“You can’t be busy and frenetic and bouncing off the walls with 100 projects if you’re obsessed about doing something really well.”

— Cal Newport

Cal Newport is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University, where he is also a founding member of the Center for Digital Ethics. In addition to his academic work, Newport is a New York Times bestselling author who writes for a general audience about the intersection of technology, productivity, and culture. His books have sold millions of copies and been translated into over forty languages. He is also a contributor to The New Yorker and hosts the popular Deep Questions podcast.

His new book is Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

Please enjoy!

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Watch the interview on YouTube here.

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Want to hear the last time Cal Newport was on this show? Listen here to our conversation in which we discussed lessons from Steve Martin, living the deep life, how Cal secured his first book deal as an unproven 20-year-old, honing the funny bone for humor writing, mastering slow productivity despite 21st-century distractions, crafting the lives we desire, considering the spiritual as an exercise of meticulous craft and creation, Cal’s 30-day digital minimalism declutter, and much more.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

• Connect with Cal Newport:

Website | Blog | YouTube

• Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport | Amazon
• The Deep Questions Podcast
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport | Amazon
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport | Amazon
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport | Amazon
• A World Without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever by Cal Newport | Amazon
• Cal Newport — The Eternal Pursuit of Craftsmanship, the Deep Life, Slow Productivity, and a 30-Day Digital Minimalism Challenge | The Tim Ferriss Show #568
• Scent of a Woman | Prime Video
• Audio-Technica ATH-M50xSTS-USB StreamSet Streaming Headset | Amazon
• It’s Time to Dismantle the Technopoly | The New Yorker
• Standing Up to Technology | Cal Newport
• Steve Jobs iPhone 2007 Presentation | YouTube
• The Social Media Conundrum and Teen Mental Health | WCAP Counseling
• Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. | The New York Times
• Don’t Quit Social Media. Put It to Work for Your Career Instead. | The New York Times
• 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly | The Technium
• Amish Studies: Technology | Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College
• After 60 Years, Scientists Uncover How Thalidomide Produced Birth Defects | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
• Termite Fishing | The Jane Goodall Institute USA
• Peter Gregory “Cicadas” (Clip) | Silicon Valley
• Smart TV | Wikipedia
• Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin | Amazon
• It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity by Cal Newport | The New Yorker
• The Dartmouth Jack-o-Lantern
• Seth’s Blog
• Now Playing | Oppenheimer
• The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman by Timothy Ferriss | Amazon
• From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks | Tim Ferriss
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss | Amazon
• Email Newsletter by Tim Ferriss | 5-Bullet Friday
• The Learning Annex | Wikipedia
• Jamie Foxx on Workout Routines, Success Habits, and Untold Hollywood Stories | The Tim Ferriss Show #124
• Jamie Foxx Part 2 – Bringing the Thunder | The Tim Ferriss Show #167
• The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby | Amazon
• More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby | Amazon
• The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie | Amazon
• The Principia: The Authoritative Translation and Guide: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton | Amazon
• In The Heights (Stage) | Lin-Manuel Miranda
• An American Musical | Hamilton
• Freestyle Love Supreme | Lin-Manuel Miranda
• Georgia O’Keeffe: Lake George History | Lake George
• Uraninite: A Radioactive Mineral and Ore of Uranium | Geology
• Sistine Chapel | Vatican Museums
• The Year in Quiet Quitting | The New Yorker
• On Running an Office Like a Factory | Cal Newport
• How to Implement a Kanban Card System | GembaDocs
• Alex Gendler: The Myth of Sisyphus | TED-Ed
• To Make Email Easier We Must Make it Harder | Cal Newport
• Filling the Void: Thoughts on Learning and Karma | Tim Ferriss
• Knowledge Workers are Bad at Working (and Here’s What to Do About It…) | Cal Newport
• An Exhausting Year in (and Out of) the Office | The New Yorker
• The Steve Martin Method: A Master Comedian’s Advice for Becoming Famous | Cal Newport
• How to Peel Hard-Boiled Eggs without Peeling | Tim Ferriss
• Skin a Watermelon Party Trick | Mark Rober
• Shed Your Money Taboos | Derek Sivers
• The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton | Amazon
• The Firm: A Novel by John Grisham | Amazon
• A Time to Kill: A Jake Brigance Novel by John Grisham | Amazon
• Should This Meeting Have Been an Email? | Cal Newport
• Continuous Partial Attention | Linda Stone
• Your Digital HQ | Slack
• Free Online Appointment Scheduling Software | Calendly
• Slack Is the Right Tool for the Wrong Way to Work | The New Yorker
• Expand Your Reach | Zoom
• How to Have a More Productive Year | The New Yorker
• Ouroboros | Wikipedia
• Fordism | Wikipedia
• The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done by Peter Drucker | Amazon
• The Curse of the Diaeresis | The New Yorker
• Feral Super Pigs Are Raising Hell on the Canadian Prairies | The Economist
• The New York Times Building | Wikipedia
• The Woman Who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave | The New Yorker
• Here’s the Real Reason Yakuza Members Chop off Their Pinky Fingers | VT
• The Paris Review
• Ezra Klein Leaves Vox for The New York Times | The New York Times
• Jiro Dreams of Sushi | Prime Video
• Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media | Noam Chomsky
• Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis | Amazon
• The Weekly Dish by Andrew Sullivan | Substack
• The Incredible Shrinking Podcast Industry | Semafor
• The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You Down | The New York Times
• Intro to Slow Productivity (RE: John McPhee) | Cal Newport
• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Letters to Shareholders | Peter Fisk
• “Seven-Minute Abs!” (Clip) | There’s Something About Mary

SHOW NOTES

• [06:14] Unