)

and then people will jump

Lex Fridman (1:28:49.040)

and then we'll just continue this kind of way.

Cal Newport (1:28:50.600)

Yeah, but see, I think like Substack, for example,

Lex Fridman (1:28:52.360)

what they're gonna pull out of Twitter,

Cal Newport (1:28:53.640)

among other things, is the audience that was,

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.440)

let's say, like slightly left of center,

Lex Fridman (1:28:58.920)

but slightly left of center, don't like Trump,

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.080)

uncomfortable with like postmodern critical theories

Lex Fridman (1:29:05.480)

made into political action, right?

Lex Fridman (1:29:07.480)

And they're like, yeah, Twitter,

Cal Newport (1:29:08.480)

there was people on there talking about this

Lex Fridman (1:29:10.200)

and it made me feel sort of hurt

Cal Newport (1:29:12.400)

because I was feeling a little bit like a nerd about it.

Lex Fridman (1:29:14.200)

But honestly, I'd probably rather subscribe

Cal Newport (1:29:16.120)

to the four subs, you know, I'm gonna have like Barry's

Lex Fridman (1:29:19.320)

and Andrew Sullivan's, I'll have like a Jesse Signals,

Cal Newport (1:29:20.840)

like I'll have a few substacks I can subscribe to

Lex Fridman (1:29:22.920)

and honestly, I'm a knowledge worker who's 32 anyways,

Cal Newport (1:29:26.920)

probably that's an email all day.

Lex Fridman (1:29:28.240)

And so like, there's an innovation that's gonna,

Cal Newport (1:29:30.280)

that group, you know, it's gonna suck them off.

Lex Fridman (1:29:32.560)

Which is actually a very large group.

Cal Newport (1:29:34.280)

Yeah, that's a lot of energy.

Lex Fridman (1:29:36.480)

And then once Trump's gone,

Cal Newport (1:29:37.480)

I guess that's probably gonna drive,

Lex Fridman (1:29:38.800)

that drove a lot of more like Trump people off Twitter.

Cal Newport (1:29:42.320)

Like this stuff is fragile, I think.

Lex Fridman (1:29:44.520)

I, but the fascinating thing to me,

Cal Newport (1:29:47.080)

because I've hung out on Parler for a short amount enough

Lex Fridman (1:29:50.720)

to know that the interface matters.

Cal Newport (1:29:52.800)

It's so fascinating like that,

Lex Fridman (1:29:54.760)

that it's not just about ideas.

Cal Newport (1:29:57.480)

It's about creating like Substack 2,

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.280)

creating a pleasant experience, a dicting experience.

Cal Newport (1:30:04.520)

No, you're right, you're right about that.

Lex Fridman (1:30:05.600)

And it's hard.

Lex Fridman (1:30:06.640)

And it's why the, this is one of the conclusions

Lex Fridman (1:30:08.240)

from that indie social media article

Cal Newport (1:30:09.880)

is it's just the ugliness matters.

Lex Fridman (1:30:12.160)

And I don't mean even just aesthetically,

Cal Newport (1:30:13.440)

it's just the clunkiness of the interfaces.

Lex Fridman (1:30:17.160)

And I don't know, it's,

Cal Newport (1:30:18.360)

to some degree, the social media companies

Lex Fridman (1:30:19.840)

have spent a lot of money on this.

Lex Fridman (1:30:21.120)

And to some degree, it's a survivorship bias, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:24.000)

I think Twitter, every time I hear Jack talks about this,

Cal Newport (1:30:26.920)

it seems like he's as surprised as anyone else,

Lex Fridman (1:30:30.160)

the way Twitter is being used.

Cal Newport (1:30:31.160)

I mean, it's basically the way, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:30:33.320)

they had it years ago.

Lex Fridman (1:30:36.600)

And then, you know, it was like, great,

Lex Fridman (1:30:38.080)

there'll be statuses, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:39.560)

This is what I'm doing, you know?

Lex Fridman (1:30:41.120)

And my friends can follow me and see it.

Cal Newport (1:30:42.600)

Without really changing anything,

Lex Fridman (1:30:43.640)

it just happened to hit everything right

Cal Newport (1:30:46.000)

to support this other type of interaction.

Lex Fridman (1:30:47.560)

Well, there's also the JavaScript model,

Cal Newport (1:30:49.440)

which Brendan Eich talked about.

Lex Fridman (1:30:51.360)

He just implemented JavaScript,

Cal Newport (1:30:53.440)

like the crappy version of JavaScript in 10 days,

Lex Fridman (1:30:55.760)

threw it out there and just changed it really quickly,

Cal Newport (1:31:00.360)

evolved it really quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:31:01.400)

And now it's become, according to Stack Exchange,

Cal Newport (1:31:04.240)

the most popular programming language in the world

Lex Fridman (1:31:06.120)

that drives like most of the internet

Lex Fridman (1:31:08.320)

and even the backend and now mobile.

Lex Fridman (1:31:10.960)

And so that's an argument for the kind of thing

Cal Newport (1:31:14.200)

you're talking about where like the bike club people

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.120)

could literally create the thing that would, you know,

Cal Newport (1:31:21.760)

run most of the internet in 10 years from now.

Lex Fridman (1:31:24.560)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:31:25.400)

So there's something to that,

Lex Fridman (1:31:27.000)

like as opposed to trying to get lucky

Cal Newport (1:31:29.320)

or trying to think through stuff

Lex Fridman (1:31:30.480)

is just to solve a particular problem.

Cal Newport (1:31:33.320)

Do stuff, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:31:34.160)

And then do stuff.

Cal Newport (1:31:35.000)

Do stuff, keep tinkering until you love it.

Lex Fridman (1:31:36.840)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:31:37.680)

And then, and of course the sad thing is timing and luck

Lex Fridman (1:31:41.360)

matter and that you can't really control.

Cal Newport (1:31:43.880)

That's the problem.

Lex Fridman (1:31:44.720)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:31:45.560)

But you can't go back to 2007.

Lex Fridman (1:31:47.840)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (1:31:48.680)

That's like the number one thing you could do

Lex Fridman (1:31:49.520)

to have a lot of success with a new platform

Cal Newport (1:31:51.080)

is go back in time 14 years.

Lex Fridman (1:31:53.480)

So the thing you have to kind of think about

Cal Newport (1:31:55.120)

is what is the like, what's the totally new thing

Lex Fridman (1:31:59.200)

that 10 years from now would seem obvious.

Cal Newport (1:32:03.040)

I mean, some people saying clubhouses that,

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.280)

there's been a lot of stuff like clubhouse before,

Lex Fridman (1:32:08.080)

but it hit the right kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:32:12.640)

Similar to Tesla actually,

Lex Fridman (1:32:14.120)

what clubhouse did is it got a lot of

Lex Fridman (1:32:16.600)

relatively famous people on there quickly.

Lex Fridman (1:32:19.320)

And then the other effect is like, it's invite only.

Lex Fridman (1:32:24.120)

So like, oh, all the smart, like famous people are on there.

Cal Newport (1:32:27.320)

I wonder what's, it's the FOMO,

Lex Fridman (1:32:29.120)

like fear that you're missing something really profound

Cal Newport (1:32:32.320)

as exciting happening there.

Lex Fridman (1:32:34.280)

So those social effects.

Lex Fridman (1:32:36.120)

And then once they actually show up,

Lex Fridman (1:32:38.840)

I'm a huge fan of this.

Cal Newport (1:32:40.200)

It's the JavaScript model is like,

Lex Fridman (1:32:42.240)

clubhouse is so dumb, like so simple in its interface.

Cal Newport (1:32:46.720)

Like you literally can't do anything except mute, unmute.

Lex Fridman (1:32:50.480)

There's a mute button.

Cal Newport (1:32:51.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:52.360)

And there's a leave quietly button.

Cal Newport (1:32:53.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:54.240)

And that's it.

Cal Newport (1:32:55.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:55.920)

And it's kinda.

Cal Newport (1:32:56.760)

I love single use technology that sense, yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:32:59.600)

There's no like, there's no,

Cal Newport (1:33:02.360)

it's just like trivial.

Lex Fridman (1:33:04.800)

And Twitter kinda started like that.

Cal Newport (1:33:08.320)

Facebook started like that.

Lex Fridman (1:33:10.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:33:10.920)

But they've evolved quickly to add all these features

Lex Fridman (1:33:12.480)

and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:33:13.440)

And I do hope clubhouse stays that way.

Lex Fridman (1:33:16.160)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (1:33:17.000)

It'd be interesting.

Lex Fridman (1:33:17.840)

Or there's alternatives.

Cal Newport (1:33:18.680)

I mean, even with clubhouse though,

Lex Fridman (1:33:21.120)

so one of the issues with a lot of these platforms

Cal Newport (1:33:23.040)

I think is bits are cheap enough now

Lex Fridman (1:33:27.840)

that we don't really need a unicorn investor model.

Cal Newport (1:33:30.920)

I mean, the investors need that model.

Lex Fridman (1:33:32.920)

There's really not really an imperative

Cal Newport (1:33:36.240)

of we need something that can scale

Lex Fridman (1:33:39.840)

to a hundred million plus a year revenue.

Cal Newport (1:33:42.160)

So, because it was gonna require this much seed

Lex Fridman (1:33:44.800)

and angel investment,

Lex Fridman (1:33:45.760)

and you're not gonna get this much seed angel investment

Lex Fridman (1:33:48.400)

unless you can have a potential exit this wide

Cal Newport (1:33:50.920)

because you have to be part of a portfolio

Lex Fridman (1:33:52.080)

that depends on one out of 10 exiting here.

Cal Newport (1:33:55.040)

If you don't actually need that

Lex Fridman (1:33:57.400)

and you don't need to satisfy that investor model,

Cal Newport (1:33:59.920)

which I think is basically the case.

Lex Fridman (1:34:01.680)

I mean, bits are so cheap.

Cal Newport (1:34:02.960)

Everything is so cheap.

Lex Fridman (1:34:04.320)

So even like with clubhouse, it's investor backed, right?

Cal Newport (1:34:07.600)

This notion of like, this needs to be a major platform,

Lex Fridman (1:34:11.840)

but the bike club doesn't necessarily need a major platform.

Cal Newport (1:34:14.200)

That's where I'm interested.

Lex Fridman (1:34:15.040)

I mean, I don't know.

Cal Newport (1:34:15.920)

There's so much money.

Lex Fridman (1:34:16.920)

That's the only problem that bets against me

Cal Newport (1:34:18.360)

is that you can concentrate a lot of capital

Lex Fridman (1:34:21.520)

if you do these things, right?

Cal Newport (1:34:22.600)

I mean, so Facebook was like

Lex Fridman (1:34:23.920)

a fantastic capital concentration machine.

Cal Newport (1:34:26.280)

It's crazy how much,

Lex Fridman (1:34:28.040)

where it even found that capital in the world

Cal Newport (1:34:30.400)

that it could concentrate and ossify in the stock price

Lex Fridman (1:34:32.600)

that a very small number of people have access to, right?

Cal Newport (1:34:35.280)

That's incredibly powerful.

Lex Fridman (1:34:37.320)

So when there is a possibility to consolidate

Lex Fridman (1:34:40.760)

and gather a huge amount of capital,

Lex Fridman (1:34:42.040)

that's a huge imperative

Cal Newport (1:34:43.240)

that's very hard for the bike club to go up against, so.

Lex Fridman (1:34:45.920)

But there's a lot of money in the bike club.

Cal Newport (1:34:47.400)

If you see what the Wall Street bets

Lex Fridman (1:34:50.720)

on that when a bunch of people get together,

Cal Newport (1:34:53.120)

I mean, it doesn't have to be a bike.

Lex Fridman (1:34:54.800)

It could be a bunch of different bike clubs

Cal Newport (1:34:56.200)

just kind of team up to overtake.

Lex Fridman (1:34:59.360)

That's what we're doing now, yeah.

Cal Newport (1:35:00.640)

Or we're gonna repurpose off the shelf stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.240)

That's not, yeah, we're gonna repurpose

Cal Newport (1:35:05.640)

whatever it was for office productivity or something,

Lex Fridman (1:35:07.760)

and like the clubs using Slack

Cal Newport (1:35:09.600)

just to build out these, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:35:11.560)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (1:35:12.560)

Let's talk about email.

Lex Fridman (1:35:14.040)

Yeah, that's right.

Cal Newport (1:35:15.760)

I wrote a book.

Lex Fridman (1:35:16.600)

You wrote yet another amazing book,

Cal Newport (1:35:20.880)

A World Without Email.

Lex Fridman (1:35:22.800)

Maybe one way to enter this discussion

Cal Newport (1:35:24.880)

is to ask what is the hyperactive hive mind,

Lex Fridman (1:35:28.240)

which is the concept you opened the book with?

Cal Newport (1:35:29.840)

Yeah, and the devil.

Lex Fridman (1:35:31.240)

And the devil.

Cal Newport (1:35:32.080)

It's the scourge of hundreds of millions.

Lex Fridman (1:35:35.880)

So I think, so I called this book A World Without Email.

Cal Newport (1:35:40.120)

The real title should be A World

Lex Fridman (1:35:41.400)

Without the Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow,

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.880)

but my publisher didn't like that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:35:45.760)

So we had to get a little bit more pithy.

Cal Newport (1:35:47.680)

I was trying to answer the question after deep work,

Lex Fridman (1:35:50.520)

why is it so hard to do this?

Cal Newport (1:35:52.720)

Like, if this is so valuable,

Lex Fridman (1:35:54.160)

if we can produce much higher,

Cal Newport (1:35:55.600)

if people are much happier,

Lex Fridman (1:35:57.920)

why do we check email a day?

Lex Fridman (1:35:58.960)

Why are we on Slack all day?

Lex Fridman (1:36:00.840)

And so I started working on this book

Cal Newport (1:36:02.400)

immediately after deep work.

Lex Fridman (1:36:04.240)

And so my initial interviews were done in 2016.

Lex Fridman (1:36:06.760)

So it took five years to pull the threads together.

Lex Fridman (1:36:08.880)

I was trying to understand why is it so hard

Cal Newport (1:36:11.320)

for most people to actually find any time

Lex Fridman (1:36:14.440)

to do the stuff that actually moves the needle?

Lex Fridman (1:36:16.560)

And the story was, and I thought this was,

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.360)

I hadn't heard this reported anywhere else.

Cal Newport (1:36:20.000)

That's why it took me so long to pull it together,

Lex Fridman (1:36:22.080)

is email arrives on the scene,

Cal Newport (1:36:24.440)

email spreads, I trace it,

Lex Fridman (1:36:26.000)

it really picks up steam in the early 1990s,

Lex Fridman (1:36:28.640)

between like 1990 and 1995, it makes its move, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:32.320)

And it does so for very pragmatic reasons.

Cal Newport (1:36:34.080)

It was replacing existing communication technologies

Lex Fridman (1:36:36.840)

that it was better than.

Lex Fridman (1:36:37.680)

It was mainly the fax machine, voicemail, and memos, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.960)

So this was just better, right?

Lex Fridman (1:36:41.720)

So it was a killer app because it was useful.

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.360)

In its wake came a new way of collaborating,

Lex Fridman (1:36:47.840)

and that's the Hyperactive Hive Mind.

Lex Fridman (1:36:49.600)

So it's like the virus that follows the rats

Cal Newport (1:36:53.520)

that went through Western Europe for the Black Pig.

Lex Fridman (1:36:55.840)

As email spread through organizations,

Cal Newport (1:36:57.920)

in its wake came the Hyperactive Hive Mind workflow,

Lex Fridman (1:37:00.560)

which says, okay, guys,

Cal Newport (1:37:01.560)

here's the way we're gonna collaborate.

Lex Fridman (1:37:03.560)

We'll just work things out on the fly

Cal Newport (1:37:05.400)

with unscheduled back and forth messages.

Lex Fridman (1:37:07.360)

Just boom, boom, boom, let's go back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:37:09.040)

Hey, what about this?

Lex Fridman (1:37:09.880)

Did you see this?

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.720)

What about that client?

Lex Fridman (1:37:11.560)

What's going on over here?

Cal Newport (1:37:13.200)

That followed email.

Lex Fridman (1:37:14.840)

It completely took over office work.

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.200)

And the need to keep up with all of these asynchronous

Lex Fridman (1:37:22.320)

back and forth unscheduled messages,

Cal Newport (1:37:24.400)

as those got more and more and more,

Lex Fridman (1:37:25.640)

and we had more of those to service,

Cal Newport (1:37:26.720)

the need to service those required us to check

Lex Fridman (1:37:29.000)

more and more and more and more, right?

Lex Fridman (1:37:30.360)

And so by the time, and I go through the numbers,

Lex Fridman (1:37:32.040)

but by the time you get to today,

Cal Newport (1:37:34.000)

now the average knowledge worker

Lex Fridman (1:37:34.960)

has to check one of these channels once every six minutes.

Cal Newport (1:37:37.480)

Because every single thing you do in your organization,

Lex Fridman (1:37:39.720)

how you talk to your colleagues,

Lex Fridman (1:37:40.680)

how you talk to your vendors,

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.600)

how you talk to your clients,

Lex Fridman (1:37:42.560)

how you talk to the HR department,

Lex Fridman (1:37:43.760)

it's all this asynchronous unscheduled

Cal Newport (1:37:45.400)

back and forth messaging.

Lex Fridman (1:37:47.200)

And you have to service the conversations.

Lex Fridman (1:37:49.560)

And it spiraled out of control,

Lex Fridman (1:37:51.320)

and it has sort of devolved a lot of work in the office now

Cal Newport (1:37:54.200)

to all I do is constantly tend communication channels.

Lex Fridman (1:37:58.800)

So it's fascinating what you're describing

Cal Newport (1:38:00.760)

is nobody ever paused in this whole evolution

Lex Fridman (1:38:05.880)

to try to create a system that actually works.

Cal Newport (1:38:08.760)

That it was kind of like a huge fan of cellular automata.

Lex Fridman (1:38:13.080)

So it's just kind of started a very simple mechanism,

Cal Newport (1:38:17.440)

just like cellular automata.

Lex Fridman (1:38:18.520)

It just kind of grew to overtake

Cal Newport (1:38:20.600)

all the fundamental communication

Lex Fridman (1:38:23.320)

of how we do business and also personal life.

Cal Newport (1:38:25.400)

Yeah, and that's one of the big ideas

Lex Fridman (1:38:27.240)

is that the unintentionality, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:29.800)

So this goes back to technological determinism.

Lex Fridman (1:38:31.920)

I mean, this is a weird business book

Cal Newport (1:38:33.280)

because I go deep on philosophy.

Lex Fridman (1:38:35.840)

I go deep on, for some reason,

Cal Newport (1:38:37.120)

we get into paleoanthropology for a while.

Lex Fridman (1:38:39.160)

We do a lot of neuroscience.

Cal Newport (1:38:40.320)

It's kind of a weird book.

Lex Fridman (1:38:42.440)

But I got real into this technological determinism, right?

Cal Newport (1:38:44.800)

This notion that just the presence of a technology

Lex Fridman (1:38:46.920)

can change how people act.

Cal Newport (1:38:48.720)

That's my big argument

Lex Fridman (1:38:49.720)

about what happened with the hive mind.

Lex Fridman (1:38:51.080)

And I can document specific examples, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:54.280)

So I document this example in IBM, 1987, maybe 85,

Lex Fridman (1:38:59.960)

but it's in like the mid to late eighties,

Lex Fridman (1:39:01.240)

IBM, R. Monk headquarters.

Lex Fridman (1:39:03.600)

We're gonna put an internal email, right?

Lex Fridman (1:39:05.560)

Because it's convenient.

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.600)

And so they ran a whole study.

Lex Fridman (1:39:09.360)

And so I talked to the engineer who ran the study,

Cal Newport (1:39:11.800)

Adrian Stone, like we're gonna run this study

Lex Fridman (1:39:13.120)

to figure out how much do we communicate

Lex Fridman (1:39:14.800)

because it was still an era where it's expensive, right?

Lex Fridman (1:39:17.800)

So you have to provision a mainframe.

Lex Fridman (1:39:19.160)

So you can't over provision.

Lex Fridman (1:39:20.880)

Like we wanna know how much communication actually happened.

Lex Fridman (1:39:22.840)

So they went and figured it out.

Lex Fridman (1:39:24.200)

How many memos, how many calls, how many notes, great.

Cal Newport (1:39:26.760)

We'll provision a mainframe to handle email

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.760)

that can handle all of that.

Lex Fridman (1:39:29.960)

So if all of our communication moves to email,

Lex Fridman (1:39:32.640)

the mainframe will still be fine.

Cal Newport (1:39:34.200)

In three days, they had melted it down.

Lex Fridman (1:39:36.040)

People were communicating six times more than that estimate.

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.480)

So just in three days, the presence

Lex Fridman (1:39:42.040)

of a low friction digital communication tool

Cal Newport (1:39:44.400)

drastically changed how everyone collaborated.

Lex Fridman (1:39:46.600)

So that's not enough time for an all hands meeting.

Cal Newport (1:39:49.560)

Guys, we figured it out.

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.120)

This is what we need to communicate a lot more

Cal Newport (1:39:52.760)

is what's gonna make us more productive.

Lex Fridman (1:39:54.960)

We need more emails.

Cal Newport (1:39:55.800)

It's emergent.

Lex Fridman (1:39:57.560)

Isn't that just on the positive end, amazing to you?

Lex Fridman (1:40:00.800)

Like, isn't email amazing?

Lex Fridman (1:40:03.240)

Like in those early days,

Cal Newport (1:40:04.680)

like just the frictionless communication.

Lex Fridman (1:40:07.200)

I mean, email is awesome.

Cal Newport (1:40:09.720)

Like people say that there's a lot of problems with emails,

Lex Fridman (1:40:13.560)

just like people say a lot of problems with Twitter

Lex Fridman (1:40:15.080)

and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:40:15.920)

It's kind of cool that you can just send a little note.

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.600)

It was a miracle, right?

Lex Fridman (1:40:20.000)

So I wrote a, there's originally was a New Yorker piece

Lex Fridman (1:40:23.880)

from a year or two ago called, was email a mistake?

Lex Fridman (1:40:26.160)

And then it's in the book too.

Lex Fridman (1:40:28.160)

But I go into the history of email,

Lex Fridman (1:40:31.280)

like why did it come along?

Lex Fridman (1:40:32.800)

And it solved a huge problem.

Lex Fridman (1:40:34.480)

It was the problem of fast asynchronous communication.

Lex Fridman (1:40:37.880)

And it was a problem that did not exist

Lex Fridman (1:40:39.360)

until we got large offices.

Cal Newport (1:40:41.040)

We got large offices, synchronous communication,

Lex Fridman (1:40:43.400)

like let's get on the phone at the same time.

Cal Newport (1:40:44.800)

There's too much overhead to it.

Lex Fridman (1:40:45.840)

There's too many people you might have to talk to.

Cal Newport (1:40:48.160)

Asynchronous communication,

Lex Fridman (1:40:49.280)

like let me send you a memo when I'm ready

Lex Fridman (1:40:51.160)

and you can read it when you're ready, took too long.

Lex Fridman (1:40:53.800)

And so it was like a huge problem.

Lex Fridman (1:40:55.000)

So one of the things I talked about is the way that

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.760)

when they built the CIA headquarters,

Cal Newport (1:40:58.960)

there was such a need for fast asynchronous communication

Lex Fridman (1:41:02.120)

that they built a pneumatic powered email system.

Cal Newport (1:41:05.120)

They had these pneumatic tubes

Lex Fridman (1:41:06.440)

all throughout the headquarters

Cal Newport (1:41:07.720)

with electromagnetic routers.

Lex Fridman (1:41:09.680)

So you would put your message in a plexiglass tube

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.720)

and you would turn these brass dials about the location.

Lex Fridman (1:41:15.240)

You would stick it in these things and pneumatic tubes

Lex Fridman (1:41:17.280)

and it would shoot and sort

Lex Fridman (1:41:18.840)

and work its way through these tubes

Cal Newport (1:41:20.520)

to show up in just a minute or something at the floor

Lex Fridman (1:41:23.800)

and at the general office suite where you wanted to go.

Lex Fridman (1:41:26.000)

And my point is the fact that they spent so much money

Lex Fridman (1:41:28.360)

to make that work,

Cal Newport (1:41:29.240)

to show how important fast asynchronous communication

Lex Fridman (1:41:32.320)

was to large offices.

Lex Fridman (1:41:33.160)

So when email came along,

Lex Fridman (1:41:35.040)

it was a productivity silver bullet.

Cal Newport (1:41:37.080)

It was a miracle.

Lex Fridman (1:41:37.920)

I talked to the researchers who were working

Cal Newport (1:41:39.360)

on computer supported collaboration in the late 80s,

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.880)

trying to figure out how are we gonna use

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.360)

computer networks to be more productive?

Lex Fridman (1:41:45.000)

And they were building all these systems and tools.

Cal Newport (1:41:47.200)

Email showed up,

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.280)

it just wiped all that research off the map.

Cal Newport (1:41:50.240)

There was no need to build

Lex Fridman (1:41:51.480)

these custom intranet applications.

Cal Newport (1:41:53.440)

There was no need to build these communication platforms.

Lex Fridman (1:41:56.400)

Email could just do everything.

Lex Fridman (1:41:58.360)

So it was a miracle application,

Lex Fridman (1:42:00.880)

which is why it spread everywhere.

Cal Newport (1:42:02.800)

That's one of these things where,

Lex Fridman (1:42:04.120)

okay, on into the consequences, right?

Cal Newport (1:42:05.720)

You had this miracle productivity silver bullet.

Lex Fridman (1:42:07.760)

It spread everywhere,

Lex Fridman (1:42:09.240)

but it was so effective.

Lex Fridman (1:42:10.640)

It just, I don't know, like a drug.

Cal Newport (1:42:12.480)

I'm sure there's some pandemic metaphor here,

Lex Fridman (1:42:15.400)

analogy here of a drug that like it's so effective

Cal Newport (1:42:17.600)

at treating this that it also blows up

Lex Fridman (1:42:19.080)

your whole immune system and then everyone gets sick.

Cal Newport (1:42:21.040)

Well, ultimately it probably significantly increased

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.520)

the productivity of the world,

Lex Fridman (1:42:24.720)

but there's a kind of hump that it now has plateaued.

Lex Fridman (1:42:28.080)

And then the fundamental question you're asking is like,

Cal Newport (1:42:32.160)

okay, how do we take the next,

Lex Fridman (1:42:33.720)

how do we keep increasing the productivity?

Cal Newport (1:42:35.680)

Now, I think it brought it down.

Lex Fridman (1:42:36.840)

So my contention,

Lex Fridman (1:42:39.040)

and so again, there's a little bit in the book,

Lex Fridman (1:42:42.040)

but I have a more recent Wired article

Cal Newport (1:42:44.080)

that puts some newer numbers to this.

Lex Fridman (1:42:47.000)

I subscribed to the hypothesis

Cal Newport (1:42:48.520)

that the hyperactive hive mind was so detrimental.

Lex Fridman (1:42:51.520)

So yeah, it helped productivity at first, right?

Cal Newport (1:42:53.840)

When you could do fast asynchronous communication,

Lex Fridman (1:42:56.480)

but very quickly there was a sort of exponential rise

Cal Newport (1:42:59.000)

in communication amounts.

Lex Fridman (1:43:01.000)

Once we got to the point where the hive mind meant

Cal Newport (1:43:02.680)

you had to constantly check your email,

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.440)

I think that made us so unproductive

Cal Newport (1:43:06.840)

that it actually was pulling down

Lex Fridman (1:43:08.240)

non industrial productivity.

Lex Fridman (1:43:09.400)

And I think the only reason why,

Lex Fridman (1:43:11.200)

so it certainly has not been going up.

Cal Newport (1:43:12.960)

That metric has been stagnating for a long time now

Lex Fridman (1:43:15.240)

while all of this was going on.

Cal Newport (1:43:16.920)

I think the only reason why it hasn't fallen

Lex Fridman (1:43:19.200)

is that we added these extra shifts off the books.

Cal Newport (1:43:22.560)

I'm gonna work for three hours in the morning,

Lex Fridman (1:43:23.880)

I'm gonna work for three hours at night.

Lex Fridman (1:43:25.600)

And only that I think has allowed us

Lex Fridman (1:43:27.480)

to basically maintain a stagnated non industrial growth.

Cal Newport (1:43:31.640)

We should have been shooting up the charts.

Lex Fridman (1:43:33.000)

I mean, this is miraculous innovations,

Cal Newport (1:43:35.480)

the computer networks.

Lex Fridman (1:43:36.320)

And then we built out these hundred billion dollar

Cal Newport (1:43:38.560)

ubiquitous worldwide high speed wireless internet

Lex Fridman (1:43:41.360)

infrastructure with supercomputers in our pockets

Cal Newport (1:43:43.400)

where we could talk to anyone at any time.

Lex Fridman (1:43:44.840)

Like why did our productivity not shoot off the charts?

Cal Newport (1:43:47.320)

Because our brain can't context switch

Lex Fridman (1:43:48.640)

once every six minutes.

Lex Fridman (1:43:49.480)

So it's fundamentally back to the context switching.

Lex Fridman (1:43:51.560)

Context switching is poison.

Cal Newport (1:43:53.440)

Context switching is poison.

Lex Fridman (1:43:54.760)

What is it about email that forces context switching?

Lex Fridman (1:43:58.240)

Is it both our psychology that drags us in?

Lex Fridman (1:44:00.640)

Or is it the expectation?

Cal Newport (1:44:02.200)

Yeah, right, right.

Lex Fridman (1:44:03.040)

Because it's not, I think we've seen this

Cal Newport (1:44:04.560)

through a personal will or failure lens recently.

Lex Fridman (1:44:08.920)

Like, oh, am I addicted to email?

Cal Newport (1:44:11.720)

I have bad etiquette about my email.

Lex Fridman (1:44:14.000)

No, it's the underlying workflow.

Lex Fridman (1:44:16.040)

So the tool itself I will exonerate.

Lex Fridman (1:44:19.360)

I think I would rather use POP3 than a fax protocol.

Cal Newport (1:44:23.600)

I think it's easier.

Lex Fridman (1:44:24.960)

The issue is the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

Lex Fridman (1:44:27.000)

So if I am now collaborating with 20 or 30 different people

Lex Fridman (1:44:30.840)

with back and forth unscheduled messaging,

Lex Fridman (1:44:33.000)

I have to tend those conversations, right?

Lex Fridman (1:44:35.160)

It's like you have 30 metaphorical ping pong tables.

Lex Fridman (1:44:38.160)

And when the balls come back across,

Lex Fridman (1:44:39.360)

you have to pretty soon hit it back

Cal Newport (1:44:41.200)

or stuff actually grinds to a halt.

Lex Fridman (1:44:43.440)

So it's the workflow that's the problem.

Cal Newport (1:44:45.560)

It's not the tools, the fact that we use it

Lex Fridman (1:44:47.080)

to do all of our collaboration.

Cal Newport (1:44:48.360)

Let's just send messages back and forth,

Lex Fridman (1:44:49.840)

which means you can't be far from checking that.

Cal Newport (1:44:52.760)

Cause if you take a break, if you batch,

Lex Fridman (1:44:54.800)

if you try to have better habits,

Cal Newport (1:44:56.760)

it's gonna slow things down.

Lex Fridman (1:44:58.000)

So my whole villain is this hyperactive hive mind workflow.

Cal Newport (1:45:02.400)

The tool is fine.

Lex Fridman (1:45:03.560)

I don't want the tool to go away,

Lex Fridman (1:45:05.320)

but I wanna replace the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

Lex Fridman (1:45:07.200)

I think this is gonna be one of the biggest

Cal Newport (1:45:10.040)

value generating productivity revolutions

Lex Fridman (1:45:12.920)

of the 21st century.

Cal Newport (1:45:14.160)

I quote an anonymous CEO who's pretty well known

Lex Fridman (1:45:16.920)

who says this is gonna be the moonshot of the 21st century.

Cal Newport (1:45:19.600)

It's gonna be of that importance.

Lex Fridman (1:45:20.960)

There's so much latent productivity that's being suppressed

Cal Newport (1:45:24.400)

because we just figure things out on the fly in email

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.320)

that as we figure that out,

Cal Newport (1:45:27.720)

I think it's gonna be hundreds of billions of dollars.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.040)

You're so absolutely right.

Lex Fridman (1:45:35.440)

The question is, what is a world without email look like?

Lex Fridman (1:45:39.080)

How do we fix email?

Lex Fridman (1:45:40.880)

So what happens is, at least in my vision,

Lex Fridman (1:45:44.080)

you identify, well, actually there's these different

Cal Newport (1:45:47.480)

processes that make up my workday.

Lex Fridman (1:45:49.200)

Like these are things that I do repeatedly,

Cal Newport (1:45:52.000)

often in collaboration with other people

Lex Fridman (1:45:53.440)

that do useful things for my company or whatever.

Cal Newport (1:45:56.440)

Right now, most of these processes are implicitly implemented

Lex Fridman (1:45:59.400)

with the hyperactive hive mind.

Lex Fridman (1:46:00.640)

How do we do this thing?

Lex Fridman (1:46:01.560)

Like answering client questions

Cal Newport (1:46:02.640)

to shoot messages back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:46:03.920)

How do we do this thing?

Cal Newport (1:46:05.200)

Posting podcast episodes,

Lex Fridman (1:46:06.280)

we'll just figure it out on the fly.

Cal Newport (1:46:07.800)

My main argument is we actually have to do

Lex Fridman (1:46:09.320)

like they did in the industrial sector,

Cal Newport (1:46:11.320)

take each of these processes and say,

Lex Fridman (1:46:12.840)

is there a better way to do this?

Lex Fridman (1:46:14.880)

And by better, I mean a way that's gonna minimize the need

Lex Fridman (1:46:17.280)

to have unscheduled back and forth messaging.

Lex Fridman (1:46:19.200)

So we actually have to do process engineering.

Lex Fridman (1:46:22.000)

This created a massive growth and productivity

Cal Newport (1:46:24.280)

in the industrial sector during the 20th century.

Lex Fridman (1:46:25.880)

We have to do it in knowledge work.

Cal Newport (1:46:26.880)

We can't just rock and roll an inbox

Lex Fridman (1:46:28.440)

as we actually have to say,

Lex Fridman (1:46:30.080)

how do we deal with client questions?

Lex Fridman (1:46:31.400)

Well, let's put in place a process

Cal Newport (1:46:32.600)

that doesn't require us to send messages back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:46:35.040)

How do we post podcast episodes?

Cal Newport (1:46:36.560)

Let's automate this to a degree where

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.520)

I don't have to just send you a message on the fly.

Lex Fridman (1:46:40.360)

And you do this process by process

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.200)

and the pressure on that inbox is released.

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.160)

And now you don't have to check it every six minutes.

Lex Fridman (1:46:46.960)

So you still have email.

Cal Newport (1:46:47.920)

I mean, like I need to send you a file.

Lex Fridman (1:46:49.120)

Sure, I'll use email,

Lex Fridman (1:46:50.320)

but we're not coordinating or collaborating over email

Lex Fridman (1:46:52.680)

or Slack, which is just a faster way of doing the hive mind.

Cal Newport (1:46:55.000)

I mean, Slack doesn't solve anything there.

Lex Fridman (1:46:57.840)

You have better structured bespoke processes.

Cal Newport (1:47:00.240)

I think that's what's gonna unleash

Lex Fridman (1:47:01.720)

this massive productivity.

Cal Newport (1:47:03.160)

Bespoke, so the interesting thing is like,

Lex Fridman (1:47:05.640)

for example, you and I exchange some emails.

Lex Fridman (1:47:07.600)

So obviously I, let's just say in my particular case,

Lex Fridman (1:47:10.920)

I schedule podcasts.

Cal Newport (1:47:11.920)

There's a bunch of different tasks,

Lex Fridman (1:47:13.920)

fascinatingly enough, that I do

Cal Newport (1:47:16.640)

that can be converted into processes.

Lex Fridman (1:47:18.360)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:47:19.200)

Is it up to me to create that process?

Lex Fridman (1:47:21.800)

Or do you think we also need to build tools

Cal Newport (1:47:23.720)

just like email was a protocol

Lex Fridman (1:47:26.000)

for helping us create processes for the different tasks?

Cal Newport (1:47:31.000)

I mean, I think ultimately the whole organization,

Lex Fridman (1:47:34.240)

the whole team has to be involved.

Cal Newport (1:47:35.400)

I think ultimately there's certainly

Lex Fridman (1:47:36.840)

a lot of investor money being spent right now

Lex Fridman (1:47:38.440)

to try to figure out those tools, right?

Lex Fridman (1:47:40.440)

So I think Silicon Valley has figured this out

Cal Newport (1:47:42.120)

in the past couple of years.

Lex Fridman (1:47:43.160)

This is the difference between

Cal Newport (1:47:45.080)

when I was talking to people after Deep Work

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.240)

and now five years later is this scent is in the air, right?

Cal Newport (1:47:51.680)

Because there's so much latent productivity.

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.280)

So yes, there are gonna be new tools,

Cal Newport (1:47:54.880)

which I think could help.

Lex Fridman (1:47:55.720)

There are already tools that exist.

Cal Newport (1:47:57.040)

I mean, in the different groups I profiled use things

Lex Fridman (1:48:00.120)

like Trello or Basecamp or Asana or Flow

Lex Fridman (1:48:03.760)

and our schedule wants and acuity,

Lex Fridman (1:48:06.080)

like there's a lot of tools out there.

Cal Newport (1:48:08.760)

The key is not to think about it in terms of

Lex Fridman (1:48:10.720)

what tool do I replace email with?

Cal Newport (1:48:12.520)

Instead, you think about it with,

Lex Fridman (1:48:14.360)

we're trying to come up with a process

Cal Newport (1:48:16.240)

that reduces back and forth messages.

Lex Fridman (1:48:17.680)

Oh, what tool might help us do that?

Cal Newport (1:48:21.360)

Yeah, and I would push,

Lex Fridman (1:48:22.320)

it's not about necessarily efficiency.

Cal Newport (1:48:24.080)

In fact, some of these things are gonna take more time.

Lex Fridman (1:48:26.120)

So writing a letter to someone is like a high value activity

Cal Newport (1:48:29.840)

it's probably worth doing.

Lex Fridman (1:48:31.040)

The thing that's killer is the back and forth

Lex Fridman (1:48:33.520)

because now I have to keep checking, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:35.200)

So we scheduled this together

Cal Newport (1:48:36.800)

because I knew you from before,

Lex Fridman (1:48:38.600)

but like most of the interviews I was scheduling for this

Cal Newport (1:48:41.560)

actually I have a process with my publicist

Lex Fridman (1:48:43.840)

where we use a shared document and she puts stuffs in there

Lex Fridman (1:48:46.480)

and then I check it twice a week

Lex Fridman (1:48:48.120)

and there's scheduling options.

Cal Newport (1:48:50.120)

I say, here's when I wanna do this one

Lex Fridman (1:48:51.240)

or this will work for this one or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.720)

And it takes more time in the moment than just,

Lex Fridman (1:48:55.000)

but it means that we have almost no back and forth messaging

Cal Newport (1:48:58.520)

for podcast scheduling, which without this,

Lex Fridman (1:49:00.560)

so like with my UK publisher,

Cal Newport (1:49:02.520)

I didn't put this process in the place

Lex Fridman (1:49:03.920)

because we're not doing as many interviews,

Lex Fridman (1:49:06.480)

but it's all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:49:07.440)

And I'm like, oh, I could really feel the difference, right?

Cal Newport (1:49:10.120)

It's the back and forth that's killer.

Lex Fridman (1:49:11.760)

I suppose it is up to the individual people involved,

Cal Newport (1:49:15.080)

like you said, knowledge workers,

Lex Fridman (1:49:18.120)

like they have to carry the responsibility

Cal Newport (1:49:21.040)

of creating processes.

Lex Fridman (1:49:23.560)

Like how always asking the first principles question,

Lex Fridman (1:49:25.960)

how can this be converted into a process?

Lex Fridman (1:49:28.280)

Yeah, so you can start by doing this yourself,

Cal Newport (1:49:30.680)

like just with what you can control.

Lex Fridman (1:49:32.680)

I think ultimately once the teams are doing that,

Cal Newport (1:49:34.960)

I think that's probably the right scale.

Lex Fridman (1:49:36.440)

If you try to do this at the organizational scale,

Lex Fridman (1:49:38.200)

you're gonna get bureaucracy, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:39.880)

So if it's, if Elon Musk is gonna dictate down

Cal Newport (1:49:44.680)

to everyone at Tesla or something like this,

Lex Fridman (1:49:46.960)

that's too much remove and you get bureaucracy.

Lex Fridman (1:49:48.680)

But if it's, we're a team of six that's working together

Lex Fridman (1:49:52.200)

on whatever powertrain software,

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.200)

then we can figure out on our own, what are our processes?

Lex Fridman (1:49:57.240)

How do we wanna do this?

Lex Fridman (1:49:58.200)

So it's ultimately also creating a culture

Lex Fridman (1:50:00.040)

where saying like an email, sending an email

Cal Newport (1:50:03.080)

just for the hell of it, it should be taboo.

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.600)

So you are being, you're being destructive

Cal Newport (1:50:09.920)

to the productivity of the team by sending this email.

Lex Fridman (1:50:12.560)

As opposed to helping develop a process and so on

Cal Newport (1:50:17.480)

that will ultimately automate this.

Lex Fridman (1:50:20.760)

That's why I'm trying to spread this message

Cal Newport (1:50:22.480)

of the context switches as poison.

Lex Fridman (1:50:24.160)

I get so much into the science of it.

Cal Newport (1:50:25.440)

I think we underestimate how much it kills us

Lex Fridman (1:50:28.000)

to have to wrench away our context,

Cal Newport (1:50:29.640)

look at a message and come back.

Lex Fridman (1:50:30.800)

And so once you have the mindset of,

Cal Newport (1:50:32.840)

it's a huge thing to ask of someone

Lex Fridman (1:50:35.160)

to have to take their attention off something

Lex Fridman (1:50:37.080)

and look back at this.

Lex Fridman (1:50:38.160)

And if they have to do that for three or four times,

Cal Newport (1:50:40.400)

like we're just gonna figure this out on the fly

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.160)

and every message is gonna require five checks

Cal Newport (1:50:44.040)

of the inbox while you wait for it.

Lex Fridman (1:50:45.520)

Now you've created whatever it is at this point,

Cal Newport (1:50:47.680)

25 or 30 context shifts.

Lex Fridman (1:50:50.240)

Like you've just done a huge disservice to someone's day.

Cal Newport (1:50:52.840)

This would be like, if I had a professional athlete,

Lex Fridman (1:50:54.640)

like, hey, do me a favor.

Cal Newport (1:50:55.920)

I need you to go do this press interview,

Lex Fridman (1:50:57.080)

but to get there, you're gonna have to carry this sandbag

Lex Fridman (1:50:59.600)

and sprint up this hill, like completely exhaust

Lex Fridman (1:51:01.600)

your muscles and then you have to go play a game.

Cal Newport (1:51:03.160)

Like, of course I'm not gonna ask an athlete

Lex Fridman (1:51:04.680)

to do like an incredibly physically demanding thing

Cal Newport (1:51:07.320)

right before a game,

Lex Fridman (1:51:08.640)

but something as easy as thoughts, question mark,

Cal Newport (1:51:11.760)

or like, hey, do you wanna jump on a call

Lex Fridman (1:51:13.280)

and it's gonna be six back and forth messages

Cal Newport (1:51:14.920)

to figure it out.

Lex Fridman (1:51:15.800)

It's kind of the cognitive equivalent, right?

Cal Newport (1:51:17.760)

You're taking the wind out of someone.

Lex Fridman (1:51:19.600)

Yeah, and by the way, for people who are listening,

Cal Newport (1:51:22.480)

because I recently posted a few job openings

Lex Fridman (1:51:24.680)

for us so I wanted to help with this thing.

Lex Fridman (1:51:26.480)

And one of the things that people are surprised

Lex Fridman (1:51:28.880)

when they work with me is how many spreadsheets

Lex Fridman (1:51:30.760)

and processes are involved.

Lex Fridman (1:51:32.160)

Yeah, it's like Claude Shannon, right?

Cal Newport (1:51:33.480)

I talked about communication theory or information theory.

Lex Fridman (1:51:36.360)

It takes time to come up with a clever code upfront.

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.720)

So you spend more time upfront figuring out those

Lex Fridman (1:51:40.240)

spreadsheets and trying to get people on board with it.

Lex Fridman (1:51:42.880)

But then your communication going forward

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.320)

is all much more efficient.

Lex Fridman (1:51:46.280)

So over time, you're using much less bandwidth, right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:49.760)

So you do pain upfront.

Cal Newport (1:51:52.320)

It's quicker just right now to send an email.

Lex Fridman (1:51:54.680)

But if I spend a half day to do this

Cal Newport (1:51:56.160)

over the next six months, I've saved myself 600 emails.

Lex Fridman (1:52:00.200)

Now, here's a tough question for, you know,

Cal Newport (1:52:02.640)

from the computer science perspective,

Lex Fridman (1:52:04.640)

we often over optimize.

Lex Fridman (1:52:07.080)

So you've create processes and you, okay,

Lex Fridman (1:52:10.920)

just like you're saying, it's so pleasurable

Cal Newport (1:52:14.880)

to increase in the longterm productivity

Lex Fridman (1:52:19.720)

that sometimes you just enjoy that process in itself

Cal Newport (1:52:22.880)

by just creating processes and you actually never,

Lex Fridman (1:52:28.440)

like it has a negative effect on productivity longterm

Cal Newport (1:52:31.080)

because you're too obsessed with the processes.

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.560)

Is that a nice problem to have essentially?

Cal Newport (1:52:37.920)

I mean, it's a problem.

Lex Fridman (1:52:38.920)

I mean, because let's look at the one sector

Lex Fridman (1:52:41.240)

that does do this, which is developers, right?

Lex Fridman (1:52:44.560)

So agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban

Cal Newport (1:52:47.240)

are basically workflow methodologies

Lex Fridman (1:52:49.880)

that are much better than the hyperactive hive mind.

Lex Fridman (1:52:52.400)

But man, some of those programmers get pretty obsessive.

Lex Fridman (1:52:55.800)

I don't know if you've ever talked to a whatever

Cal Newport (1:52:57.600)

level three Scrum master.

Lex Fridman (1:52:59.520)

They get really obsessive about like,

Cal Newport (1:53:02.040)

it has to happen exactly this way

Lex Fridman (1:53:04.280)

and it's probably seven times more complex

Cal Newport (1:53:06.000)

than it needs to be.

Lex Fridman (1:53:07.360)

I'm hoping that's just because nerds like me,

Cal Newport (1:53:09.840)

you know, like to do that,

Lex Fridman (1:53:11.080)

but it's a broadly probably an issue, right?

Cal Newport (1:53:14.280)

We have to be careful because you can just go down

Lex Fridman (1:53:16.120)

that fiddling path.

Cal Newport (1:53:18.000)

Like, so it needs to be, here's how we do it.

Lex Fridman (1:53:19.840)

Let's reduce the messages and let's roll, you know?

Cal Newport (1:53:22.640)

You can't save yourself through,

Lex Fridman (1:53:26.200)

if you can get the process just right, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:28.280)

So I wrote this article kind of recently

Lex Fridman (1:53:30.600)

called The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done.

Lex Fridman (1:53:32.800)

And I profiled this productivity guru named Merlin Mann.

Lex Fridman (1:53:37.080)

And I talked about this movement called Productivity Prawn

Cal Newport (1:53:39.960)

as like elite speak term in the early 2000s

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.920)

where people just became convinced

Cal Newport (1:53:44.520)

that if they could combine their productivity systems

Lex Fridman (1:53:47.160)

with software and they could find just the right software,

Cal Newport (1:53:50.200)

just the right configuration where they could offload

Lex Fridman (1:53:51.920)

most of the difficulty of work,

Lex Fridman (1:53:53.080)

what happened with the machines,

Lex Fridman (1:53:54.680)

when it kind of figured out for,

Lex Fridman (1:53:55.520)

and then they could just sort of crank widgets and it'd be,

Lex Fridman (1:53:57.480)

and the whole thing fell apart

Cal Newport (1:53:58.680)

because work is hard and it's hard to do

Lex Fridman (1:54:00.880)

and making decisions about what to work on is hard

Lex Fridman (1:54:03.080)

and no system can really do that for you.

Lex Fridman (1:54:04.760)

So you have to have this sort of balance between,

Cal Newport (1:54:09.840)

context switches are poison.

Lex Fridman (1:54:10.920)

So we got to get rid of the context switches.

Cal Newport (1:54:12.480)

Once like something's working good enough

Lex Fridman (1:54:13.920)

to get rid of the context switches, then get after it.

Cal Newport (1:54:17.120)

Yeah, there's a psychological process there for me.

Lex Fridman (1:54:19.520)

The OCD nature, like I've literally,

Cal Newport (1:54:22.600)

embarrassing enough, have lost my shit before when,

Lex Fridman (1:54:26.280)

so in many of the processes that involve Python scripts,

Cal Newport (1:54:30.440)

the rule is to not use spaces.

Lex Fridman (1:54:34.920)

Underscores, there's like rules

Lex Fridman (1:54:36.600)

for like how you format stuff, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:54:39.320)

And like, I should not lose my shit

Cal Newport (1:54:42.160)

when somebody had a space and maybe capital letters,

Lex Fridman (1:54:45.360)

like it's okay to have a space

Cal Newport (1:54:48.080)

because there's this feeling like something's not perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:54:51.800)

And as opposed to in the Python script,

Cal Newport (1:54:54.640)

allowing some flexibility around that,

Lex Fridman (1:54:56.680)

you create this programmatic way that's flawless

Lex Fridman (1:54:59.120)

and when everything's working perfectly, it's perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:55:01.760)

But actually, if you strive for perfection,

Cal Newport (1:55:06.120)

it has the same stress, like has a lot of the stress

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.160)

that you were seeking to escape with the context switching

Cal Newport (1:55:12.960)

because you're almost stressing about errors.

Lex Fridman (1:55:18.120)

Like when the process is functioning,

Cal Newport (1:55:20.880)

there's always this anxiety of like,

Lex Fridman (1:55:23.200)

I wonder if it's gonna succeed.

Cal Newport (1:55:25.480)

I wonder if it's gonna succeed.

Lex Fridman (1:55:26.840)

Yeah, no, no, I think some of that's just you and I probably.

Lex Fridman (1:55:29.080)

I mean, it's just our mindset, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:30.320)

We're in, we do computer science, right?

Lex Fridman (1:55:32.360)

So chicken and egg, I guess.

Lex Fridman (1:55:34.520)

And a lot of the processes end up working here much rougher.

Cal Newport (1:55:37.840)

It's like, okay, instead of letting clients

Lex Fridman (1:55:39.480)

just email me all the time, we have a weekly call

Lex Fridman (1:55:43.760)

and then we send them a breakdown

Lex Fridman (1:55:45.440)

of everything we committed to, right?

Cal Newport (1:55:47.640)

That's a process that works.

Lex Fridman (1:55:48.560)

Okay, I get asked a lot of questions

Cal Newport (1:55:50.120)

because I'm the JavaScript guy in the company.

Lex Fridman (1:55:51.960)

Instead of doing it by email, I have office hours.

Cal Newport (1:55:53.800)

This is what Basecamp does.

Lex Fridman (1:55:54.880)

All right, so you come to my office hours,

Cal Newport (1:55:55.960)

that cuts down a lot of back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:55:57.160)

All right, we're gonna, instead of emailing

Cal Newport (1:55:58.320)

about this project, we'll have a Trello board

Lex Fridman (1:56:02.040)

and we'll do a weekly really structured status meeting

Cal Newport (1:56:04.680)

real quick, what's going on, who needs what, let's go.

Lex Fridman (1:56:07.040)

And now everything's on there and on our inboxes,

Cal Newport (1:56:09.080)

we don't have to send as many messages.

Lex Fridman (1:56:10.160)

So like that rough level of granularity,

Cal Newport (1:56:12.440)

that gets you most of the way there.

Lex Fridman (1:56:14.520)

So the parts that you can't automate

Lex Fridman (1:56:17.120)

and turn into a process.

Lex Fridman (1:56:18.680)

So how many parts like that do you think

Lex Fridman (1:56:21.800)

should remain in a perfect world?

Lex Fridman (1:56:24.680)

And for those parts where email is still useful,

Lex Fridman (1:56:29.920)

what do you recommend those emails look like?

Lex Fridman (1:56:32.640)

How should you write emails?

Lex Fridman (1:56:34.400)

When should you send them?

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.840)

Yeah, I think email is good for delivering information.

Cal Newport (1:56:40.760)

Right, so I think of it like a fax machine or something.

Lex Fridman (1:56:43.360)

It's a really good fax machine.

Lex Fridman (1:56:44.360)

So if I need to send you something

Lex Fridman (1:56:46.280)

and you just send you a file,

Cal Newport (1:56:47.120)

I need to broadcast a new policy or something,

Lex Fridman (1:56:49.480)

like email is a great way to do it.

Cal Newport (1:56:51.320)

It's bad for collaboration.

Lex Fridman (1:56:53.640)

So if you're having a conversation,

Cal Newport (1:56:55.640)

like we're trying to reach a decision on something,

Lex Fridman (1:56:57.480)

I'm trying to learn about something,

Cal Newport (1:56:58.840)

I'm trying to clarify what this is,

Lex Fridman (1:57:01.440)

that's more than just like a one answer type question,

Cal Newport (1:57:04.800)

then I think that you shouldn't be doing an email.

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.480)

But see, here's the thing.

Cal Newport (1:57:08.960)

Like you and I don't talk often

Lex Fridman (1:57:11.600)

and so we have a kind of new interaction.

Cal Newport (1:57:13.840)

It's not, so sure, yeah, you have a book coming out,

Lex Fridman (1:57:17.520)

so there's a process and so on,

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.040)

but say there, don't you think there's a lot

Lex Fridman (1:57:22.000)

of novel interactive experiences?

Cal Newport (1:57:24.280)

Yeah, I think it's fine.

Lex Fridman (1:57:25.320)

So you could, just for every novel experience,

Cal Newport (1:57:27.800)

it's okay to have a little bit of exchange.

Lex Fridman (1:57:29.960)

Yeah, I think it's fine.

Cal Newport (1:57:30.800)

Like I think it's fine if stuff comes in over the transom

Lex Fridman (1:57:33.080)

or you hear from someone you haven't heard from in a while.

Cal Newport (1:57:36.000)

I think all that's fine.

Lex Fridman (1:57:37.440)

I mean, that's email at its best.

Cal Newport (1:57:39.680)

Where it starts to kill us is where all

Lex Fridman (1:57:41.720)

of our collaboration is happening with the back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:57:43.440)

So when you've moved the bulk of that out of your inbox,

Lex Fridman (1:57:45.680)

now you're back in that Meg Ryan movie, like You Got Mail,

Cal Newport (1:57:48.880)

where it's like, all right, load this up

Lex Fridman (1:57:50.880)

and you wait for the boat and be like,

Cal Newport (1:57:51.760)

oh, we got a message.

Lex Fridman (1:57:53.120)

Yeah, Lex sent me a message.

Lex Fridman (1:57:54.720)

This is interesting, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:55.560)

You're back to the AOL days.

Lex Fridman (1:57:56.920)

So you're talking about the bulk of the business world

Lex Fridman (1:58:00.040)

where email has replaced the actual communication,

Cal Newport (1:58:04.040)

all of the communication protocols required

Lex Fridman (1:58:05.920)

to accomplish anything.

Cal Newport (1:58:06.760)

Everything is just happening with messages.

Lex Fridman (1:58:08.040)

So if you now get most stuff done,

Cal Newport (1:58:11.000)

repeatable collaborations with other processes

Lex Fridman (1:58:14.040)

that don't require you to check these inboxes,

Cal Newport (1:58:15.600)

then the inbox can serve like an inbox,

Lex Fridman (1:58:17.880)

which includes hearing from interesting people, right?

Cal Newport (1:58:20.840)

Or sending something, hey, I don't know if you saw this,

Lex Fridman (1:58:22.640)

I thought you might like it.

Cal Newport (1:58:23.480)

I think it's great for that.

Lex Fridman (1:58:24.720)

So there's probably a bunch of people listening to this.

Cal Newport (1:58:27.560)

They're like, yeah, but I work on a team

Lex Fridman (1:58:31.080)

and all they use is email.

Lex Fridman (1:58:33.080)

How do you start the revolution from the ground up?

Lex Fridman (1:58:35.880)

Yeah, well, do asymmetric optimization first.

Lex Fridman (1:58:39.000)

So identify all your processes

Lex Fridman (1:58:40.680)

and then change what you can change

Lex Fridman (1:58:42.360)

and be socially very careful about it.

Lex Fridman (1:58:44.360)

So don't necessarily say like, okay,

Cal Newport (1:58:46.280)

this is a new process we all have to do.

Lex Fridman (1:58:48.280)

You're just, hey, we gotta get this report ready.

Cal Newport (1:58:51.840)

Here's what I think we should do.

Lex Fridman (1:58:52.880)

I'll get a draft into our Dropbox folder

Cal Newport (1:58:54.680)

by noon on Monday, grab it.

Lex Fridman (1:58:57.920)

I won't touch it again until Tuesday morning

Lex Fridman (1:59:00.160)

and then I'll look at your changes.

Lex Fridman (1:59:01.600)

I have this office hours always scheduled Tuesday afternoon.

Lex Fridman (1:59:03.880)

So if there's anything that catches your attention,

Lex Fridman (1:59:05.800)

grab me then.

Lex Fridman (1:59:07.000)

But I've told the designer who CC'd on this

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.240)

that by COB Tuesday, the final version will be ready

Cal Newport (1:59:13.080)

for them to take and polish or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:59:14.920)

Like the person on the other end is like, great,

Cal Newport (1:59:16.160)

I'm glad Cal has a plan.

Lex Fridman (1:59:18.160)

So what do I need to do?

Lex Fridman (1:59:19.280)

I need to edit this tomorrow, whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (1:59:21.300)

But you've actually pulled them into a process.

Cal Newport (1:59:22.760)

That means we're gonna get this report together

Lex Fridman (1:59:24.260)

without having to just go back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:59:25.920)

So you just asymmetrically optimize these things

Lex Fridman (1:59:29.240)

and then you can begin the conversation.

Lex Fridman (1:59:31.400)

And maybe that's where my book comes in place.

Lex Fridman (1:59:32.960)

You just sort of slide it across the desk.

Cal Newport (1:59:36.440)

Buy the book and just leave it, give it to everybody

Lex Fridman (1:59:39.320)

on your team.

Cal Newport (1:59:40.240)

Okay, so we solved the bulk of the email problem with this.

Lex Fridman (1:59:42.920)

Is there a case to be made that even for communication

Lex Fridman (1:59:45.480)

between you and I, we should move away from email?

Lex Fridman (1:59:50.720)

And for example, there's a guy, I recently,

Cal Newport (1:59:52.480)

I don't know if you know comedians,

Lex Fridman (1:59:53.680)

but there's a guy named Joey Diaz

Cal Newport (1:59:55.920)

that I've had an interaction with recently.

Lex Fridman (1:59:57.840)

And that guy, first of all, the sweetest human,

Lex Fridman (20:02.760)

in this world without deadlines?

Lex Fridman (20:04.200)

Why do deadlines work so well?

Cal Newport (20:06.120)

Well, I mean, it's a clear motivational signal,

Lex Fridman (20:08.440)

but in the short term, you do get an effect like that

Cal Newport (20:12.040)

in time blocking.

Lex Fridman (20:12.880)

I think the strong effect you get by saying,

Cal Newport (20:15.440)

this is the exact time I'm gonna work on this,

Lex Fridman (20:18.120)

is that you don't have the debate with yourself

Lex Fridman (20:20.000)

every three minutes about, should I take a break now?

Lex Fridman (20:23.600)

This is the big issue with just saying,

Cal Newport (20:25.000)

I'm gonna go write.

Lex Fridman (20:26.280)

I'm gonna write for a while and that's it

Cal Newport (20:27.760)

because your mind is saying,

Lex Fridman (20:28.680)

well, obviously we're gonna take some breaks.

Cal Newport (20:30.920)

We're not just gonna write forever.

Lex Fridman (20:32.360)

And so why not right now?

Cal Newport (20:34.200)

You have to be like, well, not right now.

Lex Fridman (20:35.160)

Let's go a little bit longer, five minutes.

Lex Fridman (20:36.320)

So why don't we just take a break now?

Lex Fridman (20:37.400)

We should probably look at the internet.

Cal Newport (20:38.800)

Now you have to constantly have this battle.

Lex Fridman (20:40.240)

On the other hand, if you're in a time block schedule,

Cal Newport (20:42.440)

I've got these two hours put aside for writing.

Lex Fridman (20:44.280)

That's what I'm supposed to be doing.

Cal Newport (20:46.000)

I have a break scheduled over here.

Lex Fridman (20:48.280)

I don't have to fight with myself, right?

Lex Fridman (20:50.040)

And maybe at a larger scale,

Lex Fridman (20:51.280)

deadlines give you a similar sort of effect.

Cal Newport (20:53.720)

I know this is what I'm supposed to be working on

Lex Fridman (20:55.320)

because it's due.

Cal Newport (20:57.960)

Perhaps, but will you describe it as much healthier

Lex Fridman (21:01.200)

sort of giving yourself over,

Lex Fridman (21:02.880)

and you talk about this in the new email book,

Lex Fridman (21:05.640)

the process, I mean, in general,

Cal Newport (21:07.160)

you talk about it all over, is creating a process

Lex Fridman (21:09.800)

and then giving yourself over to the process.

Lex Fridman (21:15.200)

But then you have to be strict with yourself.

Lex Fridman (21:17.600)

Yeah, but what are the deadlines you're talking about?

Cal Newport (21:19.640)

It's like with papers,

Lex Fridman (21:20.600)

like what's the main type of deadline work?

Cal Newport (21:24.520)

Well, so papers, definitely,

Lex Fridman (21:26.240)

but publications, like say this podcast,

Cal Newport (21:31.360)

I have to publish this podcast early next week,

Lex Fridman (21:35.240)

one, because your book is coming out.

Cal Newport (21:36.680)

I'd love to sort of support this amazing book,

Lex Fridman (21:40.040)

but the other is I have to fly to Vegas on Thursday

Cal Newport (21:45.040)

to run 40 miles with David Goggins.

Lex Fridman (21:47.840)

And so I want this podcast,

Cal Newport (21:50.920)

this conversation we're doing now to be out of my life.

Lex Fridman (21:54.360)

Like I don't wanna be in a hotel in Vegas,

Cal Newport (21:56.720)

like freaking out while David Goggins is yelling.

Lex Fridman (22:00.240)

On hour 43 of your Tarathon thing.

Lex Fridman (22:05.240)

But actually it's possible that I still will be doing that

Lex Fridman (22:08.640)

because that's not a hard, that's a softer deadline, right?

Lex Fridman (22:11.440)

But those are sort of,

Lex Fridman (22:12.560)

life imposes these kinds of deadlines.

Cal Newport (22:15.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (22:16.080)

I'm not, so yeah,

Cal Newport (22:17.200)

papers are nice because there's an actual deadline.

Lex Fridman (22:19.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (22:20.800)

But I am almost referring to like the pressure

Lex Fridman (22:24.440)

that people put on you.

Cal Newport (22:25.960)

Hey man, you said you're gonna get this done two months ago.

Lex Fridman (22:28.720)

Why haven't you gotten it done?

Cal Newport (22:30.040)

I don't see, I don't like that pressure.

Lex Fridman (22:31.640)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (22:32.480)

First of all, I think we can all.

Lex Fridman (22:33.320)

I hate it too.

Cal Newport (22:34.240)

We can agree, by the way, having David Goggins yell at you

Lex Fridman (22:37.160)

is probably the top productivity technique.

Cal Newport (22:39.400)

I think we'd all get a lot more done

Lex Fridman (22:42.480)

if he was yelling, but see, I don't like that.

Lex Fridman (22:45.080)

So I will try to get things done early.

Lex Fridman (22:47.520)

I like having flex.

Cal Newport (22:49.040)

I also don't like the idea of this has to get done today.

Lex Fridman (22:52.960)

Right?

Cal Newport (22:53.800)

Like it's due at midnight and we've got a lot to do

Lex Fridman (22:56.440)

as the night before,

Lex Fridman (22:57.280)

because then I get in my head about what if I get sick?

Lex Fridman (22:59.760)

Or like, what if, you know,

Lex Fridman (23:01.360)

what if I don't get a bad night's sleep

Lex Fridman (23:03.200)

and I can't think clearly?

Lex Fridman (23:04.760)

So I like to have the flex.

Lex Fridman (23:05.680)

So I'm all process.

Lex Fridman (23:07.440)

And that's like the philosophical aspect

Lex Fridman (23:08.920)

of that book, Deep Work,

Cal Newport (23:09.760)

is that there's something very human and deep

Lex Fridman (23:13.040)

about just wrangling with the world of ideas.

Cal Newport (23:15.080)

I mean, Aristotle talked about this.

Lex Fridman (23:16.480)

If you go back and read the ethics,

Cal Newport (23:18.320)

he's trying to understand the meaning of life

Lex Fridman (23:20.280)

and he eventually ends up ultimately

Cal Newport (23:22.120)

at the human capacity to contemplate deeply.

Lex Fridman (23:26.400)

It's kind of like a teleological argument.

Cal Newport (23:27.920)

It's the things that only humans can do

Lex Fridman (23:29.480)

and therefore it must be somehow connected to our ends.

Lex Fridman (23:31.680)

And he said, ultimately that's where he found his meaning,

Lex Fridman (23:34.240)

but, you know, he's touching on some sort of intimation

Cal Newport (23:36.480)

there that's correct.

Lex Fridman (23:37.760)

And so what I try to build my life around

Cal Newport (23:39.600)

is regularly thinking hard about stuff that's interesting.

Lex Fridman (23:44.360)

Just like if you get a fitness habit going,

Cal Newport (23:46.360)

you feel off when you don't do it.

Lex Fridman (23:50.200)

I try to get that cognitive habit.

Lex Fridman (23:51.600)

So it's like, I got it.

Lex Fridman (23:52.880)

I mean, look, I have my bag here somewhere,

Cal Newport (23:54.280)

I have my notebook in it because I was thinking

Lex Fridman (23:56.720)

on the Uber ride over, I was like, you know,

Cal Newport (23:58.240)

I could get some, I'm working on this new proof

Lex Fridman (24:00.400)

and it just, so you train yourself.

Cal Newport (24:02.680)

You train yourself to appreciate certain things.

Lex Fridman (24:04.680)

And then over time, the hope is that it accretes.

Cal Newport (24:08.040)

Well, let's talk about some demons

Lex Fridman (24:09.720)

because I wonder there's like deep work,

Cal Newport (24:13.760)

which and the world without email books

Lex Fridman (24:19.200)

that to me symbolize the life I want to live.

Cal Newport (24:23.280)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (24:24.120)

And then there is, I'm like,

Cal Newport (24:26.320)

despite appearances and adult at this point,

Lex Fridman (24:29.800)

and this is the life I actually live.

Lex Fridman (24:33.200)

And I'm in constant chaos.

Lex Fridman (24:36.160)

You said you don't like that anxiety.

Cal Newport (24:37.720)

I hate it too.

Lex Fridman (24:38.760)

But it seems like I'm always in it.

Cal Newport (24:41.240)

It's a giant mess.

Lex Fridman (24:42.920)

It's like, it's almost like whenever I establish,

Cal Newport (24:46.520)

whenever I have successful processes for doing deep work,

Lex Fridman (24:49.280)

I'll add stuff on top of it just to introduce the chaos.

Cal Newport (24:52.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (24:52.840)

And like, I don't want to.

Cal Newport (24:54.080)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (24:54.920)

But you have to look in the mirror at a certain point

Lex Fridman (24:57.480)

and you have to say like, who the hell am I?

Lex Fridman (25:00.560)

Like, I keep doing this.

Cal Newport (25:02.400)

Is this something that's fundamental to who I am

Lex Fridman (25:04.640)

or do I really need to fix this?

Lex Fridman (25:06.120)

What's the chaos right now?

Lex Fridman (25:07.480)

Like, I've seen your video about like your routine.

Cal Newport (25:09.840)

It seemed very structured and deep.

Lex Fridman (25:12.320)

In fact, I was really envious of it.

Lex Fridman (25:13.640)

So like, what's the chaos now that's not in that video?

Lex Fridman (25:17.040)

Many of those sessions go way longer.

Cal Newport (25:19.080)

I don't get enough sleep.

Lex Fridman (25:20.440)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (25:21.280)

And then I, the main introduction of chaos is,

Lex Fridman (25:24.080)

it's taking on too many things on the to do list.

Cal Newport (25:26.600)

I see.

Lex Fridman (25:27.800)

It's, I mean, I suppose it's a problem

Cal Newport (25:29.440)

that everybody deals with,

Lex Fridman (25:30.880)

which is saying, not saying no.

Lex Fridman (25:33.400)

But it's not like I have trouble saying no.

Lex Fridman (25:36.880)

It's that there's so much cool shit in my life.

Cal Newport (25:39.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (25:39.880)

Okay, listen, there's nothing I love more in this world

Cal Newport (25:42.720)

than the Boston Dynamics robots.

Lex Fridman (25:45.320)

Spot and the other, yeah.

Lex Fridman (25:46.960)

And they're giving me spot.

Lex Fridman (25:48.360)

So there's a to do, what am I gonna say?

Cal Newport (25:50.320)

No.

Lex Fridman (25:51.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (25:52.000)

So they're getting me spot

Lex Fridman (25:52.840)

and I wanna do some computer vision stuff

Cal Newport (25:54.320)

for the hell of it.

Lex Fridman (25:55.480)

Okay, so that's now a to do item.

Lex Fridman (25:57.520)

And then you go to Texas for a while.

Lex Fridman (25:59.000)

There's Texas.

Cal Newport (26:00.040)

Everything's happening.

Lex Fridman (26:00.880)

There's all the interesting people down there.

Lex Fridman (26:02.400)

And then there's surprises, right?

Lex Fridman (26:03.920)

There are power outages in Texas.

Cal Newport (26:05.800)

There's constant changes to plans

Lex Fridman (26:07.360)

and all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (26:08.480)

And you sleep less.

Lex Fridman (26:09.880)

And then there's personal stuff,

Cal Newport (26:11.400)

like just people in your life, sources of stress,

Lex Fridman (26:14.640)

all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman (26:16.520)

But it does feel like if I'm just being introspective,

Lex Fridman (26:19.960)

that I bring it onto myself.

Cal Newport (26:22.400)

I suppose a lot of people do this kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (26:24.480)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (26:25.680)

Is they flourish under pressure.

Lex Fridman (26:29.720)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (26:30.560)

And I wonder if that's just a hack I've developed

Lex Fridman (26:34.920)

as a habit early on in life

Cal Newport (26:38.480)

that you need to let go of, you need to fix.

Lex Fridman (26:42.080)

But it's all interesting things.

Cal Newport (26:44.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (26:44.840)

That's interesting.

Cal Newport (26:45.680)

Yeah, because these are all interesting things.

Lex Fridman (26:47.520)

Well, one of the things you talked about in Deep Work,

Cal Newport (26:49.720)

which is really important, is having an end to the day.

Lex Fridman (26:53.480)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (26:54.320)

Like putting it down.

Lex Fridman (26:55.160)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (26:56.000)

Like that, I don't think I've ever done that in my life.

Lex Fridman (26:59.040)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (26:59.880)

Well, see, I started doing that early

Lex Fridman (27:01.000)

because I got married early.

Lex Fridman (27:04.040)

So I didn't have a real job.

Lex Fridman (27:05.280)

I was a grad student, but my wife had a real job.

Lex Fridman (27:07.680)

And so I just figured I should do my work

Lex Fridman (27:10.840)

when she's at work.

Cal Newport (27:12.160)

Because hey, when work's over, she'll be home,

Lex Fridman (27:14.440)

and I don't wanna be on campus or whatever.

Lex Fridman (27:17.720)

And so real early on, I just got in that habit

Lex Fridman (27:19.680)

of this is when you end work.

Lex Fridman (27:22.280)

And then when I was a postdoc,

Lex Fridman (27:24.000)

which is kind of an easy job, right?

Cal Newport (27:26.400)

I put artificial, I was like, I wanna train.

Lex Fridman (27:29.960)

I was like, when I'm a professor, it's gonna be busier

Cal Newport (27:31.560)

because there's demands that professors have beyond research.

Lex Fridman (27:34.200)

And so as a postdoc,

Cal Newport (27:35.560)

I added artificial large time consuming things

Lex Fridman (27:37.960)

into the middle of my day.

Cal Newport (27:38.800)

I basically exercise for two hours in the middle of the day

Lex Fridman (27:41.200)

and do all this productive meditation and stuff like this,

Cal Newport (27:44.560)

while still maintaining the nine to five.

Lex Fridman (27:46.720)

So it's like, okay, I wanna get really good

Cal Newport (27:48.680)

at putting artificial constraints on so that I stay,

Lex Fridman (27:51.600)

I didn't wanna get flabby when my job was easy.

Lex Fridman (27:54.720)

So that when I became a professor,

Lex Fridman (27:56.600)

and now all of that's paying off

Cal Newport (27:57.800)

because I have a ton of kids.

Lex Fridman (27:59.280)

So now I don't really have a choice.

Cal Newport (28:01.880)

That's what's probably keeping me away from cool things

Lex Fridman (28:04.080)

is I just don't have time to do them.

Lex Fridman (28:06.200)

And then after a while people stop bothering.

Lex Fridman (28:09.960)

Well, but that's how you have a successful life.

Cal Newport (28:13.000)

Otherwise you're going to,

Lex Fridman (28:14.440)

it's too easy to then go into the full Hunter S. Thompson.

Cal Newport (28:17.960)

Like to where nobody wants,

Lex Fridman (28:22.040)

nobody functional wants to be in your vicinity.

Cal Newport (28:25.680)

Like you're driving, you attract the people

Lex Fridman (28:29.200)

that have a similar behavior pattern as you.

Lex Fridman (28:33.360)

So if you live in chaos,

Lex Fridman (28:35.400)

you're going to attract chaotic people.

Lex Fridman (28:37.360)

And then it becomes like this self fulfilling prophecy.

Lex Fridman (28:42.040)

And it feels like I'm not bothered by it,

Lex Fridman (28:45.920)

but I guess this is all coming around

Lex Fridman (28:48.400)

to exactly what you're saying, which is like,

Cal Newport (28:50.880)

I think one of the big hacks for productive people

Lex Fridman (28:53.120)

that I've met is to get married and have kids, honestly.

Cal Newport (28:57.560)

It's very perhaps counterintuitive,

Lex Fridman (29:00.800)

but it gets, it's like the ultimate timetable enforcer.

Cal Newport (29:05.600)

Yeah, it enforces a lot of timetables,

Lex Fridman (29:08.800)

though it has a huge,

Cal Newport (29:10.200)

kids have a huge productivity hit those, you gotta weigh it.

Lex Fridman (29:13.280)

But okay, here's the complicated thing though.

Cal Newport (29:15.400)

Like you could think about in your own life,

Lex Fridman (29:17.080)

starting the podcast as one of these

Lex Fridman (29:18.520)

just cool opportunities that you put on yourself, right?

Lex Fridman (29:22.040)

Like I could have been talking to you at MIT four years ago

Lex Fridman (29:25.000)

and be like, don't do that.

Lex Fridman (29:25.840)

Like your research is going well, right?

Lex Fridman (29:28.080)

But then everyone who watches you is like,

Lex Fridman (29:29.320)

okay, this podcast is,

Cal Newport (29:30.480)

the direction that's taking you

Lex Fridman (29:31.680)

is like a couple of years from now,

Cal Newport (29:33.640)

it's gonna, it'll be something really monumental

Lex Fridman (29:36.560)

that you're probably, that's gonna probably lead to, right?

Cal Newport (29:38.040)

There'll be some really,

Lex Fridman (29:39.880)

it just feels like your life is going somewhere.

Cal Newport (29:41.760)

It's going somewhere.

Lex Fridman (29:42.600)

It's interesting.

Cal Newport (29:43.600)

Unexpected, yeah.

Lex Fridman (29:44.560)

Yeah, so how do you balance those two things?

Lex Fridman (29:46.320)

And so what I try to throw at it

Lex Fridman (29:47.840)

is this motto of do less, do better, know why, right?

Lex Fridman (29:50.880)

So do less, do better, know why.

Lex Fridman (29:55.560)

It used to be the motto of my website years ago.

Lex Fridman (29:58.720)

So do a few things, but like an interesting array, right?

Lex Fridman (2:00:00.400)

despite what his comedy sounds like,

Cal Newport (2:00:02.480)

is the sweetest human being.

Lex Fridman (2:00:04.280)

And he's a big proponent of just pick up the phone and call.

Lex Fridman (2:00:08.560)

And it makes me so uncomfortable when people call me.

Lex Fridman (2:00:11.040)

It's like, I don't know what to do with this thing.

Lex Fridman (2:00:14.040)

But it kind of gets everything done quicker, I think,

Lex Fridman (2:00:17.720)

if I remove the anxiety from that.

Lex Fridman (2:00:19.880)

Is there a case to be made for that?

Lex Fridman (2:00:21.200)

Or is email could still be the most efficient way

Lex Fridman (2:00:24.240)

to do this?

Lex Fridman (2:00:25.080)

No, look, if you have to interact with someone,

Lex Fridman (2:00:27.600)

there's a lot of efficiency and synchrony, right?

Lex Fridman (2:00:30.000)

And this is something from distributed system theory

Cal Newport (2:00:31.760)

where you know if you go from synchronous

Lex Fridman (2:00:33.360)

to asynchronous networks,

Cal Newport (2:00:34.720)

there's a huge amount of overhead to the asynchrony.

Lex Fridman (2:00:36.600)

So actually the protocols required to solve things

Cal Newport (2:00:39.000)

in asynchronous networks are significantly more complicated

Lex Fridman (2:00:42.120)

and fragile than synchronous protocols.

Lex Fridman (2:00:44.000)

So if we can just do real time, it's usually better.

Lex Fridman (2:00:46.960)

And also from an interaction,

Cal Newport (2:00:48.560)

like social connection standpoint,

Lex Fridman (2:00:49.960)

there's a lot more information in the human voice

Lex Fridman (2:00:51.840)

and the back and forth.

Lex Fridman (2:00:53.760)

Yeah, if you just call, so very generational, right?

Cal Newport (2:00:56.840)

Our generation will be comfortable talking on the phone

Lex Fridman (2:00:59.400)

in a way that a younger generation isn't,

Lex Fridman (2:01:01.400)

but an older generation is more comfortable

Lex Fridman (2:01:03.080)

with, well, you just call people.

Cal Newport (2:01:05.080)

Whereas we, so there's a happy medium,

Lex Fridman (2:01:07.000)

but most of my good friends, we just talk,

Cal Newport (2:01:09.200)

we have regular phone calls.

Lex Fridman (2:01:11.000)

Okay.

Cal Newport (2:01:11.840)

Yeah, it's not, I don't just call them,

Lex Fridman (2:01:13.000)

we schedule it, we schedule it, yeah.

Cal Newport (2:01:14.440)

Just on text, like, yeah, you wanna talk sometime soon.

Lex Fridman (2:01:17.920)

Do you ever have a process around friends?

Cal Newport (2:01:20.800)

Not really, no.

Lex Fridman (2:01:22.240)

I feel like I should, I feel like.

Cal Newport (2:01:24.360)

Well, you have like a lot

Lex Fridman (2:01:25.200)

of interesting friend possibilities.

Lex Fridman (2:01:27.640)

You have like an interesting problem, right?

Lex Fridman (2:01:29.120)

Like really interesting people you can talk to.

Cal Newport (2:01:32.080)

Well, that's one problem.

Lex Fridman (2:01:33.360)

The other one is the introversion

Cal Newport (2:01:34.720)

where I'm just afraid of people and get really stressed.

Lex Fridman (2:01:37.640)

Like I freak out.

Lex Fridman (2:01:38.760)

And so.

Lex Fridman (2:01:39.600)

You picked a good line of work.

Cal Newport (2:01:41.400)

Yeah, now perhaps it's the Goggins thing.

Lex Fridman (2:01:43.960)

It's like facing your fears or whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:01:46.520)

but it's almost like there's,

Lex Fridman (2:01:50.440)

it has to do with the timetables thing and the deep work

Cal Newport (2:01:52.960)

that the nice thing about the processes

Lex Fridman (2:01:55.760)

is it not only automates sort of,

Cal Newport (2:02:00.760)

automates away the context switching,

Lex Fridman (2:02:03.160)

it ensures you do the important things too.

Cal Newport (2:02:06.200)

It's like prioritize.

Lex Fridman (2:02:07.440)

So the thing is with email,

Cal Newport (2:02:09.920)

because everything is done over email,

Lex Fridman (2:02:13.280)

you can be lazy in the same way with like social networks

Lex Fridman (2:02:17.000)

and do the easy things first that are not that important.

Lex Fridman (2:02:20.800)

So the process also enforces

Cal Newport (2:02:23.000)

that you do the important things.

Lex Fridman (2:02:24.600)

And for me, the important things is like,

Cal Newport (2:02:27.920)

okay, that sounds weird, but like social connection.

Lex Fridman (2:02:30.120)

No, that's one of the most important things

Cal Newport (2:02:32.760)

in all of human existence.

Lex Fridman (2:02:34.840)

And doing it, the paradoxical thing,

Cal Newport (2:02:37.400)

I got into this for digital minimalism,

Lex Fridman (2:02:40.160)

the more you sacrifice on behalf of the connection,

Lex Fridman (2:02:42.320)

the stronger the connection feels, right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:44.240)

So sacrificing non trivial time and attention

Cal Newport (2:02:47.000)

on behalf of someone is what tells your brain

Lex Fridman (2:02:48.920)

that this is a serious relationship,

Cal Newport (2:02:52.080)

which is why social media had this paradoxical effect

Lex Fridman (2:02:54.680)

making people feel less social

Cal Newport (2:02:56.920)

because it took the friction out of it.

Lex Fridman (2:02:58.360)

And so the brain just doesn't like,

Cal Newport (2:02:59.680)

like, yeah, you've been commenting on this person's,

Lex Fridman (2:03:01.880)

whatever, you've been retweeting them

Cal Newport (2:03:03.440)

or sending them some text.

Lex Fridman (2:03:05.400)

You haven't, it's not hard enough.

Lex Fridman (2:03:07.520)

And then the perceived strength

Lex Fridman (2:03:09.720)

of that social connection diminishes

Cal Newport (2:03:11.080)

where if you talk to them or go spend time with them

Lex Fridman (2:03:13.320)

or whatever, you're gonna feel better about it.

Lex Fridman (2:03:16.160)

So the friction is good.

Lex Fridman (2:03:17.720)

I have a thing with some of my friends

Cal Newport (2:03:18.920)

where at the end of each call,

Lex Fridman (2:03:20.680)

we take a couple minutes to schedule the next.

Cal Newport (2:03:23.120)

Then you never have to,

Lex Fridman (2:03:23.960)

it's like I do with haircuts or something, right?

Cal Newport (2:03:25.360)

Like if I don't schedule it then,

Lex Fridman (2:03:27.320)

I'm never gonna get my haircut, right?

Lex Fridman (2:03:29.120)

And so it's like, okay, when do you wanna talk next?

Lex Fridman (2:03:32.200)

Yeah, that's a really good idea.

Cal Newport (2:03:34.200)

I just don't call friends.

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.080)

And like every 10 years I do something dramatic for them

Lex Fridman (2:03:39.680)

so that we maintain the friendship.

Lex Fridman (2:03:40.960)

We're like, I'd murder somebody that they really don't like.

Cal Newport (2:03:43.560)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:03:44.400)

Careful, man, Joey might ask you to do that.

Cal Newport (2:03:46.880)

Yeah, that's why, that's one of my favorite things.

Lex Fridman (2:03:49.320)

Lex, I need you to come down to New Jersey.

Cal Newport (2:03:51.560)

That's exactly what we're gonna do.

Lex Fridman (2:03:52.400)

With that robot dog of yours.

Cal Newport (2:03:55.320)

We're gonna go down to New Jersey.

Lex Fridman (2:03:56.720)

There's a special human.

Cal Newport (2:03:57.800)

I love the comedian world.

Lex Fridman (2:04:00.000)

They've been shaking up.

Cal Newport (2:04:01.520)

I don't know if you listen to Joe Rogan, all those folks.

Lex Fridman (2:04:04.080)

They kind of are doing something interesting

Cal Newport (2:04:08.120)

for MIT and academia.

Lex Fridman (2:04:10.480)

They're shaking up this world a little bit.

Cal Newport (2:04:13.080)

Like podcasting, because comedians are paving the way

Lex Fridman (2:04:15.520)

for podcasting.

Lex Fridman (2:04:17.040)

And so you have like Andrew Huberman,

Lex Fridman (2:04:18.800)

who's a neuroscientist at Stanford, friend of mine now.

Cal Newport (2:04:23.400)

He's like into podcasting now and you're into podcasting.

Lex Fridman (2:04:27.080)

Of course, you're not necessarily podcasting

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.160)

about computer science currently, right?

Lex Fridman (2:04:30.960)

But that, it feels like you could have a lot

Cal Newport (2:04:35.760)

of the free spirit of the comedians implemented

Lex Fridman (2:04:40.480)

by the people who are academically trained.

Cal Newport (2:04:43.880)

Who actually have a niche specialty.

Lex Fridman (2:04:46.720)

Yeah, and then that results, I mean,

Cal Newport (2:04:49.240)

who knows what the experiment looks like,

Lex Fridman (2:04:51.320)

but that results me being able to talk about robotics

Cal Newport (2:04:54.160)

with Joey Diaz when he says, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:04:56.920)

drops F bombs every other sentence.

Lex Fridman (2:04:58.640)

And I, the world is like, I've seen actually a shift

Lex Fridman (2:05:02.720)

within colleagues and friends within MIT

Cal Newport (2:05:06.240)

where they're becoming much more accepting

Lex Fridman (2:05:08.480)

of that kind of thing.

Cal Newport (2:05:09.320)

It's very interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:05:10.480)

That's interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:05:11.320)

So you're seeing, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:05:12.720)

Because they're seeing how popular it is.

Cal Newport (2:05:14.480)

They're like, wait a minute.

Lex Fridman (2:05:15.320)

Well, you're really popular.

Cal Newport (2:05:16.160)

I don't know how they think about it

Lex Fridman (2:05:17.320)

at Georgetown, for example.

Cal Newport (2:05:18.880)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:05:19.720)

It's interesting, but I think what happens

Cal Newport (2:05:22.080)

is the popularity of it combined

Lex Fridman (2:05:25.160)

with just good conversations with people they respect.

Cal Newport (2:05:29.760)

It's like, oh, wait, this is the thing.

Lex Fridman (2:05:32.720)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:05:33.560)

And this is more fun to listen to

Lex Fridman (2:05:34.760)

than a shitty Zoom lecture about their work.

Cal Newport (2:05:39.160)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:05:40.000)

It's like, there's something here.

Cal Newport (2:05:40.840)

There's something interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.680)

And we don't, nobody actually knows what that is.

Cal Newport (2:05:44.000)

Just like with like Clubhouse or something,

Lex Fridman (2:05:46.560)

nobody's figured out like, where does this medium take?

Lex Fridman (2:05:49.120)

Is this a legitimate medium of education?

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.520)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:05:52.360)

Or is this just like a fun?

Lex Fridman (2:05:54.320)

Well, that's your innovation, I think,

Cal Newport (2:05:55.520)

was we can bring on professors.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.880)

And I know Joe Rogan did some of that too,

Lex Fridman (2:06:00.560)

but your professors in your field.

Cal Newport (2:06:04.880)

Yeah, exactly.

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.720)

You bring on all these MIT guys who I remember.

Cal Newport (2:06:08.280)

Well, that's been the big challenge for me is,

Lex Fridman (2:06:10.160)

I don't, is I feel,

Cal Newport (2:06:15.160)

I would ask big like philosophical questions

Lex Fridman (2:06:17.680)

of people like yourself.

Cal Newport (2:06:20.760)

They're like really well public.

Lex Fridman (2:06:23.480)

Like, so for example, you have a lot of excellent papers

Lex Fridman (2:06:25.920)

on, you know, that has a lot of theory in it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:06:31.280)

And there's some temptation to just go through papers.

Lex Fridman (2:06:35.400)

And I think it's possible to actually do that.

Lex Fridman (2:06:37.040)

I haven't done that much, but I think it's possible.

Cal Newport (2:06:39.400)

It just requires a lot of preparation.

Lex Fridman (2:06:41.680)

And I can probably only do that with things

Cal Newport (2:06:43.880)

that I'm actually like in the field I'm aware of.

Lex Fridman (2:06:48.040)

But there's a dance that I would love to be able

Cal Newport (2:06:51.080)

to try to hit right where it's actually getting

Lex Fridman (2:06:53.280)

to the core of some interesting ideas

Cal Newport (2:06:54.960)

as opposed to just talking about philosophy.

Lex Fridman (2:06:56.920)

At the same time, there's a large audience of people

Cal Newport (2:06:59.800)

that just want to be inspired by disciplines

Lex Fridman (2:07:04.280)

where they don't necessarily know the details.

Lex Fridman (2:07:07.200)

But there's a lot of people that are like,

Lex Fridman (2:07:08.520)

hmm, I'm really curious.

Cal Newport (2:07:10.600)

I've been thinking about pivoting careers

Lex Fridman (2:07:13.080)

into software engineering.

Cal Newport (2:07:14.680)

They would love to hear from people like you

Lex Fridman (2:07:16.680)

about computer science.

Cal Newport (2:07:17.920)

Even if it's like theory.

Lex Fridman (2:07:19.240)

Yeah, but just like the idea that you can have big ideas,

Cal Newport (2:07:22.120)

you push them through and it's interesting,

Lex Fridman (2:07:24.000)

you fight for it, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:07:25.120)

Well, there's some, there's what is it?

Lex Fridman (2:07:27.640)

Computerphile and Numberphile, these YouTube channels.

Cal Newport (2:07:33.080)

There's channels I watch on like chess, exceptionally popular

Lex Fridman (2:07:37.160)

where I don't understand maybe 80% of the time

Lex Fridman (2:07:41.400)

what the hell they're talking about

Lex Fridman (2:07:42.640)

because they're talking about like why this move

Cal Newport (2:07:44.520)

is better than this move.

Lex Fridman (2:07:45.480)

But I love the passion and the genius of those people

Lex Fridman (2:07:48.400)

and just overhearing it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:49.600)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (2:07:50.440)

I don't know why that's so exciting.

Lex Fridman (2:07:52.000)

Do you look at like Scott Aaronson's blog at all?

Lex Fridman (2:07:53.960)

The Settled, Optimized?

Lex Fridman (2:07:55.120)

Yeah, it's like hardcore complexity theory.

Lex Fridman (2:07:57.800)

But it's just an enthusiasm or like Terry Tao's blog.

Lex Fridman (2:08:01.160)

A little bit of humor about it.

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.600)

Terry Tao has a blog?

Lex Fridman (2:08:03.800)

He used to, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:08:05.840)

And it would just be, I'm going all in on,

Lex Fridman (2:08:09.040)

here's a new affine group with which you can do whatever.

Cal Newport (2:08:11.560)

Whatever, it was just equations.

Lex Fridman (2:08:12.960)

Well, in the case of Scott Aaronson,

Cal Newport (2:08:14.240)

he's good, he's able to turn on like the inner troll

Lex Fridman (2:08:19.320)

and comedian and so on.

Cal Newport (2:08:20.560)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:08:21.400)

He keeps the fun, which is the best

Cal Newport (2:08:22.760)

of kinds of books. And he's a philosophical guy.

Lex Fridman (2:08:24.120)

He wrote that.

Cal Newport (2:08:24.960)

He turns on the philosophy. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:08:27.080)

Yeah, so we're exploring these different ways

Cal Newport (2:08:30.360)

of communicating science and exciting the world.

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.440)

Speaking of which, I gotta ask you about computer science.

Cal Newport (2:08:36.600)

Yeah, that's right, I do some of that.

Lex Fridman (2:08:39.280)

So, I mean, a lot of your work is what inspired

Cal Newport (2:08:43.560)

this deep thinking about productivity

Lex Fridman (2:08:46.440)

from all the different angles,

Cal Newport (2:08:48.760)

because some of the most rigorous work

Lex Fridman (2:08:50.400)

is mathematical work.

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.040)

And in computer science, the theoretical computer science,

Lex Fridman (2:08:55.040)

let me ask the Scott Aaronson question of like,

Cal Newport (2:08:57.440)

is there something to you that stands out in particular

Lex Fridman (2:09:00.760)

that's beautiful or inspiring,

Cal Newport (2:09:03.440)

or just really insightful about computer science

Lex Fridman (2:09:05.920)

or maybe mathematics?

Cal Newport (2:09:08.440)

I mean, I like theory.

Lex Fridman (2:09:11.240)

And in particular, what I've always liked in theory

Cal Newport (2:09:13.120)

is the notion of impossibilities.

Lex Fridman (2:09:14.880)

That's kind of my specialty.

Lex Fridman (2:09:16.640)

So within the context of distributed algorithms,

Lex Fridman (2:09:19.880)

my specialty is impossibility results.

Lex Fridman (2:09:21.680)

So the idea that you can argue

Lex Fridman (2:09:23.880)

nothing exists that solves this,

Cal Newport (2:09:26.080)

or nothing exists that can solve this faster than this.

Lex Fridman (2:09:30.520)

And I think that's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:09:32.040)

And that goes all the way back to Turing.

Lex Fridman (2:09:34.640)

His original paper on computable numbers

Cal Newport (2:09:37.800)

with their connection to the German Eichsturzungen problem,

Lex Fridman (2:09:40.280)

but basically the German name

Cal Newport (2:09:41.880)

that Hilbert called the decision problem.

Lex Fridman (2:09:43.440)

This was precomputers, but he's English,

Lex Fridman (2:09:46.320)

so it's written in English.

Lex Fridman (2:09:47.160)

So it's a very accessible paper.

Lex Fridman (2:09:48.800)

And it lays the foundation

Lex Fridman (2:09:50.520)

for all of theoretical computer science.

Cal Newport (2:09:51.960)

He just has this insight.

Lex Fridman (2:09:53.160)

He's like, well, if we think about like an algorithm,

Cal Newport (2:09:55.160)

I mean, he figures out like all effective procedures

Lex Fridman (2:09:57.720)

or Turing machines are basically algorithms.

Cal Newport (2:09:59.640)

We could really describe a Turing machine with a number,

Lex Fridman (2:10:02.040)

which we can now imagine with like computer code,

Cal Newport (2:10:04.160)

you could just take a source file

Lex Fridman (2:10:05.600)

and just treat the binary version of the file

Lex Fridman (2:10:07.680)

as like a really long number, right?

Lex Fridman (2:10:09.440)

But he's like, every program is just a finite number.

Cal Newport (2:10:12.440)

It's a natural number.

Lex Fridman (2:10:14.000)

And then he realized like one way to think about a problem

Cal Newport (2:10:16.560)

is you have, and this is like kind of the Mike Sipser

Lex Fridman (2:10:19.400)

approach, but you have a sort of, it's a language.

Lex Fridman (2:10:21.800)

So of an infinite number of strings,

Lex Fridman (2:10:23.480)

some of them are in the language and some of them aren't,

Lex Fridman (2:10:25.040)

but basically you can imagine a problem is represented

Lex Fridman (2:10:27.360)

as an infinite binary string,

Cal Newport (2:10:29.360)

where in every position, like a one means that string

Lex Fridman (2:10:31.440)

is in the language and a zero means it isn't.

Lex Fridman (2:10:33.640)

And then he applied Cantor from the 19th century and said,

Lex Fridman (2:10:37.520)

okay, the natural numbers are countable.

Lex Fridman (2:10:39.760)

So it's countably infinite and infinite binary strings,

Lex Fridman (2:10:43.760)

you can use a diagonalization argument

Lex Fridman (2:10:45.160)

and show they're uncountable.

Lex Fridman (2:10:47.960)

So there's just vastly more problems

Cal Newport (2:10:50.800)

than there are algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:10:51.920)

So basically anything you can come up with for the most part

Cal Newport (2:10:54.000)

almost certainly is not solvable by a computer.

Lex Fridman (2:10:56.640)

And then he was like, let me give a particular example.

Lex Fridman (2:10:58.800)

And he figured out the very first computability proof.

Lex Fridman (2:11:01.240)

Let's just walk through with a little bit of simple logic

Cal Newport (2:11:03.760)

to halting problem can't be solved by an algorithm.

Lex Fridman (2:11:05.920)

And that kicked off the whole enterprise

Cal Newport (2:11:08.840)

of some things can't be solved by algorithms,

Lex Fridman (2:11:12.800)

some things can't be solved by computers.

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.280)

And we've just been doing theory on that

Lex Fridman (2:11:16.280)

since that was the 30s he wrote that.

Lex Fridman (2:11:18.600)

So proving that something is impossible

Lex Fridman (2:11:21.120)

is sort of a stricter version of that.

Cal Newport (2:11:23.400)

Is it like proving bounds on the performance

Lex Fridman (2:11:26.280)

of different algorithms?

Lex Fridman (2:11:27.120)

Yeah, so bounds are upper bounds, right?

Lex Fridman (2:11:29.360)

So you say, this algorithm does at least this well

Lex Fridman (2:11:32.920)

and no worse than this,

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.760)

but you're looking at a particular algorithm

Lex Fridman (2:11:35.600)

and possibility proof say no algorithm ever

Lex Fridman (2:11:39.240)

could ever solve this problem.

Lex Fridman (2:11:40.160)

So no algorithm could ever solve the halting problem.

Lex Fridman (2:11:42.520)

So it's problem centric.

Cal Newport (2:11:43.920)

It's making something different,

Lex Fridman (2:11:46.160)

making a conclusive statement about the problem.

Cal Newport (2:11:48.520)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (2:11:49.360)

And that's somehow satisfying because it's...

Cal Newport (2:11:51.800)

It's just philosophically interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:11:53.200)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (2:11:54.040)

I mean, it all goes back to, you get back to Plato,

Lex Fridman (2:11:55.880)

it's all reductio ad absurdum.

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.360)

So all these arguments have to start.

Lex Fridman (2:11:59.680)

The only way to do it

Cal Newport (2:12:00.520)

is because there's an infinite number of solutions

Lex Fridman (2:12:01.960)

you can't go through them.

Cal Newport (2:12:02.800)

You say, let's assume for the sake of contradiction

Lex Fridman (2:12:06.360)

that there existed something that solves this problem.

Lex Fridman (2:12:09.080)

And then you turn to crank a logic

Lex Fridman (2:12:10.320)

until you blow up the universe.

Lex Fridman (2:12:11.760)

And then you go back and say,

Lex Fridman (2:12:12.600)

okay, our original assumption

Cal Newport (2:12:13.960)

that this solution exists can't be true.

Lex Fridman (2:12:16.560)

I just think philosophically,

Cal Newport (2:12:17.720)

it's like a really exciting kind of beautiful thing.

Lex Fridman (2:12:19.800)

It's what I specialize in within distributed algorithms

Cal Newport (2:12:22.120)

is more like time bound and possibility results.

Lex Fridman (2:12:24.880)

Like no algorithm can solve this problem faster than this

Cal Newport (2:12:28.740)

in this setting.

Lex Fridman (2:12:29.720)

Of all the infinite number of ways you might ever do it.

Lex Fridman (2:12:32.120)

So you have many papers,

Lex Fridman (2:12:34.120)

but the one that caught my eye

Cal Newport (2:12:35.480)

is Smooth Analysis of Dynamic Networks,

Lex Fridman (2:12:38.440)

in which you write,

Cal Newport (2:12:40.680)

a problem with the worst case perspective

Lex Fridman (2:12:42.800)

is that it often leads to extremely strong lower bounds.

Cal Newport (2:12:45.640)

These strong results motivate a key question.

Lex Fridman (2:12:48.120)

Is this bond robust in the sense

Cal Newport (2:12:49.920)

that it captures the fundamental difficulty

Lex Fridman (2:12:52.080)

introduced by dynamism?

Cal Newport (2:12:53.960)

Or is the bond fragile in the sense

Lex Fridman (2:12:56.600)

that the poor performance it describes

Cal Newport (2:12:58.320)

depends on an exact sequence of adversarial changes.

Lex Fridman (2:13:02.080)

Fragile lower bounds leave open the possibility

Cal Newport (2:13:05.240)

of algorithms that might still perform well in practice.

Lex Fridman (2:13:08.680)

That's in the sense of the impossible

Lex Fridman (2:13:11.760)

and the bounds discussion presents the interesting question.

Lex Fridman (2:13:15.280)

I just like the idea of robust and fragile bounds,

Lex Fridman (2:13:18.440)

but what do you make about this kind of tension

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.000)

between what's provably,

Cal Newport (2:13:25.760)

like what bounds you can prove that are like robust

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.000)

and something that's a bit more fragile.

Lex Fridman (2:13:32.520)

And also by way of answering that

Lex Fridman (2:13:36.040)

for this particular paper,

Lex Fridman (2:13:38.120)

can you say what the hell are dynamic networks?

Lex Fridman (2:13:41.400)

What are distributed algorithms?

Lex Fridman (2:13:42.240)

You don't know this?

Lex Fridman (2:13:43.080)

Come on now.

Lex Fridman (2:13:43.920)

And I have no idea.

Lex Fridman (2:13:44.880)

And what is Smooth Analysis?

Cal Newport (2:13:46.160)

Yeah, well, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:13:47.000)

So Smooth Analysis, so it wasn't my idea.

Lex Fridman (2:13:49.960)

So Spielman and Tang came up with this

Lex Fridman (2:13:52.400)

in the context of sequential algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.320)

So just like the normal world of an algorithm

Lex Fridman (2:13:57.040)

that runs on a computer.

Lex Fridman (2:13:58.440)

And they were looking at, there's a well known algorithm

Lex Fridman (2:14:01.640)

called the simplex algorithm,

Lex Fridman (2:14:02.760)

but basically you're trying to find a hole

Lex Fridman (2:14:06.440)

around a group of points.

Lex Fridman (2:14:07.480)

And there was an algorithm

Lex Fridman (2:14:08.320)

that worked really well in practice.

Lex Fridman (2:14:10.480)

But when you analyze it, you would say,

Lex Fridman (2:14:12.080)

I can't guarantee it's gonna work well in practice

Cal Newport (2:14:13.960)

because if you have just the right inputs,

Lex Fridman (2:14:16.400)

this thing could run really long.

Lex Fridman (2:14:18.960)

But in practice, it seemed to be really fast.

Lex Fridman (2:14:20.480)

So Smooth Analysis is they came in and they said,

Cal Newport (2:14:22.560)

let's assume that a bad guy chooses the inputs.

Lex Fridman (2:14:25.960)

It could be anything like really bad ones.

Lex Fridman (2:14:27.880)

And all we're gonna do, because in simplex they're numbers,

Lex Fridman (2:14:30.880)

we're gonna just randomly put a little bit of noise

Cal Newport (2:14:33.520)

on each of the numbers.

Lex Fridman (2:14:34.720)

And they said, if you put a little bit of noise

Cal Newport (2:14:36.080)

on the numbers, suddenly simplex algorithm goes really fast.

Lex Fridman (2:14:39.720)

Like, oh, that explains this lower bound,

Cal Newport (2:14:41.680)

this idea that it could sometimes run really long

Lex Fridman (2:14:44.280)

was a fragile bound because it could only run

Cal Newport (2:14:46.280)

a really long time if you had exactly

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.840)

the worst pathological input.

Lex Fridman (2:14:49.800)

So then my collaborators and I brought this over

Lex Fridman (2:14:51.560)

to the world of distributed algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.560)

We brought them over the general lower bounds, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:55.360)

So in the world of dynamic networks,

Lex Fridman (2:14:58.080)

so distributed algorithm is a bunch of algorithms

Lex Fridman (2:15:00.080)

on different machines talking to each other,

Cal Newport (2:15:02.440)

trying to solve a problem.

Lex Fridman (2:15:03.280)

And sometimes they're in a network.

Lex Fridman (2:15:05.000)

So you imagine them connected with network links

Lex Fridman (2:15:07.440)

and a dynamic network, those can change, right?

Lex Fridman (2:15:10.000)

So I was talking to you, but now I can't talk to you anymore.

Lex Fridman (2:15:12.280)

Now I'm connected to a person over here.

Cal Newport (2:15:14.000)

It's a really hard environment mathematically speaking.

Lex Fridman (2:15:16.440)

And there's a lot of really strong lower bounds,

Cal Newport (2:15:19.040)

which you could imagine if the network can change

Lex Fridman (2:15:20.720)

all the time and a bad guy is doing it,

Cal Newport (2:15:23.520)

it's like hard to do things well.

Lex Fridman (2:15:24.960)

So there's an algorithm running on every single node

Cal Newport (2:15:27.280)

in the network.

Lex Fridman (2:15:28.120)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:15:28.960)

And then you're trying to say something of any kind

Lex Fridman (2:15:30.760)

that makes any kind of definitive sense

Cal Newport (2:15:32.840)

about the performance of that algorithm.

Lex Fridman (2:15:34.800)

Yeah, so I just submitted a new paper on this

Cal Newport (2:15:37.520)

a couple of weeks ago.

Lex Fridman (2:15:38.360)

And we were looking at a very simple problem.

Cal Newport (2:15:39.840)

There's some messages in the network.

Lex Fridman (2:15:42.280)

We want everyone to get them.

Cal Newport (2:15:44.200)

If the network doesn't change,

Lex Fridman (2:15:46.880)

you can do this pretty well.

Cal Newport (2:15:47.860)

You can pipeline them.

Lex Fridman (2:15:48.700)

There's some basic algorithms that work really well.

Cal Newport (2:15:52.120)

If the network can change every round,

Lex Fridman (2:15:54.100)

there's these lower bounds that says,

Cal Newport (2:15:57.040)

it takes a really long time.

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.020)

There's a way that no matter what algorithm you come up with,

Cal Newport (2:16:00.160)

there's a way the network can change in such a way

Lex Fridman (2:16:02.100)

that just really slows down your progress basically, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:05.600)

So smooth analysis there says, yeah,

Lex Fridman (2:16:07.240)

but that seems like you'd have really bad luck

Cal Newport (2:16:10.140)

if your network was changing exactly in the right way

Lex Fridman (2:16:14.520)

that you needed to screw your algorithm.

Lex Fridman (2:16:15.920)

So we said, what if we randomly just add

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.120)

or remove a couple of edges in every round?

Lex Fridman (2:16:20.600)

So the adversary is trying to choose

Lex Fridman (2:16:21.640)

the worst possible network.

Lex Fridman (2:16:22.640)

And we're just tweaking it a little bit.

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.800)

And in that case, this is a new paper.

Cal Newport (2:16:25.960)

I mean, it's a blinded submission,

Lex Fridman (2:16:27.520)

so maybe I shouldn't, it's not, whatever.

Cal Newport (2:16:30.320)

We basically showed.

Lex Fridman (2:16:31.640)

An anonymous friend of yours submitted a paper.

Cal Newport (2:16:33.600)

An anonymous friend of mine, yeah,

Lex Fridman (2:16:35.720)

whose paper should be accepted.

Cal Newport (2:16:37.840)

Showed that even just adding like one random edge per round,

Lex Fridman (2:16:42.480)

and here's the cool thing about it,

Cal Newport (2:16:43.320)

the simplest possible solution to this problem

Lex Fridman (2:16:46.080)

blows away that lower bound and does really well.

Lex Fridman (2:16:47.920)

So that's like a very fragile lower bound

Lex Fridman (2:16:50.120)

because we're like, it's almost impossible

Cal Newport (2:16:53.120)

to actually keep things slow.

Lex Fridman (2:16:55.360)

I wonder how many lower bounds you can smash open

Cal Newport (2:16:59.920)

with this kind of analysis and show that they're fragile.

Lex Fridman (2:17:02.440)

It's my interest, yeah.

Cal Newport (2:17:03.640)

Because in distributed algorithms,

Lex Fridman (2:17:05.680)

there's a ton of really famous strong lower bounds,

Lex Fridman (2:17:08.320)

but things have to go wrong, really, really wrong

Lex Fridman (2:17:12.520)

for these lower bound arguments to work.

Lex Fridman (2:17:14.600)

And so I like this approach.

Lex Fridman (2:17:15.680)

So this whole notion of fragile versus robust,

Cal Newport (2:17:17.960)

I was like, well, let's go in and just throw

Lex Fridman (2:17:20.200)

a little noise in there.

Lex Fridman (2:17:21.080)

And if it becomes solvable, then maybe that lower bound

Lex Fridman (2:17:23.880)

wasn't really something we should worry about.

Cal Newport (2:17:25.520)

You know, that's gonna embarrass,

Lex Fridman (2:17:27.320)

that's really uncomfortable.

Cal Newport (2:17:28.560)

That's really embarrassing to a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (2:17:31.480)

Because, okay, this is the OCD thing with the spaces,

Cal Newport (2:17:35.880)

is it feels really good when you can prove a nice bound.

Lex Fridman (2:17:39.000)

And if you say that that bound is fragile,

Cal Newport (2:17:43.400)

that's like, there's gonna be a sad kid

Lex Fridman (2:17:46.080)

that walks with their lunchbox back home,

Cal Newport (2:17:49.760)

like, my lower bound doesn't matter.

Lex Fridman (2:17:52.320)

No, I don't think they care.

Cal Newport (2:17:53.280)

It's all, I don't know, it feels like to me,

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.400)

a lot of this theory is just math machismo.

Cal Newport (2:17:57.680)

It's like, whatever, this was a hard bound to prove.

Lex Fridman (2:18:00.440)

What do you think about that?

Lex Fridman (2:18:02.240)

So if you show that something is fragile,

Lex Fridman (2:18:03.720)

that's really important in practice, right?

Lex Fridman (2:18:08.280)

So do you think kind of theoretical computer science

Lex Fridman (2:18:10.760)

is living its own world, just like mathematics,

Lex Fridman (2:18:13.320)

and their main effort, which I think is very valuable,

Lex Fridman (2:18:16.320)

is to develop ideas that's not necessarily interesting,

Cal Newport (2:18:19.360)

whether it's applicable in the real world.

Lex Fridman (2:18:21.040)

Yeah, we don't care about the applicability.

Cal Newport (2:18:22.720)

Yeah, we kind of do, but not really.

Lex Fridman (2:18:24.640)

And we're terrible with computers,

Lex Fridman (2:18:26.120)

and can't do anything useful with computers,

Lex Fridman (2:18:27.800)

and we don't know how to code.

Cal Newport (2:18:28.720)

And, you know, we're not productive members

Lex Fridman (2:18:31.880)

of like technological society,

Lex Fridman (2:18:33.320)

but I do think things percolate.

Lex Fridman (2:18:36.280)

Exactly.

Cal Newport (2:18:37.120)

You percolate from the world of theory

Lex Fridman (2:18:38.680)

into the world of algorithm design,

Cal Newport (2:18:40.120)

where it will pull on the theory,

Lex Fridman (2:18:41.280)

and now suddenly it's useful,

Lex Fridman (2:18:43.360)

and then the algorithm design

Lex Fridman (2:18:44.480)

gets pulled into the world of practice,

Cal Newport (2:18:45.840)

where they say, well, actually,

Lex Fridman (2:18:46.680)

we can make this algorithm a lot better,

Cal Newport (2:18:47.800)

because in practice, really, these servers do X, Y, Z,

Lex Fridman (2:18:50.120)

and now we can make this super efficient.

Lex Fridman (2:18:51.680)

And so I do think, I mean, I teach theory

Lex Fridman (2:18:54.600)

to the PhD students at Georgetown.

Cal Newport (2:18:56.560)

I show them the sort of funnel of like,

Lex Fridman (2:18:58.960)

okay, we're over here doing theory,

Lex Fridman (2:19:00.120)

but it eventually, some of this stuff

Lex Fridman (2:19:01.640)

will percolate down in effect at the very end, you know,

Cal Newport (2:19:04.440)

a phone, but it's a long tunnel.

Lex Fridman (2:19:08.120)

But the very question you're asking,

Cal Newport (2:19:10.080)

at the highest philosophical level, is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:19:12.400)

Like, if you take a system, a distributed system,

Cal Newport (2:19:15.000)

or a network, and introduce a little bit of noise into it,

Lex Fridman (2:19:19.520)

like, how many problems of that nature

Cal Newport (2:19:23.320)

are fundamentally changed

Lex Fridman (2:19:25.240)

by that little introduction of noise?

Cal Newport (2:19:27.560)

Yeah, because it's all,

Lex Fridman (2:19:29.080)

especially in distributed algorithms,

Cal Newport (2:19:30.280)

the model is everything.

Lex Fridman (2:19:31.560)

Like, the way we work is we're incredibly precise about,

Cal Newport (2:19:34.160)

here's exactly, it's mathematical,

Lex Fridman (2:19:36.040)

here's exactly how the network works,

Lex Fridman (2:19:37.560)

and it's a state machine, algorithms are state machines,

Lex Fridman (2:19:40.160)

there's rounds and schedulers,

Cal Newport (2:19:41.360)

we're super precise so we can prove lower bounds.

Lex Fridman (2:19:44.200)

But yeah, often those lower,

Cal Newport (2:19:45.120)

those impossibility results really get at the hard edges

Lex Fridman (2:19:48.800)

of exactly how that model works.

Lex Fridman (2:19:50.560)

So we'll see if this, so we published a paper on this,

Lex Fridman (2:19:53.560)

that paper you mentioned,

Cal Newport (2:19:55.560)

that kind of introduced the idea

Lex Fridman (2:19:56.800)

to the distributed algorithms world.

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.120)

And I think that's got some traction

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.120)

and there's been some followup.

Lex Fridman (2:20:02.200)

So we've just submitted our next.

Lex Fridman (2:20:05.720)

I mean, honestly, the issue with the next

Cal Newport (2:20:07.000)

that like the result fell out so easily,

Lex Fridman (2:20:09.320)

and this shows the mathematical machismo problem

Cal Newport (2:20:11.080)

in these fields is there's a good chance

Lex Fridman (2:20:13.920)

the paper won't be accepted

Cal Newport (2:20:15.000)

because there wasn't enough mathematical self flagellation.

Lex Fridman (2:20:18.200)

That's such a nice finding.

Lex Fridman (2:20:20.240)

So even showing that very few,

Lex Fridman (2:20:22.560)

just very little bit of noise,

Cal Newport (2:20:24.360)

can have a dramatic, make a dramatic statement about the.

Lex Fridman (2:20:28.000)

It was a big surprise to us,

Lex Fridman (2:20:29.360)

but once we figured out how to show it,

Lex Fridman (2:20:32.440)

it's not too hard.

Lex Fridman (2:20:34.120)

And these are venues for theoretical work.

Lex Fridman (2:20:38.880)

Okay, so the fascinating tension

Cal Newport (2:20:41.160)

that exists in other disciplines,

Lex Fridman (2:20:42.520)

like one of them is machine learning,

Cal Newport (2:20:45.000)

which despite the power of machine learning

Lex Fridman (2:20:48.760)

and deep learning and all like the impact of it,

Cal Newport (2:20:52.720)

in the real world,

Lex Fridman (2:20:53.840)

the main conferences on machine learning

Cal Newport (2:20:55.960)

are still resistant to application papers.

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.480)

And application papers broadly defined,

Cal Newport (2:21:03.880)

meaning like finding almost like you would,

Lex Fridman (2:21:08.160)

like Darwin did by like going around,

Cal Newport (2:21:12.760)

collecting some information,

Lex Fridman (2:21:14.040)

saying, huh, isn't this interesting?

Cal Newport (2:21:16.760)

Like those are some of the most popular blogs,

Lex Fridman (2:21:19.200)

and yet as a paper, it's not really accepted.

Cal Newport (2:21:21.320)

I wonder what you think about this whole world

Lex Fridman (2:21:23.400)

of deep learning from a perspective of theory.

Lex Fridman (2:21:29.480)

What do you make of this whole discipline

Lex Fridman (2:21:31.720)

of the success of Neon Networks,

Lex Fridman (2:21:33.240)

of how to do science on them?

Lex Fridman (2:21:34.920)

Are you excited by the possibilities

Lex Fridman (2:21:37.960)

of what we might discover about Neon Networks?

Lex Fridman (2:21:40.080)

Do you think it's fundamental in engineering discipline,

Cal Newport (2:21:42.320)

or is there something theoretical

Lex Fridman (2:21:44.660)

that we might crack open one of these days

Cal Newport (2:21:47.480)

in understanding something deep

Lex Fridman (2:21:48.820)

about how system optimization and how systems learn?

Lex Fridman (2:21:52.160)

I am convinced by, is it Tegmark at MIT?

Lex Fridman (2:21:56.160)

Tegmark? Yeah, Tegmark, right.

Lex Fridman (2:21:58.000)

So his notion has always been convincing to me

Lex Fridman (2:22:00.200)

that the fact that some of these models are inscrutable

Cal Newport (2:22:04.840)

is not fundamental to them,

Lex Fridman (2:22:06.880)

and that we can, we're gonna get better and better,

Cal Newport (2:22:08.640)

because in the end, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:22:09.960)

the reason why practicing computer scientists often

Cal Newport (2:22:12.640)

who are doing AI or working at AI and industry

Lex Fridman (2:22:15.600)

aren't like worried about so much existential threats

Cal Newport (2:22:18.680)

is because they see the reality

Lex Fridman (2:22:20.320)

as they're multiplying matrices with NumPy

Lex Fridman (2:22:22.960)

or something like this, right?

Lex Fridman (2:22:23.800)

Yeah, and tweaking constants

Lex Fridman (2:22:25.440)

and hoping that the classifier fitness,

Lex Fridman (2:22:27.800)

for God's sakes, before the submission deadline

Cal Newport (2:22:30.520)

actually gets above some,

Lex Fridman (2:22:31.840)

it feels like it's linear algebra and tedium, right?

Lex Fridman (2:22:37.300)

But anyways, I'm really convinced with his idea

Lex Fridman (2:22:39.320)

that once we understand better and better

Cal Newport (2:22:40.720)

what's going on from a theory perspective,

Lex Fridman (2:22:42.240)

it's gonna make it into an engineering discipline.

Lex Fridman (2:22:44.700)

So in my mind, where we're gonna end up is,

Lex Fridman (2:22:47.240)

okay, forget these metaphors of neurons,

Lex Fridman (2:22:50.280)

and these things are gonna be put down

Lex Fridman (2:22:52.360)

into these mathematical kind of elegant equations,

Cal Newport (2:22:54.860)

differentiable equations that just kind of work well,

Lex Fridman (2:22:57.600)

and then it's gonna be

Cal Newport (2:22:58.920)

when I need a little bit of AI in this thing, plumbing.

Lex Fridman (2:23:02.280)

Like, let's get a little bit of a pattern recognizer

Cal Newport (2:23:05.220)

with a noise module and let's connect.

Lex Fridman (2:23:06.840)

I mean, you know this feel better than me,

Lex Fridman (2:23:08.280)

so I don't know if this is like a reasonable prediction,

Lex Fridman (2:23:11.200)

but it's gonna become less inscrutable,

Lex Fridman (2:23:14.100)

and then it's gonna become more engineerable,

Lex Fridman (2:23:16.300)

and then we're gonna have AI in more things

Cal Newport (2:23:18.580)

because we're gonna have a little bit more control

Lex Fridman (2:23:20.580)

over how we piece together

Cal Newport (2:23:22.540)

these different classification black boxes.

Lex Fridman (2:23:25.840)

So one of the problems, and there might be

Cal Newport (2:23:28.040)

some interesting parallels that you might provide intuition

Lex Fridman (2:23:30.360)

on is, you know, neural networks are very large,

Lex Fridman (2:23:32.600)

and they have a lot of, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:23:35.000)

we were talking about, you know, dynamic networks

Lex Fridman (2:23:39.040)

and distributed algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:23:41.860)

One of the problems with the analysis of neural networks

Cal Newport (2:23:45.460)

is, you know, you have a lot of nodes,

Lex Fridman (2:23:48.680)

and you have a lot of edges.

Cal Newport (2:23:50.840)

To be able to interpret and to control different things

Lex Fridman (2:23:53.120)

is very difficult.

Cal Newport (2:23:53.960)

There's fields in trying to figure out like mathematically

Lex Fridman (2:23:59.040)

how you form clean representations that are like,

Cal Newport (2:24:04.600)

like one node contains all the information

Lex Fridman (2:24:07.680)

about a particular thing,

Lex Fridman (2:24:08.700)

and no other nodes is correlated to it.

Lex Fridman (2:24:10.800)

So like it has unique knowledge and like,

Lex Fridman (2:24:13.680)

but that ultimately boils down to trying

Lex Fridman (2:24:15.920)

to simplify this thing into,

Cal Newport (2:24:19.000)

that goes against this very nature,

Lex Fridman (2:24:20.600)

which is like deeply connected,

Lex Fridman (2:24:23.200)

and like dynamic and just, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:24:27.600)

hundreds of millions, billions of nodes.

Lex Fridman (2:24:30.400)

And in a distributed sense, like when you zoom out,

Lex Fridman (2:24:33.960)

the thing has a representation

Lex Fridman (2:24:35.440)

and understanding of something,

Lex Fridman (2:24:36.960)

but the individual nodes are just doing

Cal Newport (2:24:38.520)

their little exchanging thing.

Lex Fridman (2:24:40.520)

And it's the same thing with Stephen Wolfram

Cal Newport (2:24:42.800)

when you talk about cellular automata,

Lex Fridman (2:24:44.480)

it's very difficult to do math

Cal Newport (2:24:46.340)

when you have a huge collection of distributed things,

Lex Fridman (2:24:48.800)

each acting on their own.

Lex Fridman (2:24:50.440)

And it's almost like, it feels like it's almost impossible

Lex Fridman (2:24:54.760)

to do any kind of theoretical work in the traditional sense.

Cal Newport (2:24:58.200)

It almost becomes completely like a biology,

Lex Fridman (2:25:02.560)

you become a biologist as opposed to a theoretician.

Cal Newport (2:25:06.080)

You just study it experimentally.

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.720)

Yeah, I think that's the big question, I guess, right?

Cal Newport (2:25:10.720)

Yeah, so is the large size and interconnectedness

Lex Fridman (2:25:15.280)

of the like a deep learning network fundamental

Cal Newport (2:25:18.360)

to that task, or are we just not very good at it yet

Lex Fridman (2:25:20.400)

because we're using the wrong metaphor?

Cal Newport (2:25:23.360)

I mean, the human brain learns with much fewer examples

Lex Fridman (2:25:26.800)

and with much less tuning of the whatever, whatever,

Cal Newport (2:25:30.400)

whatever probably that requires to get

Lex Fridman (2:25:32.320)

those like deep mind networks up and running.

Lex Fridman (2:25:34.480)

But yeah, so I don't really know,

Lex Fridman (2:25:36.240)

but the one thing I have observed is that the, yeah,

Cal Newport (2:25:38.440)

there's the mundane nature of some of the working

Lex Fridman (2:25:42.080)

with these models tends to lead people to think that,

Cal Newport (2:25:46.440)

to do it like, it could be Skynet

Lex Fridman (2:25:49.200)

or it could be like a lot of pain to get the thermostat

Cal Newport (2:25:53.120)

to do what we want it to do.

Lex Fridman (2:25:54.520)

And there's a lot of open questions in between there.

Lex Fridman (2:25:56.680)

And then of course, the distributed network

Lex Fridman (2:26:02.960)

of humans that use these systems.

Lex Fridman (2:26:04.720)

So like you can have the system itself,

Lex Fridman (2:26:07.560)

then your network, but you can also have like little

Cal Newport (2:26:10.040)

algorithms controlling the behavior of humans,

Lex Fridman (2:26:11.800)

which is what you have with social networks.

Cal Newport (2:26:14.120)

It's possible that a very, what is it, a toaster or whatever,

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.520)

the opposite of Skynet when taken at scale

Cal Newport (2:26:20.640)

while used by individual humans and controlling

Lex Fridman (2:26:22.680)

their behavior can actually have the Skynet effect.

Lex Fridman (2:26:25.880)

So the scale there.

Lex Fridman (2:26:27.800)

We might have that now.

Cal Newport (2:26:29.040)

We might have that now, we just don't know.

Lex Fridman (2:26:31.440)

As it's happening.

Lex Fridman (2:26:32.280)

Is Twitter creating a little mini Skynet?

Lex Fridman (2:26:33.720)

I mean, because of what happens,

Cal Newport (2:26:35.080)

it twirls out ramifications in the world.

Lex Fridman (2:26:38.000)

And is it really that much different if it's a robot

Cal Newport (2:26:41.480)

with tentacles or a bunch of servers that.

Lex Fridman (2:26:44.480)

Yeah, and the destructive effects could be,

Cal Newport (2:26:47.520)

I mean, it could be political, but it could also be like,

Lex Fridman (2:26:51.000)

you could probably make an interesting case that the virus,

Cal Newport (2:26:54.640)

the coronavirus spread on Twitter too,

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.360)

in the minds of people.

Cal Newport (2:27:00.760)

Like the fear and the misinformation

Lex Fridman (2:27:03.360)

in some very interesting ways mixed up.

Lex Fridman (2:27:06.360)

And maybe this pandemic wasn't sufficiently dangerous

Lex Fridman (2:27:08.960)

to where that could have created a weird like an instability,

Lex Fridman (2:27:12.960)

but maybe other things might create instability.

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.120)

Like somebody, God forbid,

Cal Newport (2:27:17.000)

detonates a nuclear weapon somewhere.

Lex Fridman (2:27:19.160)

And then maybe the destructive aspect of that

Cal Newport (2:27:21.520)

would not as much be the military actions,

Lex Fridman (2:27:24.880)

but the way those news are spread on Twitter

Lex Fridman (2:27:28.040)

and the panic that creates.

Lex Fridman (2:27:29.280)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:27:30.400)

I mean, I think that's a great case study, right?

Lex Fridman (2:27:32.320)

Like what happened, not,

Lex Fridman (2:27:34.040)

but I'm not suggesting that Lexi go let off a nuclear bomb.

Lex Fridman (2:27:36.720)

I meant the coronavirus, but yeah,

Cal Newport (2:27:39.880)

I think that's a really interesting case study.

Lex Fridman (2:27:43.000)

I'm interested in the counterfactual of 1995,

Cal Newport (2:27:46.040)

like do the same virus in 1995.

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.360)

So first of all, it would have been,

Cal Newport (2:27:50.440)

I get to hear whatever the nightly news,

Lex Fridman (2:27:53.560)

we'll talk about it.

Lex Fridman (2:27:54.480)

And then there'll be my local health board,

Lex Fridman (2:27:57.280)

we'll talk about it.

Cal Newport (2:27:58.320)

That mitigation decisions would probably necessarily be

Lex Fridman (2:28:01.560)

very sort of localized.

Cal Newport (2:28:04.320)

Okay, our community is trying to figure out

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.480)

what are we gonna do?

Lex Fridman (2:28:06.320)

What's gonna happen?

Lex Fridman (2:28:07.160)

Like we see this with schools,

Cal Newport (2:28:08.080)

like where I grew up in New Jersey,

Lex Fridman (2:28:10.400)

there's very localized school districts.

Lex Fridman (2:28:12.800)

So even though they had sort of

Lex Fridman (2:28:15.040)

really bad viral numbers there,

Cal Newport (2:28:16.280)

my school I grew up in has been open since the fall

Lex Fridman (2:28:18.320)

because it's very localized.

Cal Newport (2:28:20.160)

It's like these teachers and these parents,

Lex Fridman (2:28:21.640)

what do we wanna do?

Lex Fridman (2:28:22.480)

What are we comfortable with?

Lex Fridman (2:28:23.680)

I live in a school district right now in Montgomery County

Cal Newport (2:28:26.440)

that's a billion dollar a year budget,

Lex Fridman (2:28:27.960)

150,000 kid school district.

Cal Newport (2:28:29.960)

It just can't, it's closed because it's too.

Lex Fridman (2:28:32.680)

So I'm interested in that counterfactual.

Cal Newport (2:28:33.880)

Yeah, so you have all this information moving around

Lex Fridman (2:28:36.400)

and then you have the effects on discourse

Cal Newport (2:28:39.160)

that we were talking about earlier,

Lex Fridman (2:28:40.480)

that the Neil Postman style effects of Twitter,

Cal Newport (2:28:43.480)

which shifts people into a sort of a dunk culture mindset

Lex Fridman (2:28:46.160)

of don't give an inch to the other team.

Lex Fridman (2:28:49.840)

And we're used to this and was fired up by politics

Lex Fridman (2:28:51.680)

and the unique attributes of Twitter.

Cal Newport (2:28:53.440)

Now throw in the coronavirus

Lex Fridman (2:28:54.720)

and suddenly we see decades of public health knowledge,

Cal Newport (2:28:58.440)

a lot of which was honed during the HIV epidemic,

Lex Fridman (2:29:00.920)

was thrown out the window

Cal Newport (2:29:02.280)

because a lot of this was happening on Twitter

Lex Fridman (2:29:04.120)

and suddenly we had public health officials

Cal Newport (2:29:06.160)

using a don't give an inch to the other team mindset

Lex Fridman (2:29:08.680)

of like, well, if we say this,

Cal Newport (2:29:10.520)

that might validate something that was wrong over here

Lex Fridman (2:29:12.920)

and we need to, if we say this,

Cal Newport (2:29:14.120)

then maybe like that'll stop them from doing this.

Lex Fridman (2:29:16.360)

That's like very Twittery in a way that in 1995

Cal Newport (2:29:19.720)

is probably not the way public health officials

Lex Fridman (2:29:22.560)

would be thinking.

Cal Newport (2:29:23.400)

Where now it's like, well, this is,

Lex Fridman (2:29:25.240)

if we said this about masks,

Lex Fridman (2:29:26.480)

but the other team said that about masks,

Lex Fridman (2:29:28.080)

we can't give an inch to this.

Lex Fridman (2:29:29.240)

So we gotta be careful.

Lex Fridman (2:29:30.200)

And like, we can't tell people it's okay

Cal Newport (2:29:31.600)

after they're vaccinated because that might,

Lex Fridman (2:29:33.560)

we're giving them an inch on this

Lex Fridman (2:29:34.600)

and that's very Twittery in my mind, right?

Lex Fridman (2:29:36.760)

That is the impact of Twitter

Cal Newport (2:29:39.360)

on the way we think about discourse,

Lex Fridman (2:29:40.600)

which is a dunking culture

Cal Newport (2:29:41.600)

of don't give any inch to the other team

Lex Fridman (2:29:43.120)

and it's all about slam dunks

Cal Newport (2:29:44.360)

where you're completely right and they're completely wrong.

Lex Fridman (2:29:46.400)

It's as a rhetorical strategy, it's incredibly simplistic,

Lex Fridman (2:29:49.000)

but it's also the way that we think right now

Lex Fridman (2:29:50.760)

about how we do debate.

Cal Newport (2:29:52.480)

It combined terribly with election year pandemic.

Lex Fridman (2:29:56.320)

Yeah, election year pandemic.

Cal Newport (2:29:58.240)

I wonder if we could do some smooth analysis.

Lex Fridman (2:30:00.040)

Let's run the simulation over a few times.

Cal Newport (2:30:01.800)

A little bit of noise, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:30:03.600)

See if it can dramatically change

Cal Newport (2:30:05.760)

the behavior of the system.

Lex Fridman (2:30:07.240)

Okay, we talked about your love

Cal Newport (2:30:09.040)

for proving that something is impossible.

Lex Fridman (2:30:11.760)

So there's quite a few still open problems

Lex Fridman (2:30:14.360)

and complexity of algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:30:17.440)

So let me ask, does P equal NP?

Cal Newport (2:30:20.800)

Probably not.

Lex Fridman (2:30:22.040)

Probably not.

Cal Newport (2:30:23.360)

If P equals NP, what kind of,

Lex Fridman (2:30:29.240)

and you'd be really surprised somebody proves it.

Lex Fridman (2:30:32.440)

What would that proof look like

Lex Fridman (2:30:33.960)

and why would that even be?

Lex Fridman (2:30:35.080)

What would that mean?

Lex Fridman (2:30:36.480)

What would that proof look like?

Lex Fridman (2:30:38.320)

And what possible universe could P equals NP?

Lex Fridman (2:30:40.840)

Is there something in size that you could say there?

Cal Newport (2:30:43.440)

It could be true.

Lex Fridman (2:30:45.440)

I mean, I'm not a complexity theorist,

Lex Fridman (2:30:47.280)

but every complexity theorist I know

Lex Fridman (2:30:49.520)

is convinced they're not equal

Lex Fridman (2:30:51.440)

and are basically not working on it anymore.

Lex Fridman (2:30:53.120)

I mean, there is a million dollars at stake

Cal Newport (2:30:54.480)

if you can solve the proof.

Lex Fridman (2:30:55.920)

It's one of the millennium prizes.

Cal Newport (2:30:57.800)

Okay, so here's how I think the P not equals NP proof

Lex Fridman (2:31:00.840)

is gonna eventually happen.

Cal Newport (2:31:02.800)

I think it's gonna fall out

Lex Fridman (2:31:04.520)

and it's gonna be not super simple,

Lex Fridman (2:31:07.360)

but not as hard as people think,

Lex Fridman (2:31:08.720)

because my theory about a lot of theoretical computer science

Cal Newport (2:31:12.200)

based on just some results I've done,

Lex Fridman (2:31:13.960)

so this is a huge extrapolation,

Cal Newport (2:31:15.440)

is that a lot of what we're doing

Lex Fridman (2:31:17.200)

is just obfuscating deeper mathematics.

Lex Fridman (2:31:20.840)

So this happens to me a lot, not a lot,

Lex Fridman (2:31:22.680)

but it's happened to me a few times in my work

Cal Newport (2:31:24.320)

where we obfuscate it because we say,

Lex Fridman (2:31:26.240)

well, there's an algorithm and it has this much memory

Lex Fridman (2:31:29.280)

and they're connected on a network

Lex Fridman (2:31:30.640)

and okay, here's our setup

Lex Fridman (2:31:31.760)

and now we're trying to see how fast it can solve a problem

Lex Fridman (2:31:34.480)

and people do bounds about it

Lex Fridman (2:31:35.960)

and then the end it turns out

Lex Fridman (2:31:37.040)

that we were just obfuscating some underlying

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.680)

mathematical thing that already existed, right?

Lex Fridman (2:31:43.520)

So this has happened to me.

Cal Newport (2:31:44.400)

I had this paper I was quite fond of a while ago.

Lex Fridman (2:31:47.400)

It was looking at this problem called contention resolution

Cal Newport (2:31:50.560)

where you put an unknown set of people on a shared channel

Lex Fridman (2:31:54.520)

and they're trying to break symmetry.

Lex Fridman (2:31:55.720)

So it's like an ethernet, whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:31:57.720)

Only one person can use it at a time.

Cal Newport (2:31:58.920)

You try to break symmetry.

Lex Fridman (2:31:59.760)

There's all these bounds people have proven over the years

Lex Fridman (2:32:02.360)

about how long it takes to do this, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:05.040)

And like I discovered at some point,

Cal Newport (2:32:07.440)

there's this one combinatorial result from the early 1990s.

Lex Fridman (2:32:12.640)

All of these lower bound proofs all come from this

Lex Fridman (2:32:15.440)

and in fact, it improved a lot of them

Lex Fridman (2:32:16.840)

and simplified a lot.

Cal Newport (2:32:17.680)

You could put it all in one paper.

Lex Fridman (2:32:19.800)

It's like, are we really?

Lex Fridman (2:32:20.640)

And then, okay, so this new paper

Lex Fridman (2:32:21.920)

that I submitted a couple of weeks ago,

Cal Newport (2:32:24.200)

I found you could take some of these same lower bound proofs

Lex Fridman (2:32:26.440)

for this contention resolution problem.

Cal Newport (2:32:28.080)

You could reprove them.

Lex Fridman (2:32:29.720)

Using Shannon's source code theorem

Cal Newport (2:32:32.280)

that actually when you're breaking contention,

Lex Fridman (2:32:34.080)

what you're really doing is building a code over,

Cal Newport (2:32:38.360)

if you have a distribution on the network sizes,

Lex Fridman (2:32:40.520)

it's a code over that source.

Lex Fridman (2:32:41.720)

And if you plug in a high entropy information source

Lex Fridman (2:32:44.440)

and plug in from 1948, the source code theorem

Cal Newport (2:32:47.480)

that says on a noiseless channel,

Lex Fridman (2:32:48.720)

you can't send things at a faster rate

Cal Newport (2:32:51.080)

than the entropy allows,

Lex Fridman (2:32:52.440)

the exact same lower bounds fall back out again, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:54.440)

So like this type of thing happens.

Lex Fridman (2:32:55.840)

There's some famous lower bounds and distributed algorithms

Cal Newport (2:32:58.720)

that turned out to all be algebraic topology

Lex Fridman (2:33:01.600)

underneath the covers.

Lex Fridman (2:33:02.760)

And they won the Girdle Prize for working on that.

Lex Fridman (2:33:05.560)

So my sense is what's gonna happen is at some point,

Cal Newport (2:33:08.400)

someone really smart to be very exciting

Lex Fridman (2:33:11.000)

is gonna realize there's some sort of other representation

Cal Newport (2:33:14.760)

of what's going on with these Turing machines

Lex Fridman (2:33:16.840)

trying to sort of efficiently compute.

Lex Fridman (2:33:18.680)

And there'll be an existing mathematical result

Lex Fridman (2:33:22.120)

that apply.

Cal Newport (2:33:23.880)

Someone or something, I guess.

Lex Fridman (2:33:25.360)

It could be AI theorem provers kind of thing.

Cal Newport (2:33:28.040)

It could be, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:33:28.880)

I mean, not a, well, yeah.

Cal Newport (2:33:30.520)

I mean, there's theorem provers,

Lex Fridman (2:33:31.760)

like what that means now, which is not fun.

Cal Newport (2:33:35.440)

It's just a bunch of...

Lex Fridman (2:33:37.040)

Very carefully formulated postulates that,

Lex Fridman (2:33:39.280)

but I take your point, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:33:41.320)

Yeah, so, okay.

Cal Newport (2:33:44.520)

On a small tangent on that,

Lex Fridman (2:33:45.920)

then you're kind of implying that mathematics,

Cal Newport (2:33:49.000)

it almost feels like a kind of weird evolutionary tree

Lex Fridman (2:33:52.520)

that ultimately leads back to some kind of ancestral,

Cal Newport (2:33:55.400)

few fundamental ideas that all are just like,

Lex Fridman (2:33:58.840)

they're all somehow connected.

Cal Newport (2:34:01.680)

In that sense, do you think

Lex Fridman (2:34:04.840)

math is fundamental to our universe

Lex Fridman (2:34:07.000)

and we're just like slowly trying to understand

Lex Fridman (2:34:10.960)

these patterns or is it discovered?

Cal Newport (2:34:15.240)

Or is it just a little game that we play amongst ourselves

Lex Fridman (2:34:19.920)

to try to fit little patterns to the world?

Lex Fridman (2:34:23.680)

Yeah, that's the question, right?

Lex Fridman (2:34:24.880)

That's the physicist question.

Cal Newport (2:34:26.840)

I mean, I'm probably, I'm in the discovered camp,

Lex Fridman (2:34:29.120)

but I don't do theoretical physics.

Lex Fridman (2:34:30.720)

So I know they have a,

Lex Fridman (2:34:33.320)

they feel like they have a stronger claim

Cal Newport (2:34:35.200)

to answering that question.

Lex Fridman (2:34:37.280)

But everything comes back to it.

Cal Newport (2:34:38.480)

Everything comes back to it.

Lex Fridman (2:34:39.520)

I mean, all the physics,

Cal Newport (2:34:40.680)

the fact that the universe is, well, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:34:45.800)

It's a complicated question.

Lex Fridman (2:34:47.200)

So how often do you think,

Lex Fridman (2:34:49.280)

how deeply does this result describe

Lex Fridman (2:34:53.040)

the fundamental reality of nature?

Lex Fridman (2:34:57.080)

So the reason I hesitated,

Cal Newport (2:34:59.720)

because it's something I'm,

Lex Fridman (2:35:01.080)

I taught this seminar and did a little work

Cal Newport (2:35:03.080)

on what are called biological algorithms.

Lex Fridman (2:35:05.000)

So there's this notion of,

Lex Fridman (2:35:09.360)

so physicists use mathematics to explain the universe, right?

Lex Fridman (2:35:14.400)

And it was unreasonable that mathematics works so well.

Cal Newport (2:35:18.200)

All these differential equations,

Lex Fridman (2:35:19.760)

why does that explain all we need to know

Cal Newport (2:35:21.680)

about thermodynamics and gravity

Lex Fridman (2:35:23.040)

and all these types of things?

Cal Newport (2:35:24.240)

Well, there's this movement

Lex Fridman (2:35:25.560)

within the intersection of computer science and biology,

Cal Newport (2:35:28.680)

just kind of Wolframium, I guess, really,

Lex Fridman (2:35:31.160)

that algorithms can be very explanatory, right?

Cal Newport (2:35:35.040)

Like if you're trying to explain parsimoniously

Lex Fridman (2:35:39.440)

something about like an ant colony or something like this,

Cal Newport (2:35:41.840)

you're not going to,

Lex Fridman (2:35:43.160)

ultimately it's not gonna be explained as a equation,

Cal Newport (2:35:45.840)

like a physics equation.

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.840)

It's gonna be explained by an algorithm.

Lex Fridman (2:35:48.280)

So like this algorithm run distributedly

Lex Fridman (2:35:51.920)

is going to explain the behavior.

Lex Fridman (2:35:53.240)

So that's mathematical, but not quite mathematical,

Lex Fridman (2:35:56.160)

but it is if you think about an algorithm

Cal Newport (2:35:57.640)

like a Lambda calculus,

Lex Fridman (2:35:58.680)

which brings you back to the world of mathematics.

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.040)

So I'm thinking out loud here,

Lex Fridman (2:36:01.960)

but basically abstract math is sort of like

Cal Newport (2:36:07.040)

unreasonably effective at explaining a lot of things.

Lex Fridman (2:36:10.440)

And that's just what I feel like I glimpse.

Cal Newport (2:36:11.840)

I'm not like a super well known theoretician.

Lex Fridman (2:36:14.960)

I don't have really famous results.

Lex Fridman (2:36:16.960)

So even as a sort of middling career theoretician,

Lex Fridman (2:36:21.880)

I keep encountering this where we think we're solving

Cal Newport (2:36:25.920)

some problem about computers and algorithms,

Lex Fridman (2:36:28.640)

and it's some much deeper underlying math.

Cal Newport (2:36:31.040)

It's Shannon, but Shannon is entropy,

Lex Fridman (2:36:33.240)

but entropy was really goes all the way back

Cal Newport (2:36:36.840)

to whatever it was,

Lex Fridman (2:36:38.380)

Boyle or all the way back to looking at the early physics.

Lex Fridman (2:36:40.680)

And it's, anyways, to me, I think it's amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:36:44.960)

Yeah, but it could be the flip side of that could be

Cal Newport (2:36:47.760)

just our brains draw so much pleasure

Lex Fridman (2:36:49.480)

from the deriving generalized theories

Lex Fridman (2:36:53.240)

and simplifying the universe that we just naturally see

Lex Fridman (2:36:56.680)

that kind of simplicity in everything.

Lex Fridman (2:36:58.680)

Yeah, so that's the whole Newton to Einstein, right?

Lex Fridman (2:37:01.880)

So you can say this must be right

Cal Newport (2:37:03.600)

because it's so predictive.

Lex Fridman (2:37:04.960)

Well, it's not quite predictive

Cal Newport (2:37:06.440)

because Mercury wobbles a little bit,

Lex Fridman (2:37:07.720)

but I think we have it set

Lex Fridman (2:37:08.680)

and then you turn out, no, Einstein.

Lex Fridman (2:37:10.780)

And then you get Bohr like, no, not Einstein.

Cal Newport (2:37:13.920)

It's actually statistical.

Lex Fridman (2:37:15.160)

And yeah, so that would be interesting.

Cal Newport (2:37:16.600)

It's hard to also know

Lex Fridman (2:37:17.800)

where a smooth analysis fits into all that

Cal Newport (2:37:20.320)

or a little bit of noise.

Lex Fridman (2:37:21.560)

Like you can say something very clean about a system

Lex Fridman (2:37:25.720)

and then a little bit of noise,

Lex Fridman (2:37:27.440)

like the average case is actually very different.

Lex Fridman (2:37:29.880)

And so, I mean, that's where

Lex Fridman (2:37:31.720)

the quantum mechanics comes in.

Lex Fridman (2:37:32.920)

It's like, ugh, why does it have to be randomness in this?

Lex Fridman (2:37:36.200)

Yeah, I would have to do this complex statistics.

Cal Newport (2:37:38.720)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:37:41.240)

So to be determined.

Cal Newport (2:37:42.600)

Yeah, that'll be my next book.

Lex Fridman (2:37:44.000)

That'd be ambitious.

Cal Newport (2:37:45.600)

The fundamental core of reality, comma,

Lex Fridman (2:37:50.040)

and some advice for being more productive at work.

Cal Newport (2:37:53.760)

Can I ask you just,

Lex Fridman (2:37:55.280)

if it's possible to do an overview

Lex Fridman (2:37:57.120)

and just some brief comments of wisdom

Lex Fridman (2:38:00.480)

on the process of publishing a book,

Lex Fridman (2:38:02.960)

what's that process entail?

Lex Fridman (2:38:04.120)

What are the different options

Lex Fridman (2:38:05.480)

and what's your recommendation

Lex Fridman (2:38:08.440)

for somebody that wants to write a book like yours,

Cal Newport (2:38:12.440)

a nonfiction book that discovers

Lex Fridman (2:38:14.840)

something interesting about this world?

Lex Fridman (2:38:17.800)

So what I usually advise is follow the process as is.

Lex Fridman (2:38:25.560)

Don't try to reinvent.

Cal Newport (2:38:27.280)

I think that happens a lot where you'll try to reinvent

Lex Fridman (2:38:31.480)

the way the publishing industry should work.

Cal Newport (2:38:33.000)

Like this is kind of not like in a business model ways,

Lex Fridman (2:38:36.280)

but just like, this is what I want to do.

Cal Newport (2:38:38.200)

I want to write a thousand words a day

Lex Fridman (2:38:39.680)

and I want to do this and I'm gonna put it on the internet

Lex Fridman (2:38:41.800)

and the publishing industry is very specific

Lex Fridman (2:38:44.680)

about how it works.

Lex Fridman (2:38:46.320)

And so like when I got started writing books,

Lex Fridman (2:38:47.880)

which at a very young age,

Lex Fridman (2:38:48.840)

so I sold my first book at the age of 21.

Lex Fridman (2:38:52.320)

The way I did that is I found a family friend

Cal Newport (2:38:56.320)

that was an agent and I said,

Lex Fridman (2:38:58.920)

I'm not trying to make you be my agent.

Cal Newport (2:39:00.560)

Just explain to me how this works.

Lex Fridman (2:39:02.240)

Not just how the world works,

Lex Fridman (2:39:03.360)

but give me the hard truth about how would a 21 year old,

Lex Fridman (2:39:06.680)

under what conditions could a 21 year old sell a book

Lex Fridman (2:39:08.800)

and what would that look like?

Lex Fridman (2:39:09.640)

And she just explained it to me.

Cal Newport (2:39:10.600)

You know, you have to do this and have to be a subject

Lex Fridman (2:39:12.400)

that it made sense for you to write.

Lex Fridman (2:39:14.040)

And you would have to do this type of writing

Lex Fridman (2:39:15.360)

for the publications to validate it and blah, blah, blah.

Lex Fridman (2:39:17.600)

And you have to get the agent first.

Lex Fridman (2:39:18.760)

And I learned the whole game plan and then I executed.

Lex Fridman (2:39:22.280)

And so the rough game plan is with nonfiction,

Lex Fridman (2:39:24.720)

you get the agent first

Lex Fridman (2:39:26.480)

and the agent's gonna sell it to the publishers.

Lex Fridman (2:39:28.760)

So like you're never sending something directly

Cal Newport (2:39:30.240)

to the publishers.

Lex Fridman (2:39:31.080)

In nonfiction, you're not writing the book first, right?

Cal Newport (2:39:34.320)

You're gonna get an advance from the publisher once sold

Lex Fridman (2:39:37.280)

and then you're gonna do the primary writing of the book.

Cal Newport (2:39:40.200)

In fact, it will, in most circumstances, hurt you

Lex Fridman (2:39:42.720)

if you've already written it.

Cal Newport (2:39:43.560)

If you've already written it.

Lex Fridman (2:39:44.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:39:45.240)

So you're trying to sell, well, I guess the agent,

Lex Fridman (2:39:47.200)

first you sell it to the agent

Lex Fridman (2:39:48.040)

and then the agent sells it to the publishers.

Lex Fridman (2:39:50.120)

It's much easier to get an agent than a book deal.

Lex Fridman (2:39:52.360)

So the thought is, if you can't get an agent,

Lex Fridman (2:39:54.440)

then why would you?

Lex Fridman (2:39:55.280)

So you start with, and also the way this works

Lex Fridman (2:39:57.880)

with a good agent is they know all the editors

Lex Fridman (2:40:00.480)

and they have lunch with the editors

Lex Fridman (2:40:01.520)

and they're always just like,

Lex Fridman (2:40:02.360)

okay, what projects do you have coming?

Lex Fridman (2:40:03.240)

What are you looking for?

Cal Newport (2:40:04.080)

Here's one of my authors.

Lex Fridman (2:40:04.900)

That's the way all these deals happen.

Cal Newport (2:40:06.080)

It's not, you're not emailing a manuscript to a slush pile.

Lex Fridman (2:40:09.520)

Yeah, and so first of all, the agent takes a percentage

Lex Fridman (2:40:12.320)

and then the publishers, this is where the process comes in.

Lex Fridman (2:40:14.680)

They take also a cut that's probably ridiculous.

Lex Fridman (2:40:17.880)

So if you try to reinvent the system,

Lex Fridman (2:40:21.000)

you'll probably be frustrated by the percentage

Cal Newport (2:40:22.800)

that everyone takes relative to how much bureaucracy

Lex Fridman (2:40:25.320)

and efficiency ridiculousness there is in the system.

Cal Newport (2:40:28.240)

Your recommendation is like, you're just one ant.

Lex Fridman (2:40:31.640)

Stop trying to build your own ant colony.

Cal Newport (2:40:34.400)

Well, or if you create your own process

Lex Fridman (2:40:36.840)

for how it should work,

Cal Newport (2:40:38.440)

the book's not gonna get published.

Lex Fridman (2:40:39.480)

So there's the separate question,

Cal Newport (2:40:40.840)

the economic question of like,

Lex Fridman (2:40:41.920)

should I create my own, like self publish it

Lex Fridman (2:40:44.560)

or do something like that?

Lex Fridman (2:40:45.400)

But putting that aside,

Cal Newport (2:40:47.080)

there's a lot of people I encounter

Lex Fridman (2:40:48.860)

that wanna publish a book with a main publisher,

Lex Fridman (2:40:51.320)

but they invent their own rules for how it works, right?

Lex Fridman (2:40:54.080)

So then the alternative though is self publishing

Lex Fridman (2:40:56.400)

and the downside, there's a lot of downsides.

Lex Fridman (2:41:00.440)

It's almost like publishing an opinion piece

Cal Newport (2:41:03.080)

in the New York Times versus writing on a blog.

Lex Fridman (2:41:05.560)

There's no reason why writing a blog post on Medium

Cal Newport (2:41:09.520)

can't get way more attention and legitimacy

Lex Fridman (2:41:13.560)

and long lasting prestige than a New York Times article.

Lex Fridman (2:41:16.800)

But nevertheless, for most people,

Lex Fridman (2:41:18.920)

writing in a prestigious newspaper,

Cal Newport (2:41:21.220)

quote unquote prestigious, is just easier.

Lex Fridman (2:41:26.640)

And well, and depends on your goal.

Cal Newport (2:41:29.060)

So, you know, like I push you towards a big publisher

Lex Fridman (2:41:32.240)

because I think your goal, it's huge ideas, you want impact.

Cal Newport (2:41:36.080)

You're gonna have more impact.

Lex Fridman (2:41:37.920)

Even though, like actually,

Lex Fridman (2:41:39.880)

so there's different ways to measure impact, right?

Lex Fridman (2:41:41.880)

In the world of ideas.

Cal Newport (2:41:42.800)

In the world of ideas.

Lex Fridman (2:41:44.200)

And also, yeah, in the world of ideas,

Cal Newport (2:41:46.480)

it's kind of like the clubhouse thing now,

Lex Fridman (2:41:48.960)

even if the audience is not large,

Cal Newport (2:41:51.200)

the people in the audience are very interesting.

Lex Fridman (2:41:54.760)

It's like the conversation feels like

Cal Newport (2:41:56.880)

that has long lasting impact among the people

Lex Fridman (2:42:01.500)

in different and disparate industries

Cal Newport (2:42:03.720)

that are also then starting their own conversations

Lex Fridman (2:42:06.540)

and all that kind of stuff.

Cal Newport (2:42:07.380)

Yeah, because you have other,

Lex Fridman (2:42:09.040)

so like self publishing a book,

Cal Newport (2:42:12.160)

the goals that would solve,

Lex Fridman (2:42:13.260)

you have much better ways of getting to those goals,

Lex Fridman (2:42:15.340)

might be part of it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:16.220)

So if there's the financial aspect

Cal Newport (2:42:17.880)

of well, you get to keep more of it,

Lex Fridman (2:42:19.560)

I mean, the podcast is probably gonna crush

Lex Fridman (2:42:22.420)

what the book's gonna do anyways, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:23.600)

Yeah, if it's, I wanna get directly

Cal Newport (2:42:27.240)

to certain audiences or crowds,

Lex Fridman (2:42:28.760)

it might be harder through a traditional publisher.

Cal Newport (2:42:30.560)

There's better ways to talk to those crowds.

Lex Fridman (2:42:32.520)

It could be on clubhouse with all these new technologies,

Cal Newport (2:42:34.680)

self published books not gonna be the most effective way

Lex Fridman (2:42:36.880)

to find your way to a new crowd.

Lex Fridman (2:42:39.200)

But if the idea is like, I wanna have a,

Lex Fridman (2:42:40.560)

leave a dent in the world of ideas,

Cal Newport (2:42:43.600)

then to have a vulnerable old publisher,

Lex Fridman (2:42:47.200)

put out your book in a nice hardcover

Lex Fridman (2:42:49.140)

and do the things they do, that goes a long way.

Lex Fridman (2:42:52.760)

And they do do a lot.

Cal Newport (2:42:53.700)

I mean, it's very difficult actually.

Lex Fridman (2:42:55.680)

There's so much involved in putting together a book.

Cal Newport (2:42:57.800)

They get books into bookstores

Lex Fridman (2:42:59.160)

and all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:42:59.980)

And from an efficiency standpoint,

Lex Fridman (2:43:02.560)

I mean, just the time involved

Cal Newport (2:43:03.800)

in trying to do this yourself is.

Lex Fridman (2:43:05.600)

They have a process, right?

Cal Newport (2:43:06.800)

Like you said, they have a process.

Lex Fridman (2:43:08.440)

They've got a process.

Cal Newport (2:43:09.280)

I mean, I know like Jocko did this recently,

Lex Fridman (2:43:11.080)

he started his own imprint and I have a couple other.

Lex Fridman (2:43:13.080)

But it's a huge overhead.

Lex Fridman (2:43:15.040)

I mean, if you run a business and you,

Lex Fridman (2:43:17.240)

so like Jocko is a good case study, right?

Lex Fridman (2:43:19.300)

So he got fed up with Simon and Schuster

Cal Newport (2:43:22.440)

dragging their feet and said,

Lex Fridman (2:43:23.600)

I'm gonna start my own imprint then,

Cal Newport (2:43:25.240)

if you're not gonna publish my kid's book.

Lex Fridman (2:43:28.120)

But he, what does he do, he runs businesses, right?

Lex Fridman (2:43:30.800)

So I think in his world, like I already run,

Lex Fridman (2:43:32.760)

I'm a partner in whatever, in Origin,

Lex Fridman (2:43:34.900)

and I have this and that.

Lex Fridman (2:43:35.740)

And so it's like, yeah, we can run businesses.

Cal Newport (2:43:37.720)

That's what we know how to do.

Lex Fridman (2:43:38.560)

That's what I do.

Cal Newport (2:43:39.400)

I run businesses, I have people.

Lex Fridman (2:43:40.520)

But for like you or I, we don't run businesses.

Cal Newport (2:43:43.160)

It'd be terrible.

Lex Fridman (2:43:44.000)

Yeah, well, especially these kinds of businesses, right?

Lex Fridman (2:43:47.420)

So I do wanna launch a business with very different

Lex Fridman (2:43:49.600)

technology business.

Cal Newport (2:43:50.440)

It's very different.

Lex Fridman (2:43:51.280)

Yeah, it's very, very different, yeah.

Cal Newport (2:43:53.320)

I mean, this is like, okay, I need copy editors

Lex Fridman (2:43:55.760)

and graphic book binders, and I need to contract

Cal Newport (2:43:58.680)

with the printer, but oh, the printer doesn't have slots.

Lex Fridman (2:44:00.760)

And so now I have to try to, I mean, it's.

Cal Newport (2:44:02.800)

I get so, I need to shut this off in my room,

Lex Fridman (2:44:05.720)

but I get so frustrated when the system

Cal Newport (2:44:07.220)

could clearly be improved.

Lex Fridman (2:44:08.620)

It's the thing that you're mentioning.

Cal Newport (2:44:10.480)

It's like, this is so inefficient.

Lex Fridman (2:44:12.480)

Every time I go to the DMV or something like that,

Cal Newport (2:44:15.640)

you think like, ah, this could be done so much better.

Lex Fridman (2:44:18.760)

But, and the same thing as the worry with an editor,

Cal Newport (2:44:23.760)

which I guess would come from the publisher,

Lex Fridman (2:44:26.120)

like who would, how much supervision on your book

Lex Fridman (2:44:31.260)

did you receive like, hey, do you think this is too long?

Lex Fridman (2:44:34.280)

Or do you think the title, like title,

Lex Fridman (2:44:36.280)

how much choice do you have in the title, in the cover,

Lex Fridman (2:44:39.200)

in the presentation and the branding

Lex Fridman (2:44:41.200)

and all that kind of stuff?

Lex Fridman (2:44:42.040)

Yeah, I mean, all of it depends, right?

Lex Fridman (2:44:43.860)

So when it comes on the relationship with the editor

Lex Fridman (2:44:48.040)

on the writing, it depends on the editor

Lex Fridman (2:44:49.520)

and it depends on you.

Lex Fridman (2:44:51.640)

So like at this point, I'm on my seventh book

Lex Fridman (2:44:54.160)

and I write for a lot of major publications.

Lex Fridman (2:44:56.920)

And at this point I have what I feel like is a voice

Lex Fridman (2:45:00.240)

and a level of craft that I'm very comfortable with, right?

Lex Fridman (2:45:03.920)

So my editor is not gonna be,

Cal Newport (2:45:06.020)

she kind of is gonna trust me

Lex Fridman (2:45:07.100)

and it's gonna be more big picture.

Cal Newport (2:45:08.320)

Like I'm losing the thread here

Lex Fridman (2:45:10.880)

or this seems like it could be longer.

Cal Newport (2:45:12.840)

Whereas the first book I wrote when I was 21,

Lex Fridman (2:45:15.400)

I had notes such as you start a lot of sentences with so,

Cal Newport (2:45:19.520)

you don't use any contractions

Lex Fridman (2:45:20.960)

because I've been doing scientific writing,

Cal Newport (2:45:22.360)

we don't use contractions.

Lex Fridman (2:45:23.440)

Like you should probably use contractions.

Cal Newport (2:45:25.200)

It was way more, I had to go back

Lex Fridman (2:45:27.600)

and rewrite the whole thing, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:45:29.640)

But ultimately the recommendation,

Lex Fridman (2:45:31.960)

I mean, we talked offline and sort of,

Cal Newport (2:45:33.720)

I was thinking loosely, not really sure,

Lex Fridman (2:45:36.840)

but I was thinking of writing a book

Lex Fridman (2:45:37.960)

and there's a kind of desire to go self publishing,

Lex Fridman (2:45:40.640)

not for financial reasons.

Lex Fridman (2:45:42.040)

And the money can be good by the way, right?

Lex Fridman (2:45:43.360)

I mean, it's very power law type distributed, right?

Lex Fridman (2:45:48.080)

So the money on a hardcover is somewhere

Lex Fridman (2:45:49.840)

between one or $2 a book.

Lex Fridman (2:45:52.040)

So the thing is, I personally don't.

Lex Fridman (2:45:53.880)

But then you give up 15% to the agent, so.

Cal Newport (2:45:56.040)

I personally don't care about money

Lex Fridman (2:45:57.420)

as I've mentioned before,

Lex Fridman (2:45:58.620)

but I for some reason really don't like spending money

Lex Fridman (2:46:03.280)

on things that are not worth it.

Cal Newport (2:46:05.800)

Like I don't care if I get money,

Lex Fridman (2:46:08.040)

I just don't like spending money on like feeding a system

Cal Newport (2:46:11.480)

that's inefficient.

Lex Fridman (2:46:12.840)

It's like I'm contributing to the problem.

Cal Newport (2:46:14.480)

That's my biggest problem.

Lex Fridman (2:46:16.080)

Right, so you're worried about the inefficiencies

Cal Newport (2:46:18.640)

of the opportunity.

Lex Fridman (2:46:19.920)

Yeah, the fact that.

Cal Newport (2:46:21.320)

Like the overheads, the number of people involved.

Lex Fridman (2:46:23.080)

Or the overheads.

Cal Newport (2:46:24.040)

The emails again.

Lex Fridman (2:46:26.320)

The fact that they have this way of speaking,

Cal Newport (2:46:30.280)

which I'm allergic to many people,

Lex Fridman (2:46:32.360)

like that's very marketing speak.

Cal Newport (2:46:34.640)

Like you could tell they've been having

Lex Fridman (2:46:36.180)

Zoom meetings all day.

Cal Newport (2:46:37.760)

It's like as opposed to a sort of creative collaborators

Lex Fridman (2:46:43.280)

that are like also a little bit crazy.

Cal Newport (2:46:45.680)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:46:46.520)

I suppose some of that is finding the right people.

Cal Newport (2:46:48.160)

Finding the right people.

Lex Fridman (2:46:48.980)

That's what I would say.

Cal Newport (2:46:49.820)

I'd say there's definitely,

Lex Fridman (2:46:51.120)

and maybe it's just good fortune.

Cal Newport (2:46:53.640)

Good fortune in terms of like my agents and editors

Lex Fridman (2:46:55.580)

I've worked with.

Cal Newport (2:46:56.420)

There's really good people who see the vision

Lex Fridman (2:47:01.080)

are smart or incredibly literary.

Lex Fridman (2:47:02.400)

And they actually help you.

Lex Fridman (2:47:03.220)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (2:47:04.060)

Like psychologically.

Lex Fridman (2:47:05.080)

Yeah, I had a great editor when I was first moving

Cal Newport (2:47:06.800)

into hardcover books, for example.

Lex Fridman (2:47:08.720)

It was my first big book advance

Lex Fridman (2:47:12.280)

and my first sort of big deal

Lex Fridman (2:47:14.640)

and he was like a senior editor

Lex Fridman (2:47:16.640)

and it was very useful, you know?

Lex Fridman (2:47:19.200)

He was like, we had a lot of long talks, right?

Cal Newport (2:47:21.360)

I was, so this was my fourth book,

Lex Fridman (2:47:23.080)

So Good They Can't Ignore You was my first,

Cal Newport (2:47:25.080)

my big hardcover idea book.

Lex Fridman (2:47:28.000)

And we had a lot of talks,

Cal Newport (2:47:29.320)

like even before I started writing it,

Lex Fridman (2:47:31.060)

just let's talk about books and his philosophy.

Cal Newport (2:47:34.040)

He'd been in the business for a long time.

Lex Fridman (2:47:35.560)

He was the head of the imprint.

Cal Newport (2:47:37.080)

It was useful.

Lex Fridman (2:47:38.480)

Yeah, but I mean, the other frustrating thing

Cal Newport (2:47:41.000)

is how long the whole thing takes.

Lex Fridman (2:47:42.600)

Makes a long time.

Cal Newport (2:47:44.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:47:45.080)

But I suppose that's, you just have to accept that.

Cal Newport (2:47:46.320)

Well, yeah, I handed in this manuscript

Lex Fridman (2:47:48.000)

for the book that comes out now,

Cal Newport (2:47:50.400)

like when this, I handed it in,

Lex Fridman (2:47:52.320)

I mean, over the summer, like during the pandemic.

Lex Fridman (2:47:54.440)

So it's not, it's not terrible, right?

Lex Fridman (2:47:56.440)

And we were editing during the pandemic

Lex Fridman (2:47:57.920)

and I finished it in the spring.

Lex Fridman (2:48:00.460)

We've talked most of the day,

Cal Newport (2:48:02.240)

except for a little bit computer science,

Lex Fridman (2:48:03.640)

most of the day about a productive life.

Lex Fridman (2:48:07.360)

How does love, friendship and family fit into that?

Lex Fridman (2:48:11.220)

Is there, do you find that there's a tension?

Cal Newport (2:48:17.580)

Is it possible for relationships

Lex Fridman (2:48:19.620)

to energize the whole process, to benefit?

Lex Fridman (2:48:22.460)

Or is it ultimately a trade off?

Lex Fridman (2:48:25.420)

But because life is short and ultimately

Cal Newport (2:48:30.040)

we seek happiness, not productivity,

Lex Fridman (2:48:32.780)

that we have to accept that tension.

Cal Newport (2:48:35.060)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:48:36.300)

I mean, I think relationships is the,

Cal Newport (2:48:39.220)

that's the whole deal.

Lex Fridman (2:48:41.540)

Like I thought about this the other day,

Cal Newport (2:48:43.780)

I don't know what the context was.

Lex Fridman (2:48:44.700)

I was thinking about if I was gonna give

Cal Newport (2:48:46.180)

like an advice speech, like a commencement address

Lex Fridman (2:48:49.060)

or like giving advice to young people.

Lex Fridman (2:48:51.700)

And like the big question I have for young people is

Lex Fridman (2:48:56.100)

if they haven't already, bad things are gonna happen

Lex Fridman (2:48:58.580)

that you don't control, so what's the plan, right?

Lex Fridman (2:49:01.820)

Like, let's start figuring that out now

Cal Newport (2:49:03.580)

because it's not all, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:49:05.620)

some people get off better than others,

Lex Fridman (2:49:07.460)

but eventually stuff happens, right?

Lex Fridman (2:49:09.980)

You get sick, something falls apart,

Cal Newport (2:49:11.900)

the economy craters, someone you know dies,

Lex Fridman (2:49:16.020)

like all sorts of bad stuff is gonna happen, right?

Lex Fridman (2:49:19.020)

So how are we gonna do this?

Lex Fridman (2:49:20.660)

Like, how do we like live life when life is hard?

Lex Fridman (2:49:23.100)

And in ways that is unfair and unpredictable,

Lex Fridman (2:49:25.780)

then relationships is the,

Cal Newport (2:49:27.860)

that's the buffer for all of that.

Lex Fridman (2:49:30.420)

Cause we're wired for it, right?

Cal Newport (2:49:31.540)

I went down this rabbit hole with digital minimalism.

Lex Fridman (2:49:34.160)

I went down this huge rabbit hole

Cal Newport (2:49:35.420)

about the human brain and sociality.

Lex Fridman (2:49:38.780)

It's all we're wired to do.

Cal Newport (2:49:39.780)

It's like all of our brain is for this.

Lex Fridman (2:49:41.260)

Like everything, all of our mechanisms,

Cal Newport (2:49:43.340)

everything is made to service the social connections

Lex Fridman (2:49:46.380)

because it's what kept you alive, you know?

Cal Newport (2:49:47.620)

I mean, you had the, your tribal connections

Lex Fridman (2:49:49.660)

is how you didn't starve during a famine,

Cal Newport (2:49:52.020)

people would share food, et cetera.

Lex Fridman (2:49:54.660)

And so you can't neglect that.

Lex Fridman (2:49:56.180)

And it's like everything and people feel it, right?

Lex Fridman (2:49:58.380)

Like there's no, our social networks

Cal Newport (2:50:00.020)

are hooked up to the pain center.

Lex Fridman (2:50:01.700)

That's why it feels so terrible when you miss someone

Lex Fridman (2:50:03.940)

or like someone dies or something, right?

Lex Fridman (2:50:05.300)

That's like how seriously we take it.

Cal Newport (2:50:07.660)

There's a pretty accepted theory

Lex Fridman (2:50:09.260)

that the default mode network,

Cal Newport (2:50:10.480)

like a lot of what the default mode network is doing.

Lex Fridman (2:50:12.540)

So that's sort of the default state our brain goes into

Cal Newport (2:50:14.980)

when we're not doing something in particular

Lex Fridman (2:50:16.260)

is practicing sociality, practicing interactions thing,

Cal Newport (2:50:19.540)

because it's so crucial to what we do.

Lex Fridman (2:50:22.540)

It's like at the core of human thriving.

Lex Fridman (2:50:25.100)

So I've more recently,

Lex Fridman (2:50:26.340)

the way I think about it is like relationships first.

Cal Newport (2:50:29.260)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (2:50:30.100)

Given that foundation of putting like,

Lex Fridman (2:50:31.560)

and I don't think we put nearly enough time into it.

Lex Fridman (2:50:33.180)

I worry that social media is reducing relationships,

Cal Newport (2:50:36.060)

strong relationships.

Lex Fridman (2:50:37.440)

Strong relationships where you're sacrificing

Cal Newport (2:50:39.180)

non trivial time and attention and resources,

Lex Fridman (2:50:42.860)

whatever on behalf of other people.

Cal Newport (2:50:44.600)

That's the net that is gonna allow you

Lex Fridman (2:50:46.420)

to get through anything.

Cal Newport (2:50:48.260)

Then, all right.

Lex Fridman (2:50:50.140)

Now what do we wanna do with the surplus that remains?

Cal Newport (2:50:53.580)

Maybe I wanna build some fire, build some tools.

Lex Fridman (2:50:55.940)

So put relationships first.

Cal Newport (2:50:57.740)

I like the worst case analysis

Lex Fridman (2:50:59.300)

from the computer science perspective.

Cal Newport (2:51:01.220)

Put relationships first.

Lex Fridman (2:51:03.420)

Yeah, because everything else is just assuming average case,

Cal Newport (2:51:08.660)

assuming things kind of keep going as they were going.

Lex Fridman (2:51:10.740)

And you're neglecting the fundamental human drive.

Cal Newport (2:51:13.420)

Like we have this, we talked about the boredom instinct.

Lex Fridman (2:51:15.340)

We wanna build things, we wanna have impact,

Cal Newport (2:51:16.980)

we wanna do productivity.

Lex Fridman (2:51:17.820)

That's not nearly as clear cut of a drive of we need people.

Lex Fridman (2:51:21.420)

But if we look at the real worst case analysis here

Lex Fridman (2:51:25.620)

is one day you're pretty young now,

Lex Fridman (2:51:28.940)

but that's not gonna last very long.

Lex Fridman (2:51:31.900)

You're gonna die one day.

Lex Fridman (2:51:33.100)

Is that something you think about?

Lex Fridman (2:51:35.260)

Little bit.

Lex Fridman (2:51:36.420)

Are you afraid of death?

Lex Fridman (2:51:37.660)

Well, I'm of the mindset of,

Cal Newport (2:51:39.460)

let's make that a productivity hack.

Lex Fridman (2:51:41.980)

I'm of the mindset of we need to confront that soon.

Lex Fridman (2:51:47.100)

So let's do what we can now

Lex Fridman (2:51:48.700)

so that when we really confront and think about it,

Cal Newport (2:51:50.660)

we're more likely to feel better about it.

Lex Fridman (2:51:52.780)

So in other words, let's focus now on living

Lex Fridman (2:51:55.860)

and doing things in such a way that we're proud of

Lex Fridman (2:51:58.660)

so that when it really comes time to confront that,

Cal Newport (2:52:00.740)

we're more likely to say,

Lex Fridman (2:52:02.780)

like, okay, I feel kind of good about the situation.

Lex Fridman (2:52:05.180)

So what, when you're laying on your deathbed,

Lex Fridman (2:52:07.620)

would you, in looking back,

Lex Fridman (2:52:09.700)

what would make you think like,

Lex Fridman (2:52:11.060)

oh, I did okay, I'm proud of that.

Cal Newport (2:52:13.940)

I optimized the hell out of that.

Lex Fridman (2:52:15.900)

That's a good, I mean, it's a good question

Cal Newport (2:52:17.220)

to go backwards on.

Lex Fridman (2:52:19.940)

I mean, this is like David Brooks's eulogy virtues

Cal Newport (2:52:24.660)

versus resume virtues.

Lex Fridman (2:52:26.860)

Right, so his argument is that,

Lex Fridman (2:52:28.940)

and that's another interesting DC area person.

Lex Fridman (2:52:30.740)

I keep thinking of interesting DC area people.

Cal Newport (2:52:32.980)

All right, David Brooks is here too.

Lex Fridman (2:52:34.540)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (2:52:36.220)

His argument, he thinks eulogy virtues is,

Lex Fridman (2:52:38.340)

so what we eulogize is different

Cal Newport (2:52:39.780)

than what we promote on the resume.

Lex Fridman (2:52:43.020)

That's his whole thing now, right?

Cal Newport (2:52:44.140)

His Suckin Mountain wrote the character.

Lex Fridman (2:52:46.020)

Both these books are, he has this whole premise

Cal Newport (2:52:48.740)

of there's like this professional phase

Lex Fridman (2:52:50.140)

and there's a phase of giving of yourself

Lex Fridman (2:52:53.340)

and sacrificing on behalf of other people.

Lex Fridman (2:52:55.740)

I don't know, maybe it's all mixed together, right?

Lex Fridman (2:52:57.300)

You wanna, I think living by a code is important, right?

Lex Fridman (2:53:00.300)

I mean, this is something that's not emphasized enough.

Cal Newport (2:53:03.180)

I always think of advice that my undergrad

Lex Fridman (2:53:05.180)

should be given that they're not given,

Cal Newport (2:53:06.700)

especially at a place like Georgetown

Lex Fridman (2:53:07.780)

that has this like deep history

Cal Newport (2:53:09.620)

of trying to promote human flourishing

Lex Fridman (2:53:11.860)

because of the Jesuit connection.

Cal Newport (2:53:14.780)

There's such resiliency and pride

Lex Fridman (2:53:19.340)

that comes out of living well, even when it's hard,

Cal Newport (2:53:22.180)

like living according to a code, living accord to,

Lex Fridman (2:53:24.620)

which I think religion used to structure this for people.

Lex Fridman (2:53:28.540)

But in its absence, you need some sort of replacement.

Lex Fridman (2:53:30.260)

But even when things were,

Lex Fridman (2:53:31.860)

soldiers get this a lot, right?

Lex Fridman (2:53:33.540)

They experienced this a lot.

Cal Newport (2:53:34.380)

Even when things were tough,

Lex Fridman (2:53:35.220)

I was able to persist in living this way

Cal Newport (2:53:36.780)

that I knew was right,

Lex Fridman (2:53:37.620)

even though it wasn't the easiest thing

Cal Newport (2:53:38.460)

to do in the moment.

Lex Fridman (2:53:39.300)

Fewer things give humans more resiliency.

Cal Newport (2:53:42.100)

It's like having done that,

Lex Fridman (2:53:43.980)

your relationships were strong, right?

Cal Newport (2:53:45.700)

Many people coming to your funeral is a standard.

Lex Fridman (2:53:47.620)

A lot of people are gonna come to your funeral.

Cal Newport (2:53:49.180)

I mean, you matter to a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (2:53:51.180)

And then maybe having done,

Cal Newport (2:53:52.380)

to the extent of whatever capabilities

Lex Fridman (2:53:55.660)

you happen to be granted,

Lex Fridman (2:53:57.900)

and they're different for different people,

Lex Fridman (2:53:59.100)

and some people can sprint real fast,

Lex Fridman (2:54:00.740)

and some people can do math problems,

Lex Fridman (2:54:02.860)

try to actually do something of impact.

Cal Newport (2:54:06.500)

I'll just promise to give gift cards

Lex Fridman (2:54:08.580)

to anybody who shows up to the funeral.

Cal Newport (2:54:10.220)

You're gonna hack it.

Lex Fridman (2:54:11.060)

I'm gonna hack even the funeral.

Cal Newport (2:54:12.900)

There's gonna be a lottery wheel you spin

Lex Fridman (2:54:14.740)

when you come in and someone goes away with $10,000.

Cal Newport (2:54:17.940)

See, the problem is, with all this living by principles,

Lex Fridman (2:54:22.180)

living a principled life,

Cal Newport (2:54:23.140)

focusing on relationships,

Lex Fridman (2:54:24.300)

and kind of thinking of this life as this perfect thing

Cal Newport (2:54:27.780)

kind of forgets the notion that none of it

Lex Fridman (2:54:32.020)

makes any sense, right?

Cal Newport (2:54:36.220)

It kind of implies that this is like a video game

Lex Fridman (2:54:40.340)

and you wanna get a high score,

Cal Newport (2:54:42.420)

as opposed to none of this even makes sense.

Lex Fridman (2:54:45.820)

Like, why would he, like, what that?

Lex Fridman (2:54:47.980)

Like, what does it even mean to die?

Lex Fridman (2:54:52.660)

It's gonna be over.

Cal Newport (2:54:53.700)

It's like everything I do, all these productivity hacks,

Lex Fridman (2:54:57.780)

all this life, all these efforts, all this creative efforts,

Cal Newport (2:55:00.140)

kind of assume it's gonna go on forever.

Lex Fridman (2:55:02.180)

There's a kind of a sense of immortality,

Lex Fridman (2:55:05.140)

and I don't even know how to intellectually

Lex Fridman (2:55:06.660)

make sense that it ends.

Cal Newport (2:55:08.380)

Of course, gotta ask you in that context,

Lex Fridman (2:55:10.780)

what do you think is the meaning of it all,

Lex Fridman (2:55:13.180)

especially for a computer scientist?

Lex Fridman (2:55:14.740)

I mean, there's gotta be some mathematical.

Lex Fridman (2:55:17.380)

Yeah, 27, or what's the, what's the Douglas Adams?

Lex Fridman (2:55:21.300)

Yeah, or 42, okay.

Cal Newport (2:55:23.420)

27 is a better number.

Lex Fridman (2:55:24.820)

I should read more sci fi.

Cal Newport (2:55:26.940)

Maybe you're onto something with a 27.

Lex Fridman (2:55:28.860)

I don't wanna give away too much, but just trust me, 27.

Cal Newport (2:55:31.860)

It's visible, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:55:34.940)

So, I mean, I don't know, obviously, right?

Cal Newport (2:55:37.060)

I mean, I'm a...

Lex Fridman (2:55:38.060)

I was hoping you would.

Cal Newport (2:55:38.900)

Yeah, I don't know, but going back to what you were saying

Lex Fridman (2:55:41.860)

about the sort of the existentialist,

Cal Newport (2:55:43.460)

or sort of the more nihilist style approach,

Lex Fridman (2:55:47.140)

the one thing that there is are intimations, right?

Lex Fridman (2:55:50.460)

So that there's these intimations that human halves

Lex Fridman (2:55:53.700)

of somehow this feels right, and this feels wrong,

Cal Newport (2:55:56.540)

this feels good, this feels like I'm doing,

Lex Fridman (2:55:59.140)

I'm aligned with something, you know,

Lex Fridman (2:56:01.020)

when I'm acting with courage to save, whatever, right?

Lex Fridman (2:56:03.140)

It's not, these intimations

Cal Newport (2:56:04.900)

are a grounding against arbitrariness.

Lex Fridman (2:56:07.180)

Like, one of the ideas I'm really interested in is that

Lex Fridman (2:56:11.380)

when you look at religion, right?

Lex Fridman (2:56:13.500)

So I'm interested in world religions.

Cal Newport (2:56:15.780)

My grandfather was like a theologian

Lex Fridman (2:56:18.300)

that studied and wrote all these books,

Lex Fridman (2:56:19.460)

and I'm very interested in this type of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:56:21.380)

And there's this great book that's,

Cal Newport (2:56:24.540)

it's not specific to a particular religion,

Lex Fridman (2:56:27.500)

but it's Karen Armstrong wrote this great book

Cal Newport (2:56:29.220)

called The Case for God.

Lex Fridman (2:56:30.820)

She's very interesting.

Cal Newport (2:56:31.660)

She was a Catholic nun who sort of left that religion,

Lex Fridman (2:56:34.580)

but one of the smartest thinkers

Cal Newport (2:56:37.620)

in terms of like accessible theological thinking

Lex Fridman (2:56:40.220)

that's not tied to any particular religion.

Cal Newport (2:56:42.940)

Her whole argument is that the way to understand religion,

Lex Fridman (2:56:45.460)

first of all, you have to go way back pre enlightenment

Cal Newport (2:56:47.540)

where all this was formed.

Lex Fridman (2:56:48.380)

We got messed up thinking about religion

Lex Fridman (2:56:50.220)

post enlightenment, right?

Lex Fridman (2:56:51.300)

And these were operating systems

Cal Newport (2:56:54.660)

for making sense of intimations.

Lex Fridman (2:56:57.620)

The one thing we had were these different intimations

Cal Newport (2:57:00.220)

of this field, like awe and mystical experience.

Lex Fridman (2:57:03.700)

And this feels, there's something you feel

Cal Newport (2:57:05.860)

when you act in a certain way

Lex Fridman (2:57:07.140)

and don't act in this other way.

Lex Fridman (2:57:08.700)

And it was like the scientists who were trying to study

Lex Fridman (2:57:11.900)

and understand the model of the atom

Cal Newport (2:57:13.460)

by just looking at experiments and trying to understand

Lex Fridman (2:57:15.900)

what's going on.

Cal Newport (2:57:16.740)

Like the great religions of the world

Lex Fridman (2:57:18.260)

were basically figuring out

Lex Fridman (2:57:19.780)

how do we make sense of these intimations

Lex Fridman (2:57:21.300)

and live in alignment with them

Lex Fridman (2:57:22.940)

and build a life of meaning around that.

Lex Fridman (2:57:24.860)

What were the tools they were using?

Cal Newport (2:57:26.180)

They were using ritual.

Lex Fridman (2:57:27.140)

They were using belief.

Cal Newport (2:57:28.100)

They were using action, but all of it was like an OS.

Lex Fridman (2:57:31.060)

It was like a liturgical model of the atom that did.

Cal Newport (2:57:34.740)

It's hard coded in.

Lex Fridman (2:57:35.860)

So it did through the evolutionary process.

Cal Newport (2:57:39.060)

I mean, they wouldn't have called it that back then

Lex Fridman (2:57:41.340)

or yeah, I mean, they didn't have that as pre enlightenment.

Cal Newport (2:57:45.220)

They just said, this is here.

Lex Fridman (2:57:46.860)

And the directive is to try to live in alignment with that.

Cal Newport (2:57:50.820)

Well, then I want to ask who wrote the original code.

Lex Fridman (2:57:53.340)

Yeah, so Armstrong lays out this good argument

Lex Fridman (2:57:56.700)

and where it gets really interesting

Lex Fridman (2:57:58.140)

is that she emphasizes that all of this

Lex Fridman (2:58:01.020)

was considered ineffable, right?

Lex Fridman (2:58:03.140)

So the whole notion, and this is like rich

Cal Newport (2:58:05.220)

in Jewish tradition in particular

Lex Fridman (2:58:06.420)

and also in Islamic tradition,

Cal Newport (2:58:08.100)

we can't comprehend and understand what's going on here.

Lex Fridman (2:58:11.100)

Right?

Lex Fridman (2:58:11.940)

And so the best we can do to approximate understanding

Lex Fridman (2:58:13.900)

and live in alignment is we act as if this is true,

Cal Newport (2:58:16.900)

do these rituals, have these actions or whatever.

Lex Fridman (2:58:19.860)

Post enlightenment, a lot of that got,

Cal Newport (2:58:22.620)

once we learned about enlightenment,

Lex Fridman (2:58:24.780)

we grew these suspicions around religion

Lex Fridman (2:58:26.620)

that are very much of the modern era, right?

Lex Fridman (2:58:28.740)

So like the Karen Armstrong,

Cal Newport (2:58:30.740)

like Sam Harris's critique of religion makes no sense.

Lex Fridman (2:58:33.820)

Right?

Cal Newport (2:58:34.660)

The critique's based on, well, this is,

Lex Fridman (2:58:35.980)

you're making the ascent to propositions

Cal Newport (2:58:37.580)

that you think are true for which you do not have evidence

Lex Fridman (2:58:39.340)

that they are true.

Lex Fridman (2:58:40.180)

That's an enlightenment thing, right?

Lex Fridman (2:58:41.580)

This is not the context and this is not,

Cal Newport (2:58:43.740)

the religion is the Rutherford model of the atom.

Lex Fridman (2:58:46.820)

Like it's not actually maybe what is underneath happening,

Lex Fridman (2:58:50.380)

but this model explains why your chemical equations work.

Lex Fridman (2:58:52.740)

And so this is like the way religion was.

Cal Newport (2:58:55.060)

There's a God, we'll call it this, this is how it works,

Lex Fridman (2:58:57.220)

we do this ritual, we act in this way,

Cal Newport (2:58:58.620)

it aligns with it, just like the model of the atom

Lex Fridman (2:59:00.820)

predicted why NA and CL is gonna become salt,

Cal Newport (2:59:03.660)

this predicts that you're gonna feel

Lex Fridman (2:59:05.020)

and live in alignment, right?

Cal Newport (2:59:06.100)

It's like this beautiful sophisticated theory,

Lex Fridman (2:59:08.380)

which actually matches how a lot of great theologians

Cal Newport (2:59:11.100)

have thought about it.

Lex Fridman (2:59:13.580)

But then when you come forward in time,

Cal Newport (2:59:14.900)

yeah, maybe it's evolution.

Lex Fridman (2:59:15.860)

I mean, this is like what Peterson hints at, right?

Cal Newport (2:59:18.420)

Like he's basically, he doesn't like to get super pinned down

Lex Fridman (2:59:24.260)

on this, but it kind of seems where he sees it that way.

Cal Newport (2:59:27.300)

He's almost like searching for the words.

Lex Fridman (2:59:29.140)

He focuses more on like Jung and other people,

Lex Fridman (2:59:31.020)

but I mean, I know he's very Jungian,

Lex Fridman (2:59:32.900)

but that same type of analysis, I think, roughly speaking,

Cal Newport (2:59:35.820)

like Armstrong is sort of a, it's kind of like a Peter

Lex Fridman (2:59:38.540)

Sony analysis, but she's looking more at the deep history

Cal Newport (2:59:41.940)

of religion than, but yeah, he throws in an evolutionary.

Lex Fridman (2:59:45.980)

Yeah, and I wonder what home it finds,

Cal Newport (2:59:48.500)

I wonder what the new home is if religion dissipates

Lex Fridman (2:59:51.860)

and what the new home for these kinds of

Cal Newport (2:59:54.060)

natural inclinations are, whether it's technology,

Lex Fridman (2:59:58.180)

whether...

Lex Fridman (2:59:59.020)

And if it's evolution, I mean, this is Francis Collins's

Lex Fridman (30:01.880)

So I was doing MIT stuff, but I was also writing, you know?

Lex Fridman (30:06.840)

So a couple of things are, you know, they were interesting.

Lex Fridman (30:08.440)

Like I have a couple bets placed

Cal Newport (30:10.200)

on a couple of different numbers on the roulette table,

Lex Fridman (30:12.760)

but not too many things.

Lex Fridman (30:14.080)

And then really try to do those things really well

Lex Fridman (30:15.840)

and see where it goes.

Cal Newport (30:16.800)

Like with my writing,

Lex Fridman (30:17.640)

I just spent years and years and years just training.

Cal Newport (30:19.520)

I was like, I wanna be a better writer,

Lex Fridman (30:20.360)

I wanna be a better writer.

Cal Newport (30:21.200)

I started writing student books when I was a student.

Lex Fridman (30:24.160)

I really wanted to write hardcover idea books.

Cal Newport (30:25.920)

I started training.

Lex Fridman (30:26.760)

I would use like New Yorker articles to train myself.

Cal Newport (30:30.280)

I'd break them down and then I'd get commissions

Lex Fridman (30:31.960)

with much smaller magazines and practice the skills.

Lex Fridman (30:34.320)

And it took forever until, you know, but now today,

Lex Fridman (30:37.000)

like I actually get to write for the New Yorker,

Lex Fridman (30:38.320)

but it took like a decade.

Lex Fridman (30:40.280)

So a small number of things, try to do them really well.

Lex Fridman (30:42.080)

And then the know why is have a connection

Lex Fridman (30:44.040)

to some sort of value.

Cal Newport (30:45.760)

Like in general, I think this is worth doing

Lex Fridman (30:48.880)

and then seeing where it leads.

Lex Fridman (30:50.600)

And so the choice of the few things is grounded in what?

Lex Fridman (30:55.280)

Like a little flame of passion, like a love for the thing,

Cal Newport (31:00.240)

like a sense that you say you wanted to write,

Lex Fridman (31:02.560)

get good at writing.

Cal Newport (31:04.200)

You had that kind of introspective moment of thinking,

Lex Fridman (31:07.780)

this actually brings me a lot of joy and fulfillment.

Cal Newport (31:10.320)

Yeah, I mean, it gets complicated

Lex Fridman (31:11.560)

because I wrote a whole book

Cal Newport (31:12.400)

about following your passion being bad advice,

Lex Fridman (31:14.640)

which is like the first thing I kind of got infamous for.

Cal Newport (31:18.400)

I wrote that back in 2012.

Lex Fridman (31:20.080)

But the argument there is like passion cultivates, right?

Lex Fridman (31:23.280)

So what I was pushing back on was the myth

Lex Fridman (31:26.120)

that the passion for what you do exists full intensity

Cal Newport (31:29.880)

before you start, and then that's what propels you.

Lex Fridman (31:32.620)

Or actually the reality is as you get better at something,

Cal Newport (31:35.400)

as you gain more autonomy, more skill and more impact,

Lex Fridman (31:37.280)

the passion grows along with it.

Lex Fridman (31:38.600)

So that when people look back later and say,

Lex Fridman (31:42.060)

oh, follow your passion, what they really mean is

Cal Newport (31:43.760)

I'm very passionate about what I do,

Lex Fridman (31:45.200)

and that's a worthy goal.

Lex Fridman (31:47.080)

But how you actually cultivate that is much more complicated

Lex Fridman (31:49.320)

than just introspection is gonna identify,

Cal Newport (31:51.960)

like for sure you should be a writer or something like this.

Lex Fridman (31:54.060)

So I was actually quoting you.

Cal Newport (31:55.280)

I was on a social network last night in a clubhouse.

Lex Fridman (32:00.400)

I don't know if you've heard of it.

Cal Newport (32:01.720)

Wait, I have to ask you about this

Lex Fridman (32:03.280)

because I'm invited to do a clubhouse.

Cal Newport (32:05.560)

I don't know what that means.

Lex Fridman (32:07.160)

A tech reporter has invited me to do a clubhouse

Cal Newport (32:09.300)

about my new book.

Lex Fridman (32:11.200)

That's awesome.

Cal Newport (32:12.560)

Well, let me know when, because I'll show up.

Lex Fridman (32:14.200)

But what is it?

Cal Newport (32:15.080)

Okay, so first of all, let me just mention

Lex Fridman (32:16.680)

that I was in a clubhouse room last night,

Lex Fridman (32:21.120)

and I kept plugging exactly what you said about passion.

Lex Fridman (32:24.760)

So we'll talk about it.

Cal Newport (32:25.800)

It was a room that was focused on burnout.

Lex Fridman (32:28.360)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (32:29.520)

But first, clubhouse is a kind of fascinating place

Lex Fridman (32:34.200)

in terms of your mind would be very interesting

Cal Newport (32:37.680)

to analyze this place because we talk about email,

Lex Fridman (32:41.640)

talk about social networks,

Lex Fridman (32:43.560)

but clubhouse is something very different.

Lex Fridman (32:45.400)

And I've encountered it in other places,

Cal Newport (32:47.280)

Discord and so on, that's voice only communication.

Lex Fridman (32:52.320)

So it's a bunch of people in a room.

Cal Newport (32:53.740)

They're just, their eyes closed.

Lex Fridman (32:56.240)

All you hear is their voices.

Cal Newport (32:57.640)

In real time.

Lex Fridman (32:58.520)

Real time, live.

Cal Newport (32:59.840)

It only happens live.

Lex Fridman (33:01.060)

You're technically not allowed to record,

Lex Fridman (33:03.240)

but some people still do,

Lex Fridman (33:04.680)

and especially when it's big conversations.

Lex Fridman (33:07.740)

But the whole point is it's there live.

Lex Fridman (33:09.840)

And there's different structures.

Cal Newport (33:10.960)

Like on Discord, it was so fascinating.

Lex Fridman (33:13.920)

I have this Discord server

Lex Fridman (33:15.960)

that would have hundreds of people in a room together, right?

Lex Fridman (33:19.480)

We're all just little icons that can mute and unmute our mics.

Cal Newport (33:22.880)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (33:23.720)

And so you're sitting there, so it's just voices,

Lex Fridman (33:28.240)

and you're able with hundreds of people

Lex Fridman (33:31.280)

to not interrupt each other.

Cal Newport (33:33.960)

Well, first of all, like as a dynamic system, like.

Lex Fridman (33:37.400)

You see icons just like mics muted or not muted basically.

Cal Newport (33:40.160)

Yeah, well, so everyone's muted and they unmute

Lex Fridman (33:42.360)

and it starts flashing.

Cal Newport (33:44.120)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (33:44.960)

Oh, so you're like, okay, let me get precedence.

Cal Newport (33:47.940)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (33:48.780)

So it's the digital equivalent

Cal Newport (33:49.600)

of when you're in a conversation, like at a faculty meeting,

Lex Fridman (33:52.320)

and you sort of like kind of make some noises,

Cal Newport (33:54.840)

like while the other person's finishing.

Lex Fridman (33:56.200)

And so people realize like, okay,

Cal Newport (33:57.800)

this person wants to talk next,

Lex Fridman (33:58.880)

but now it's purely digital.

Cal Newport (34:00.200)

You see a flashing.

Lex Fridman (34:01.480)

But in a faculty meeting, which is very interesting,

Cal Newport (34:04.280)

like even as we're talking now,

Lex Fridman (34:06.540)

there's a visual element that seems to increase

Cal Newport (34:09.600)

the probability of interruption.

Lex Fridman (34:11.320)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (34:12.160)

It's just darkness.

Lex Fridman (34:13.680)

You actually listen better and you don't interrupt.

Lex Fridman (34:17.280)

So like if you create a culture,

Lex Fridman (34:18.720)

there's always gonna be assholes,

Lex Fridman (34:20.840)

but they're actually exceptions.

Lex Fridman (34:23.320)

Everybody adjusts.

Cal Newport (34:24.640)

They kind of evolve to the beat of the room.

Lex Fridman (34:28.240)

Okay, that's one fascinating aspect.

Cal Newport (34:30.280)

It's like, okay, that's weird.

Lex Fridman (34:32.200)

Cause it's different than like a Zoom call

Cal Newport (34:34.360)

where there's video.

Lex Fridman (34:35.520)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (34:36.760)

It's just audio.

Lex Fridman (34:38.520)

You think video adds, but actually seems like it subtracts.

Cal Newport (34:42.680)

The second aspect of it that's fascinating

Lex Fridman (34:45.160)

is when it's no video, just audio, there's an intimacy.

Cal Newport (34:49.920)

It's weird.

Lex Fridman (34:51.640)

Because with strangers, you connect in a much more real way.

Cal Newport (34:57.160)

It's similar to podcasts.

Lex Fridman (34:58.960)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (34:59.800)

But with a lot of people.

Lex Fridman (35:01.600)

With a lot of people and new people.

Lex Fridman (35:03.880)

And they bring, okay, first of all,

Lex Fridman (35:07.520)

different voices, like low voices and like high voices.

Lex Fridman (35:10.840)

And it's more difficult to judge.

Lex Fridman (35:14.320)

In Discord, you couldn't even see the people.

Cal Newport (35:18.520)

It was a culture where you do funny profile pictures

Lex Fridman (35:21.600)

as opposed to your actual face.

Cal Newport (35:23.120)

In clubhouse, it's your actual face.

Lex Fridman (35:24.920)

So you can tell like as an older person, younger person.

Cal Newport (35:27.600)

In Discord, you couldn't.

Lex Fridman (35:28.800)

You just have to judge based on the voice.

Lex Fridman (35:31.240)

But there's something about the listening

Lex Fridman (35:34.960)

and the intimacy of being surprised

Cal Newport (35:37.920)

by different strangers that feels almost

Lex Fridman (35:40.080)

like a party with friends.

Lex Fridman (35:43.560)

And friends of friends you haven't met yet,

Lex Fridman (35:45.320)

but you really like.

Cal Newport (35:47.280)

Now clubhouse also has an interesting innovation

Lex Fridman (35:49.680)

where there's a large crowd that just listens

Lex Fridman (35:52.280)

and there's a stage.

Lex Fridman (35:54.120)

And you can bring people up onto stage.

Lex Fridman (35:56.320)

So only people on stage are talking.

Lex Fridman (35:59.200)

And you can have like five, six, seven, eight,

Cal Newport (36:01.320)

sometimes 20, 30 people on stage.

Lex Fridman (36:03.320)

And then you can also have thousands of people

Cal Newport (36:05.200)

just listening.

Lex Fridman (36:06.040)

I see.

Lex Fridman (36:06.880)

So there's a, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (36:08.880)

a lot of people are being surprised by this.

Lex Fridman (36:10.760)

Why is it called a social network?

Lex Fridman (36:12.280)

It seems like it doesn't have, there's not social links.

Cal Newport (36:14.200)

There's not a feed that's trying to harvest attention.

Lex Fridman (36:17.200)

It feels like a communication.

Lex Fridman (36:20.160)

So the social network aspect is you follow people.

Lex Fridman (36:24.160)

And the people you follow,

Cal Newport (36:26.160)

now this is like the first social network

Lex Fridman (36:27.600)

that is actually correct use of follow, I think.

Cal Newport (36:30.440)

You're more likely to see the rooms they're in.

Lex Fridman (36:35.080)

So there's a, your feed is a bunch of rooms

Cal Newport (36:37.200)

that are going on right now.

Lex Fridman (36:39.120)

And the people you follow are the ones

Cal Newport (36:43.360)

that will increase the likelihood

Lex Fridman (36:44.800)

that you'll see the room they're in.

Lex Fridman (36:46.360)

And so the final result is like,

Lex Fridman (36:48.480)

there's a list of really interesting rooms.

Cal Newport (36:50.320)

Like I have all these, I've been speaking Russian

Lex Fridman (36:53.800)

quite a bit, there's practicing,

Lex Fridman (36:55.880)

but also just like talking politics

Lex Fridman (36:58.200)

and philosophy in Russian.

Cal Newport (37:00.080)

I've never done that before,

Lex Fridman (37:01.160)

but it allows me to connect with that community.

Lex Fridman (37:03.320)

And then there's a community of people,

Lex Fridman (37:05.640)

like it's funny, but like I'll go in a community

Cal Newport (37:09.160)

of all African American people talking about race

Lex Fridman (37:12.160)

and I'll be welcomed.

Cal Newport (37:13.920)

I've never had, like I've literally never been

Lex Fridman (37:17.040)

in a difficult conversation about race,

Cal Newport (37:20.200)

like with people from all over the place.

Lex Fridman (37:22.520)

It's like fascinating.

Lex Fridman (37:23.440)

And then musicians, jazz musicians, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (37:26.400)

You could say that a lot of other places

Cal Newport (37:28.400)

could have created that culture, I suppose.

Lex Fridman (37:31.280)

Twitter and Facebook a lot for that culture,

Lex Fridman (37:32.960)

but there's something about this network

Lex Fridman (37:35.880)

as it stands now, cause no Android users.

Cal Newport (37:40.480)

It's probably just because it's iPhone people.

Lex Fridman (37:43.800)

It's like.

Cal Newport (37:44.640)

Less conspiratorial or something.

Lex Fridman (37:45.480)

Well, like less, listen, I'm an Android person.

Lex Fridman (37:47.320)

So I got an iPhone just for this network, which is funny.

Lex Fridman (37:52.400)

For now it's all like, there's very few trolls.

Cal Newport (37:55.920)

There's very few people that are trying

Lex Fridman (37:57.240)

to manipulate the system and so on.

Lex Fridman (37:59.240)

So I don't know, it's interesting.

Lex Fridman (38:00.920)

Now the downside, the reason you're going to hate it

Cal Newport (38:04.760)

is because it's so intimate, because it pulls you in

Lex Fridman (38:08.520)

and pulls in very successful people like you,

Cal Newport (38:11.320)

just like really successful, productive, very busy people.

Lex Fridman (38:20.040)

It's a huge time sink.

Cal Newport (38:21.360)

It's very difficult to pull yourself out.

Lex Fridman (38:23.640)

Interesting, you mean once you're in a room?

Cal Newport (38:25.080)

Well, no, leaving the room is actually easy.

Lex Fridman (38:27.760)

The beautiful thing about a stage with multiple people,

Cal Newport (38:30.480)

there's a little button that says leave quietly.

Lex Fridman (38:33.600)

So culture, no etiquette wise, it's okay to just leave.

Lex Fridman (38:38.520)

So you and I in a room, when it's just you and I,

Lex Fridman (38:41.000)

it's a little awkward to leave.

Cal Newport (38:42.200)

If you're asking questions, I'm just gone.

Lex Fridman (38:44.240)

But, and actually if you're being interviewed for the book,

Cal Newport (38:47.760)

that's weird because you're now in the event

Lex Fridman (38:51.040)

and you're supposed to, but usually the person interviewing

Cal Newport (38:54.000)

would be like, okay, it's time for you to go.

Lex Fridman (38:55.920)

It's more normal, but the normal way to use the room

Cal Newport (38:59.960)

was like, you're just opening the app

Lex Fridman (39:02.840)

and there'll be like, I don't know, Sam Harris,

Cal Newport (39:06.840)

Eric Weinstein, I think Joe Rogan showed up to the app,

Lex Fridman (39:12.040)

Bill Gates, these people on stage

Cal Newport (39:13.960)

just like randomly just plugged in

Lex Fridman (39:15.840)

and then you'll step up on stage,

Cal Newport (39:18.000)

listen, maybe you won't contribute at all,

Lex Fridman (39:20.360)

maybe you'll say something funny

Lex Fridman (39:22.000)

and then you'll just leave.

Lex Fridman (39:23.400)

And there's the addicting aspect to it.

Cal Newport (39:26.880)

The reason it's a time sink is you don't wanna leave.

Lex Fridman (39:30.040)

What I've noticed about exceptionally busy people

Cal Newport (39:33.440)

that they love this.

Lex Fridman (39:35.600)

I think it might have to do with the pandemic.

Cal Newport (39:37.280)

It might be a little bit, yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:38.240)

There's a loneliness.

Cal Newport (39:39.240)

They're all starved, yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:40.560)

But also it's really cool people.

Cal Newport (39:42.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:43.320)

Like when was the last time you talked to Sam Harris

Cal Newport (39:46.040)

or whoever, like think of anybody,

Lex Fridman (39:48.760)

Tyler Copeland, like any faculty.

Cal Newport (39:52.120)

This is like what universities strive to create,

Lex Fridman (39:54.840)

but it's taken hundreds of years of cultural evolution

Cal Newport (39:57.680)

to try to get a lot of interesting, smart people together

Lex Fridman (39:59.640)

that run into each other.

Cal Newport (3:00:00.900)

book also, he's like, well, that's a religious,

Lex Fridman (3:00:04.420)

that could be a very religious notion.

Cal Newport (3:00:06.500)

I don't, I think this stuff is interesting.

Lex Fridman (3:00:07.580)

I'm not a very religious person,

Lex Fridman (3:00:08.740)

but I'm thinking it's not a bad idea.

Lex Fridman (3:00:11.940)

Maybe what replaces, honestly, like maybe what replaces

Cal Newport (3:00:14.540)

religion is a return to religion,

Lex Fridman (3:00:17.260)

but in this sort of more sophisticated...

Cal Newport (3:00:20.060)

I mean, if you went back, yeah, I mean, it's the issue

Lex Fridman (3:00:22.460)

with like a lot of the recent critiques,

Lex Fridman (3:00:24.860)

I think it's a strong critique in a complicated way, right?

Lex Fridman (3:00:29.660)

Because the whole way these, the way this works,

Cal Newport (3:00:32.380)

I mean, the theologians, if you're reading Paul Tillich,

Lex Fridman (3:00:34.420)

if you're reading Heschel, if you're reading these people,

Cal Newport (3:00:36.940)

they're thinking very sophisticatedly about religion

Lex Fridman (3:00:39.260)

in terms of this, it's ineffable,

Lex Fridman (3:00:40.780)

and we're just these things, and it connects us

Lex Fridman (3:00:43.580)

to these things in a way that puts life in alignment.

Cal Newport (3:00:46.020)

We can't really explain what's going on

Lex Fridman (3:00:47.180)

because our brains can't handle it, right?

Cal Newport (3:00:50.020)

For the average person though, this notion of live as if

Lex Fridman (3:00:53.740)

is kind of how religions work, is live as if this is true.

Cal Newport (3:00:57.620)

It's like an OS for getting in alignment with,

Lex Fridman (3:01:00.140)

because through cultural evolution,

Cal Newport (3:01:02.780)

like you behave in this way, do these words,

Lex Fridman (3:01:04.220)

live as if this is true gives you

Cal Newport (3:01:07.780)

the goal you're looking for.

Lex Fridman (3:01:10.140)

But that's a complicated thing, live as if this is true,

Cal Newport (3:01:12.380)

because if you, especially if you're not a theologian,

Lex Fridman (3:01:15.020)

to say, yeah, this is not true in an enlightenment sense,

Lex Fridman (3:01:18.620)

but I'm living as if, it kind of takes the heat out of it,

Lex Fridman (3:01:21.420)

but of course it's what people are doing

Cal Newport (3:01:22.820)

because highly religious people still do bad things,

Lex Fridman (3:01:25.660)

where if you really were, there's absolutely a hell

Lex Fridman (3:01:28.380)

and I'm definitely gonna go to it if I do this bad thing,

Lex Fridman (3:01:30.100)

you would never have, you know,

Cal Newport (3:01:31.980)

no one would ever murder anyone

Lex Fridman (3:01:33.180)

if they were an evangelical Christian, right?

Lex Fridman (3:01:34.800)

So it's like what, this is kind of a tangent

Lex Fridman (3:01:37.420)

that I'm on shaky ground here,

Lex Fridman (3:01:39.580)

but it's something I've been interested off and on a lot.

Lex Fridman (3:01:43.340)

Well, it's fascinating, I mean,

Cal Newport (3:01:44.500)

I think we're in some sense searching for,

Lex Fridman (3:01:46.620)

because it does make for a good operating system,

Cal Newport (3:01:48.700)

we're searching for a good live as if X is true

Lex Fridman (3:01:52.080)

and we're searching for a new X.

Lex Fridman (3:01:54.300)

And maybe artificial intelligence will be the very,

Lex Fridman (3:01:58.820)

the new gods that we're so desperately looking for.

Cal Newport (3:02:02.540)

Or it'll just spit out 42.

Lex Fridman (3:02:04.960)

I thought it was 27.

Cal Newport (3:02:06.420)

Cal, this is, as you know, I've been a huge fan,

Lex Fridman (3:02:10.780)

so are a huge number of people that I've spoken with,

Lex Fridman (3:02:14.700)

so they've been telling me,

Lex Fridman (3:02:15.980)

I absolutely have to talk to you, this is a huge honor,

Cal Newport (3:02:18.380)

this is really fun, thanks for wasting all this time with me.

Lex Fridman (3:02:20.700)

Yeah, no, likewise, man, I've been a long time fan,

Lex Fridman (3:02:22.440)

so this was a lot of fun.

Lex Fridman (3:02:23.520)

Yeah, thanks, man.

Cal Newport (3:02:25.440)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Cal Newport

Lex Fridman (3:02:28.140)

and thank you to our sponsors, ExpressVPN,

Cal Newport (3:02:31.900)

Linode Linux Virtual Machines,

Lex Fridman (3:02:34.300)

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Lex Fridman (3:02:36.620)

and SimpliSafe Home Security.

Lex Fridman (3:02:39.340)

Click the sponsor links to get a discount

Lex Fridman (3:02:42.220)

and to support this podcast.

Lex Fridman (3:02:44.460)

And now let me leave you with some words from Cal himself,

Cal Newport (3:02:47.880)

"'Clarity about what matters provides clarity

Lex Fridman (3:02:51.060)

"'about what does not.'"

Cal Newport (3:02:52.980)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (40:00.640)

We have really strong faculty in a room together

Cal Newport (40:04.600)

with no scheduling.

Lex Fridman (40:05.760)

This is the power of it.

Cal Newport (40:07.160)

It's like you just show up,

Lex Fridman (40:08.760)

there's none of that baggage of scheduling and so on

Lex Fridman (40:11.320)

and there's no pressure to leave, sorry,

Lex Fridman (40:13.880)

no pressure to stay.

Cal Newport (40:15.080)

It's very easy for you to leave.

Lex Fridman (40:16.680)

You realize that there's a lot of constraints on meetings

Lex Fridman (40:19.240)

and like faculty, like even stopping by before the pandemic,

Lex Fridman (40:25.520)

a friend or faculty or colleague and so on,

Cal Newport (40:28.400)

there's a weirdness about leaving.

Lex Fridman (40:30.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (40:31.040)

But here there's not a weirdness about leaving.

Lex Fridman (40:33.240)

So they've discovered something interesting.

Lex Fridman (40:36.040)

But the final result when you observe it

Lex Fridman (40:38.800)

is it's very fulfilling.

Cal Newport (40:41.080)

I think it's very beneficial, but it's very addicting.

Lex Fridman (40:44.840)

So you have to make sure you moderate.

Cal Newport (40:48.520)

Yeah, that's interesting.

Lex Fridman (40:50.160)

Okay, well, so maybe I'll try it.

Cal Newport (40:52.160)

I mean, look, there's no,

Lex Fridman (40:53.520)

the things that make me suspicious

Cal Newport (40:54.720)

about other platforms aren't here.

Lex Fridman (40:56.640)

So the feed is not full of user generated content

Cal Newport (41:00.480)

that is going through some sort of algorithmic rating process

Lex Fridman (41:02.800)

with all the weird incentives and nudging that does.

Lex Fridman (41:05.760)

And you're not producing content that's being harvested

Lex Fridman (41:08.840)

to be monetized by another company.

Lex Fridman (41:11.240)

I mean, it seems like it's more ephemeral, right?

Lex Fridman (41:14.360)

You're here, you're talking.

Cal Newport (41:15.760)

The feed is just actually just showing you

Lex Fridman (41:17.880)

here's interesting things happening, right?

Cal Newport (41:19.320)

You're not jockeying in the feed for,

Lex Fridman (41:21.040)

look, I'm being clever or something

Lex Fridman (41:22.400)

and I'm gonna get a light count that goes up

Lex Fridman (41:24.640)

and that's gonna influence.

Lex Fridman (41:26.640)

And there's more friction.

Lex Fridman (41:27.520)

There's more cognitive friction, I guess,

Cal Newport (41:28.960)

involved in listening to smart people

Lex Fridman (41:31.360)

versus scrolling through.

Cal Newport (41:33.480)

Yeah, there's something there.

Lex Fridman (41:34.440)

So there's no.

Lex Fridman (41:35.320)

Why are people so, I see all,

Lex Fridman (41:37.160)

there's all these articles that seem,

Cal Newport (41:39.200)

I haven't really read them.

Lex Fridman (41:40.360)

Why are reporters negative about this?

Cal Newport (41:42.320)

Competition.

Lex Fridman (41:43.240)

The New York Times wrote this article called

Cal Newport (41:44.880)

Unfettered Conversations Happening on Clubhouse is.

Lex Fridman (41:49.120)

So I'm right in picking up a tone

Cal Newport (41:51.080)

even from the headlines

Lex Fridman (41:51.920)

that there's some like negative vibes from the press.

Cal Newport (41:55.000)

No, so I can say, let's say,

Lex Fridman (41:58.400)

well, I'll tell you what the article was saying,

Cal Newport (42:00.880)

which is they're having cancellable conversations,

Lex Fridman (42:05.680)

like the biggest people in the world

Cal Newport (42:07.240)

almost trolling the press.

Lex Fridman (42:08.920)

Right.

Lex Fridman (42:09.760)

And the press is desperately.

Lex Fridman (42:10.600)

Like foreshanning the press.

Cal Newport (42:11.440)

Yeah, foreshanning the press.

Lex Fridman (42:13.120)

By saying that you guys are looking for click bait

Cal Newport (42:16.680)

from our genuine human conversations.

Lex Fridman (42:19.200)

And so I think the, honestly,

Lex Fridman (42:23.000)

the press is just like, what do we do with this?

Lex Fridman (42:25.400)

We can't, first of all, it's a lot of work for them.

Cal Newport (42:28.880)

Okay.

Lex Fridman (42:29.920)

It's what Naval says, which is like,

Cal Newport (42:32.320)

this is skipping the journalist.

Lex Fridman (42:34.520)

Like the interview you, if you go on Clubhouse,

Cal Newport (42:37.080)

the interview you might do for the book

Lex Fridman (42:39.640)

will be with somebody who's like a journalist

Lex Fridman (42:41.360)

and interviewing you.

Lex Fridman (42:42.320)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (42:43.160)

That's more traditional.

Lex Fridman (42:44.760)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (42:45.600)

It'd be a good introduction for you to try it.

Lex Fridman (42:47.200)

But like the way to use Clubhouse is you just show up

Lex Fridman (42:52.960)

and it's like, again, like me, I'm sorry,

Lex Fridman (42:55.560)

I'm like, boy, I keep mentioning Sam Harris

Cal Newport (42:58.880)

as if it's like the only person I know,

Lex Fridman (43:00.480)

but like a lot of these major faculty,

Cal Newport (43:03.600)

I don't know, Max Tegmark.

Lex Fridman (43:04.840)

Like just major faculty just sitting there

Lex Fridman (43:07.360)

and then you show up and then I'll ask like,

Lex Fridman (43:10.840)

oh, don't you have a book coming out or something?

Lex Fridman (43:12.680)

And then you'll talk about the book

Lex Fridman (43:14.360)

and then you'll leave five minutes later

Cal Newport (43:15.640)

because you have to go get coffee included.

Lex Fridman (43:17.360)

Interesting.

Lex Fridman (43:18.200)

So like that's the, it's not the journalistic,

Lex Fridman (43:20.920)

you're not gonna actually enjoy the interview as much

Cal Newport (43:23.840)

because it'll be like the normal thing.

Lex Fridman (43:26.120)

Yeah.

Cal Newport (43:26.960)

Like you're there 40 minutes or an hour

Lex Fridman (43:28.800)

and there'll be questions from the audience.

Cal Newport (43:30.560)

Right.

Lex Fridman (43:31.400)

Like I'm doing an event next week for the book launch

Cal Newport (43:33.720)

where it's like Jason Fried and I are talking about email,

Lex Fridman (43:37.360)

but it's using some more like a thousand people

Cal Newport (43:40.120)

who are there to watch virtually,

Lex Fridman (43:41.560)

but it's using some sort of traditional webinar.

Cal Newport (43:44.720)

Clubhouse would be a situation

Lex Fridman (43:46.000)

where that could just happen informally.

Cal Newport (43:47.560)

Like I jump in like Jason's there

Lex Fridman (43:49.000)

and then someone else jumps in and yeah, that's interesting.

Lex Fridman (43:51.920)

But for now it's still closed.

Lex Fridman (43:53.920)

So even though there's a lot of excitement

Lex Fridman (43:56.160)

and there'll be quite famous people

Lex Fridman (43:58.920)

just sitting there listening to you.

Cal Newport (44:00.320)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (44:01.800)

But the numbers aren't exactly high.

Lex Fridman (44:04.280)

So you're talking about rooms,

Lex Fridman (44:05.920)

like even the huge rooms are like just a few thousand.

Cal Newport (44:09.320)

Right.

Lex Fridman (44:10.160)

And this is probably like Soho in the 50s or something too.

Cal Newport (44:12.600)

Just because of the exponential growth,

Lex Fridman (44:15.400)

give it seven more months.

Lex Fridman (44:17.080)

And if you let one invite be, it gets two invites,

Lex Fridman (44:19.440)

it gets four invites,

Cal Newport (44:20.280)

because pretty soon it'll be everyone.

Lex Fridman (44:22.120)

And then the rooms in your feed are gonna be whatever,

Cal Newport (44:25.360)

marketing, performance enhancing drugs or something like that.

Lex Fridman (44:27.760)

Exactly.

Cal Newport (44:28.600)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (44:29.440)

But then in a bunch of competitors,

Cal Newport (44:30.560)

there's already like 30 plus competitors sprung up,

Lex Fridman (44:33.240)

Twitter spaces.

Lex Fridman (44:34.360)

So Twitter is creating a competitor

Lex Fridman (44:36.160)

that's going to likely destroy Clubhouse

Cal Newport (44:38.520)

because they just have a much larger user base

Lex Fridman (44:40.480)

and they already have a social network.

Lex Fridman (44:42.400)

So I would be very cautious, of course,

Lex Fridman (44:46.400)

with the addictive element,

Lex Fridman (44:47.560)

but it doesn't just like you said,

Lex Fridman (44:49.280)

this particular implementation in its early stages

Cal Newport (44:52.080)

doesn't have the like,

Lex Fridman (44:56.040)

it doesn't have the context switching problem.

Cal Newport (44:58.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (44:58.840)

You'll just switch to it and you'll be stuck.

Cal Newport (45:01.120)

Yeah, to keep a context is great.

Lex Fridman (45:02.840)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:04.360)

But then I think the best way I've found to use it

Lex Fridman (45:07.640)

is to acknowledge that these things pull you in.

Cal Newport (45:12.920)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:13.760)

So I've used it in the past,

Cal Newport (45:17.000)

like almost, I'll go get a coffee

Lex Fridman (45:19.120)

and I'll tune into a conversation

Cal Newport (45:22.040)

as if that's how I use podcasts sometimes.

Lex Fridman (45:24.360)

I'll just like play a little bit of a podcast

Lex Fridman (45:26.920)

and then I can just turn it off.

Lex Fridman (45:29.600)

The problem with these is it pulls you in,

Cal Newport (45:31.880)

it's really interesting.

Lex Fridman (45:32.800)

And then the other problem that you'll experience

Cal Newport (45:35.400)

is like somebody will recognize you.

Lex Fridman (45:38.000)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:38.840)

And then they'll be like, oh, Lex.

Lex Fridman (45:40.400)

Come on up.

Cal Newport (45:41.320)

Come on.

Lex Fridman (45:42.160)

Oh, hey, I had a question for you.

Lex Fridman (45:43.440)

And then it takes a lot for you to go like,

Lex Fridman (45:46.600)

to ignore that.

Cal Newport (45:47.600)

Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:48.520)

So. Yeah.

Lex Fridman (45:49.360)

And then you pulled in and it's fascinating

Lex Fridman (45:51.080)

and it's really cool people.

Lex Fridman (45:52.280)

So it's like a source of a lot of joy,

Lex Fridman (45:53.840)

but you have to be very, very careful.

Cal Newport (45:58.120)

The reason I brought it up is we,

Lex Fridman (46:00.160)

there's a room, there's an entire club actually on burnout.

Lex Fridman (46:04.120)

And I brought you up and I brought David Goggins

Lex Fridman (46:08.120)

as the process I go through, which is,

Cal Newport (46:10.960)

my passion goes up and down, it dips.

Lex Fridman (46:14.920)

And I don't think I trust my own mind

Cal Newport (46:17.920)

to tell me whether I'm getting close to burnout

Lex Fridman (46:22.600)

or exhaustion or not.

Cal Newport (46:24.800)

I kind of go with the David Goggins model of,

Lex Fridman (46:28.280)

I mean, he's probably more applying it to running,

Lex Fridman (46:30.240)

but when it feels like your mind can't take any more,

Lex Fridman (46:35.120)

that you're just 40% at your capacity.

Cal Newport (46:38.920)

I mean, it's just like an arbitrary level.

Lex Fridman (46:41.040)

It's the Navy SEAL thing, right?

Cal Newport (46:41.880)

The Navy SEAL thing.

Lex Fridman (46:43.040)

I mean, you could put that at any percent,

Lex Fridman (46:44.600)

but it is remarkable that if you just take it

Lex Fridman (46:48.080)

one step at a time, just keep going,

Cal Newport (46:49.960)

it's similar to this idea of a process.

Lex Fridman (46:53.360)

If you just trust the process and you just keep following,

Cal Newport (46:55.840)

even if the passion goes up and down and so on,

Lex Fridman (46:58.400)

then ultimately, if you look in aggregate,

Cal Newport (47:02.720)

the passion will increase.

Lex Fridman (47:04.400)

Your self satisfaction will increase.

Lex Fridman (47:06.560)

And if you have two things,

Lex Fridman (47:08.280)

this has been a big strategy of mine,

Lex Fridman (47:09.760)

so that what you hope for is off phase, off phase alignment.

Lex Fridman (47:14.200)

Sometimes it's in phase and that's a problem,

Lex Fridman (47:16.520)

but off phase alignment's good.

Lex Fridman (47:18.040)

So, okay, my research, I'm struggling,

Lex Fridman (47:20.680)

but my book stuff is going well, right?

Lex Fridman (47:22.680)

And so when you add those two waves together,

Cal Newport (47:24.760)

like, oh, we're doing pretty well.

Lex Fridman (47:25.720)

And then in other periods, like on my writing,

Cal Newport (47:28.400)

I feel like I'm just not getting anywhere,

Lex Fridman (47:29.880)

but I've had some good papers, I'm feeling good over there.

Lex Fridman (47:32.360)

So having two things that can counteract each other.

Lex Fridman (47:35.960)

Now, sometimes they fall into sync and then it gets rough.

Cal Newport (47:38.640)

Then when, you know, when everything,

Lex Fridman (47:40.240)

because everything for me is cyclical,

Cal Newport (47:41.720)

good periods, bad periods with all this stuff.

Lex Fridman (47:43.240)

So typically they don't coincide, so it helps compensate.

Cal Newport (47:47.560)

When they do coincide, you get really high highs,

Lex Fridman (47:50.360)

like where everything's clicking,

Lex Fridman (47:51.200)

and then you get these really low lows

Lex Fridman (47:52.760)

where like your research is not working,

Cal Newport (47:54.680)

your program's not clicking,

Lex Fridman (47:56.360)

you feel like you're nowhere with your writing,

Lex Fridman (47:59.280)

and then it's a little rougher.

Lex Fridman (48:00.680)

Is, do you think about the concept of burnout?

Cal Newport (48:04.000)

Because I personally have never experienced burnout

Lex Fridman (48:06.360)

in the way that folks talk about,

Cal Newport (48:08.240)

which is like, it's not just the up and down.

Lex Fridman (48:11.680)

It's like, you don't want to do anything ever again.

Cal Newport (48:14.720)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (48:15.560)

It's like, for some people it's like physical,

Cal Newport (48:17.640)

like to the hospital kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (48:19.680)

Yeah, so I do worry about it.

Lex Fridman (48:22.800)

So when I used to do student writing,

Lex Fridman (48:24.760)

like writing about students and student advice,

Cal Newport (48:27.360)

it came up a lot with students at elite schools,

Lex Fridman (48:30.360)

and I used to call it deep procrastination,

Lex Fridman (48:32.360)

but it was a real, really vivid, very replicatable syndrome

Lex Fridman (48:37.600)

where they stop being able to do schoolwork.

Cal Newport (48:39.600)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (48:40.440)

Like this is due, and the professor gives you an extension,

Lex Fridman (48:42.920)

and the professor gives you an incomplete,

Lex Fridman (48:44.280)

and says, you got it, you were gonna fail the course,

Lex Fridman (48:46.120)

you have to hand this in, and they can't do it, right?

Lex Fridman (48:48.680)

It's like a complete stop

Cal Newport (48:50.600)

on the ability to actually do work.

Lex Fridman (48:52.400)

And so I used to counsel students who had that issue,

Lex Fridman (48:54.120)

and often it was a combination of,

Lex Fridman (48:56.480)

this is my best analysis,

Cal Newport (48:58.680)

is you have just the physical and cognitive difficulties

Lex Fridman (49:01.360)

of they're usually under a very hard load, right?

Cal Newport (49:03.680)

They're doing too many majors, too many extracurriculars,

Lex Fridman (49:05.520)

just really pushing themselves,

Lex Fridman (49:07.480)

and the motivation is not sufficiently intrinsic.

Lex Fridman (49:11.440)

Right.

Lex Fridman (49:12.280)

So if you have a motivational center

Lex Fridman (49:13.320)

that's not completely on board,

Lex Fridman (49:14.440)

so a lot of these kids, like when I'm dealing with MIT kids,

Lex Fridman (49:16.720)

they would be, their whole town was shooting off fireworks

Cal Newport (49:20.200)

that they got in.

Lex Fridman (49:21.040)

Everyone's hoped that they were going there,

Lex Fridman (49:23.480)

and that they're in three majors,

Lex Fridman (49:24.640)

they don't wanna let people down,

Lex Fridman (49:25.640)

but they're not really interested

Lex Fridman (49:26.560)

in being a doctor or whatever.

Lex Fridman (49:28.200)

So your motivation's not in the right place.

Lex Fridman (49:30.080)

The motivational psychologist would say

Cal Newport (49:31.600)

the locus of control was more towards

Lex Fridman (49:33.160)

the extrinsic end of the spectrum, and you have hardship.

Lex Fridman (49:36.640)

And you could just fritz out the whole system.

Lex Fridman (49:38.840)

And so I would always be very worried about that.

Lex Fridman (49:40.560)

So I think about that a lot.

Lex Fridman (49:41.880)

I do a lot of multi phase or multi scale seasonality.

Lex Fridman (49:45.400)

So I'll go hard on something for a while,

Lex Fridman (49:48.160)

and then for a few weeks, go easy.

Cal Newport (49:50.320)

I'll have semesters that are hard,

Lex Fridman (49:51.960)

and semesters that are easy.

Cal Newport (49:53.120)

Or I'll take the summer really low.

Lex Fridman (49:54.160)

So on multiple scales,

Lex Fridman (49:55.200)

and in the day I'll go really hard on something,

Lex Fridman (49:56.680)

but then have a hard cut off at five.

Lex Fridman (49:57.920)

So like every scale, it's all about rest and recovery.

Lex Fridman (50:01.920)

Because I really wanna avoid that.

Lex Fridman (50:02.960)

And I do burn out.

Lex Fridman (50:03.800)

I burnt out, pretty recently I get minor burnt outs.

Cal Newport (50:06.600)

I got a couple papers that I was trying to work through

Lex Fridman (50:10.080)

for a deadline a few weeks ago,

Lex Fridman (50:12.760)

and I wasn't sleeping well,

Lex Fridman (50:14.680)

and there's some other things going on.

Lex Fridman (50:17.520)

And it just knocks out and I get sick usually,

Lex Fridman (50:20.320)

is how I know I've pushed myself too far.

Lex Fridman (50:22.400)

And so I kind of pulled it back.

Lex Fridman (50:23.440)

Now I'm doing this book launch.

Cal Newport (50:24.440)

Then after this book launch, I'm pulling it back again.

Lex Fridman (50:26.700)

So I like seasonality for rest and recovery,

Cal Newport (50:29.040)

I think it's crucial.

Lex Fridman (50:30.160)

And at every scale, daily, monthly,

Lex Fridman (50:33.720)

and then at the annual scale.

Lex Fridman (50:34.920)

An easy summer, for example,

Cal Newport (50:36.280)

I think is like a great idea if that's possible.

Lex Fridman (50:38.900)

Okay, you just made me realize

Cal Newport (50:41.260)

that that's exactly what I do.

Lex Fridman (50:43.280)

Because I feel like I'm not even close

Cal Newport (50:45.160)

to burnout or anything.

Lex Fridman (50:46.120)

Even though I'm in chaos,

Cal Newport (50:49.660)

I feel the right exact way is the seasonality,

Lex Fridman (50:52.440)

is the, not even the seasonality,

Lex Fridman (50:55.200)

but like you always have multiple seasons operating.

Lex Fridman (50:59.020)

It's like you said,

Cal Newport (51:00.120)

because when you have a lot of cool shit going on,

Lex Fridman (51:02.840)

there's always at least one thing that's a source of joy,

Cal Newport (51:06.320)

that there's always a reason.

Lex Fridman (51:08.740)

I suppose the fundamental thing,

Lex Fridman (51:10.900)

and I've known people that suffer from depression too,

Lex Fridman (51:13.800)

the fundamental problem with the experience of depression

Lex Fridman (51:16.760)

and burnout is why do, life is meaningless.

Lex Fridman (51:21.840)

And I always have an answer of why today could be cool.

Lex Fridman (51:28.160)

And you have to contrive it, right?

Lex Fridman (51:29.920)

If you don't have it, you have to contrive it.

Cal Newport (51:31.720)

I think it's really important.

Lex Fridman (51:33.140)

Like, okay, well, this is going bad,

Lex Fridman (51:34.800)

so now is the time to start thinking about,

Lex Fridman (51:37.240)

I mean, look, I started a podcast during the pandemic.

Lex Fridman (51:39.840)

It's like, this is going pretty bad, but you know what?

Lex Fridman (51:43.060)

This could be something really interesting.

Cal Newport (51:46.320)

Deep questions with Kyle Newport.

Lex Fridman (51:49.140)

I do it all in that voice.

Cal Newport (51:50.480)

I love the podcast, by the way.

Lex Fridman (51:53.460)

But yeah, I think David Foster Wallace said,

Cal Newport (51:56.780)

the key to life is to be unboreable.

Lex Fridman (51:59.120)

I've always kind of taken that to heart,

Cal Newport (52:01.800)

which is like, you should be able to maybe artificially

Lex Fridman (52:05.840)

generate anything.

Cal Newport (52:08.680)

Like, find something in your environment,

Lex Fridman (52:13.960)

in your surroundings, that's a source of joy.

Cal Newport (52:16.080)

Like, everything is fun.

Lex Fridman (52:17.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (52:18.520)

Did you read The Pale King?

Lex Fridman (52:20.120)

It goes deep on boredom.

Cal Newport (52:21.540)

It's like uncomfortable.

Lex Fridman (52:22.980)

It's like an uncomfortable meditation on boredom.

Cal Newport (52:25.660)

Like, the characters in that are just driven

Lex Fridman (52:27.680)

to the extremes of, I just bought three books on boredom

Cal Newport (52:31.660)

the other day, so now I'm really interested in this topic.

Lex Fridman (52:35.160)

Because I was anxious about my book launch

Cal Newport (52:37.200)

happening this week.

Lex Fridman (52:38.040)

So I was like, okay, I need something else.

Lex Fridman (52:39.600)

So I have this idea for, I might do it as an article first,

Lex Fridman (52:42.560)

but as a book.

Cal Newport (52:43.600)

Like, okay, I need something cool to be thinking about.

Lex Fridman (52:46.800)

Because I was worried about, like,

Cal Newport (52:48.160)

I don't know if the launch's gonna work, the pandemic,

Lex Fridman (52:50.440)

what's gonna happen, I don't know if it's gonna get there.

Lex Fridman (52:52.160)

So this is exactly what we're talking about.

Lex Fridman (52:54.160)

So I went out and I bought a bunch of books,

Lex Fridman (52:56.040)

and I'm beginning like a whole intellectual exploration.

Lex Fridman (53:00.240)

Well, I think that's one of the profound ideas

Cal Newport (53:03.040)

in deep work that you don't expand on too much

Lex Fridman (53:06.480)

is boredom.

Cal Newport (53:08.440)

Yeah, well, so deep work had a superficial idea

Lex Fridman (53:12.600)

about boredom, which was,

Cal Newport (53:13.880)

I had this chapter called Embrace Boredom,

Lex Fridman (53:16.160)

and a very functionalist idea was basically,

Cal Newport (53:19.800)

you have to have some boredom in your regular schedule,

Lex Fridman (53:21.800)

or your mind is gonna form a Pavlovian connection

Cal Newport (53:25.040)

between as soon as I feel boredom, I get stimuli.

Lex Fridman (53:28.520)

And once it forms that connection,

Cal Newport (53:29.680)

it's never gonna tolerate deep work.

Lex Fridman (53:30.880)

So there's this very pragmatic treatment of boredom

Cal Newport (53:34.320)

of your mind better be used to the idea

Lex Fridman (53:36.720)

that sometimes you don't get stimuli

Cal Newport (53:37.920)

because otherwise you can't write for three hours,

Lex Fridman (53:39.800)

like it's just not gonna tolerate it.

Lex Fridman (53:41.840)

But more recently, what I'm really interested in boredom

Lex Fridman (53:44.120)

is it as a fundamental human drive, right?

Cal Newport (53:47.240)

Because it's incredibly uncomfortable.

Lex Fridman (53:49.760)

And think about the other things

Cal Newport (53:51.000)

that are incredibly uncomfortable, like hunger or thirst,

Lex Fridman (53:53.280)

they serve a really important purpose for a species, right?

Cal Newport (53:56.680)

Like if something is really distressing, there's a reason.

Lex Fridman (53:58.760)

Pain is really uncomfortable

Cal Newport (54:00.000)

because we need to worry about getting injured.

Lex Fridman (54:02.440)

Thirst is really uncomfortable

Cal Newport (54:03.680)

because we need water to survive.

Lex Fridman (54:05.560)

So what's boredom?

Lex Fridman (54:07.000)

Why is that uncomfortable?

Lex Fridman (54:08.680)

And I've been interested in this notion

Cal Newport (54:11.480)

that boredom is about driving us towards productive action.

Lex Fridman (54:17.360)

Like as a species, I mean, think about it,

Lex Fridman (54:19.200)

like what got us to actually take advantage of these brains?

Lex Fridman (54:22.320)

What got us to actually work with fire?

Lex Fridman (54:24.400)

What got us to start shaping stones and the hand axes

Lex Fridman (54:27.680)

and figuring out if we could actually sharpen a stick

Cal Newport (54:29.680)

sharp enough that we could throw it as a melee weapon

Lex Fridman (54:32.320)

or a distance weapon for hunting mammoth, right?

Cal Newport (54:35.240)

Boredom drives us towards action.

Lex Fridman (54:37.920)

So now I'm fascinated by this fundamental action instinct

Cal Newport (54:41.440)

because I have this theory that I'm working on

Lex Fridman (54:43.520)

that we're out of sync with it.

Cal Newport (54:45.760)

Just like we have this drive for hunger,

Lex Fridman (54:47.880)

but then we introduced junk food

Lex Fridman (54:49.040)

and got out of sync with hunger

Lex Fridman (54:50.280)

and it makes us really unhealthy.

Cal Newport (54:52.040)

We have this drive towards action,

Lex Fridman (54:53.400)

but then we overload ourselves

Lex Fridman (54:55.400)

and we have all of these distractions.

Lex Fridman (54:56.760)

And then that causes,

Cal Newport (54:58.560)

it's like a cognitive action obesity type things

Lex Fridman (55:01.440)

because it short circuits this system

Cal Newport (55:02.800)

that wants us to do things,

Lex Fridman (55:03.760)

but we put more things on our plate than we can possibly do

Lex Fridman (55:05.680)

and then we're really frustrated we can't do them

Lex Fridman (55:07.440)

and we're short circuiting all of our wires.

Lex Fridman (55:09.160)

So it all comes back to this question,

Lex Fridman (55:11.520)

well, what would be the ideal sort of amount of stuff

Lex Fridman (55:16.840)

to do and type of things to do?

Lex Fridman (55:18.360)

Like if we wanted to look back at our ancestral environment

Lex Fridman (55:20.600)

and say, if I could just build from scratch,

Lex Fridman (55:23.920)

how much work I do and what I work on

Cal Newport (55:26.480)

to be as in touch with that as like paleo people

Lex Fridman (55:28.600)

are trying to get their diets in touch with that.

Lex Fridman (55:30.080)

And so now I'm just, well, see, this is,

Lex Fridman (55:32.200)

it's something I made up,

Lex Fridman (55:34.000)

but now I'm going deep on it.

Lex Fridman (55:36.160)

And one of my podcast listeners I was talking about

Cal Newport (55:38.080)

on the show and I was like,

Lex Fridman (55:39.280)

well, I get trying to learn about animals and boredom.

Lex Fridman (55:41.400)

And she sent me this cool article

Lex Fridman (55:42.840)

from an animal behaviorist journal

Cal Newport (55:44.560)

about what we know about human boredom versus animal boredom.

Lex Fridman (55:48.080)

So trying to figure out that puzzle

Cal Newport (55:49.960)

is the wave that's high.

Lex Fridman (55:52.240)

So I can get through the wave that's low of like,

Cal Newport (55:54.120)

I don't know about this pandemic book launch.

Lex Fridman (55:55.680)

And my research is stumbling a little bit

Cal Newport (55:59.760)

because of the pandemic.

Lex Fridman (56:00.600)

And so I needed a nice, you know, high.

Lex Fridman (56:03.640)

So there we go, there's a case study.

Lex Fridman (56:05.360)

Well, it's both a case study

Lex Fridman (56:07.480)

and a very interesting set of concepts

Lex Fridman (56:09.320)

because I didn't even realize that it's so simple.

Cal Newport (56:12.280)

I'm one of the people

Lex Fridman (56:14.200)

that has a interesting push and pull dynamic with hunger,

Cal Newport (56:18.960)

trying to understand the hunger with myself.

Lex Fridman (56:21.160)

Like I probably have an unhealthy relationship with food.

Cal Newport (56:24.640)

I don't know, but there's probably a perfect,

Lex Fridman (56:28.440)

that's a nice way to think about diet as action.

Cal Newport (56:32.760)

There's probably an optimal diet response

Lex Fridman (56:36.520)

to the experience that our body's telling us,

Cal Newport (56:40.320)

the signal that our body's sending, which is hunger.

Lex Fridman (56:43.280)

And in that same way, boredom is sending a signal.

Lex Fridman (56:46.840)

And most of our intellectual activities in this world,

Lex Fridman (56:49.960)

our creative activities,

Cal Newport (56:51.800)

are essentially a response to that signal.

Lex Fridman (56:56.640)

Yeah, and think about this analogy

Cal Newport (56:59.680)

that we have this hunger instinct

Lex Fridman (57:01.120)

that junk food short circuits, right?

Cal Newport (57:03.960)

It's like, oh, we'll satisfy that hyper palatably

Lex Fridman (57:06.760)

and it doesn't end up well.

Cal Newport (57:08.280)

Now think about modern attention engineered,

Lex Fridman (57:11.800)

digitally mediated entertainment.

Cal Newport (57:14.560)

We have this boredom instinct.

Lex Fridman (57:16.040)

Oh, we can take care of that

Cal Newport (57:17.800)

with a hyper palatable alternative.

Lex Fridman (57:20.520)

Is that gonna lead to a similar problem?

Lex Fridman (57:22.280)

So I've been fasting a lot lately,

Lex Fridman (57:23.760)

like I'm doing eating once a day.

Cal Newport (57:27.680)

I've been doing that for over a month,

Lex Fridman (57:29.640)

just eating one meal a day and primarily meat.

Lex Fridman (57:33.800)

But it's very, fasting has been incredible for me,

Lex Fridman (57:38.280)

for focus, for wellbeing, for, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (57:41.600)

just for feeling good, okay?

Lex Fridman (57:43.040)

We'll put on a chart what makes me feel good.

Lex Fridman (57:45.680)

And that fasting and eating primarily a meat based diet

Lex Fridman (57:50.720)

makes me feel really good.

Lex Fridman (57:52.480)

And so, but that ultimately what fasting did,

Lex Fridman (57:57.760)

I haven't fasted super long yet,

Cal Newport (57:59.240)

like a seven day diet, which I really like to do.

Lex Fridman (58:02.080)

But even just fasting for a day for 24 hours

Cal Newport (58:05.080)

gets you in touch with your, with the signal.

Lex Fridman (58:09.920)

It's fascinating.

Cal Newport (58:10.760)

Like you get to listen to your,

Lex Fridman (58:12.320)

learn to listen to your body that like,

Cal Newport (58:16.240)

it's okay to be hungry.

Lex Fridman (58:17.680)

It's like a little signal that sends you stuff.

Lex Fridman (58:19.720)

And then I get to listen to how it responds

Lex Fridman (58:24.080)

when I put food in my body.

Cal Newport (58:27.480)

Like, and I get to like, okay, cool.

Lex Fridman (58:30.440)

So like food is a thing that pacifies the signal.

Lex Fridman (58:33.720)

Like it sounds ridiculous, okay?

Lex Fridman (58:35.520)

And you could do that with.

Lex Fridman (58:36.360)

And do different types of food.

Lex Fridman (58:38.280)

It feels different.

Lex Fridman (58:39.120)

So you learn about what your body wants.

Lex Fridman (58:41.640)

For some reason fasting,

Cal Newport (58:44.120)

it's similar to the deep work, embrace boredom.

Lex Fridman (58:47.320)

Fasting allowed me to go into mode of listening,

Cal Newport (58:50.360)

of trying to understand the signal that I could say,

Lex Fridman (58:53.840)

I have an unhealthy appreciation of fruit, okay?

Cal Newport (58:57.840)

I love apples and cherries.

Lex Fridman (58:59.520)

Like, I don't know how to moderate them.

Lex Fridman (59:01.400)

So if you take just same amount of calories,

Lex Fridman (59:03.480)

I don't know calories matter, but they say calories.

Cal Newport (59:05.920)

2000 calories of cherries versus 2000 calories of steak.

Lex Fridman (59:11.520)

If I eat 2000 calories of steak,

Cal Newport (59:13.280)

maybe just a little bit of like green beans or cauliflower,

Lex Fridman (59:17.160)

I'm going to feel really good, fulfilled, focused and happy.

Cal Newport (59:22.360)

If I eat cherries, I'm going to be,

Lex Fridman (59:24.440)

I'm going to wake up behind a dumpster crying with like naked

Lex Fridman (59:28.400)

and like, it's just.

Lex Fridman (59:29.680)

Pits all around.

Cal Newport (59:30.520)

Yeah, with everything.

Lex Fridman (59:31.640)

Over your face, yeah.

Lex Fridman (59:32.480)

And it's just like bloated, just not and unhappy.

Lex Fridman (59:36.400)

And also the mood swings up and down.

Cal Newport (59:39.720)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (59:41.320)

And I'll be much hungrier the next day.

Cal Newport (59:44.720)

Sometimes it takes a couple of days.

Lex Fridman (59:46.240)

But when I introduce carbs into the system, too many carbs,

Cal Newport (59:50.080)

it starts, it's just unhealthy.

Lex Fridman (59:53.040)

I go into this roller coaster as opposed to a calm boat ride

Cal Newport (59:56.040)

along the river in the Amazon or something like that.

Lex Fridman (59:58.560)

And so fasting was the mechanism for me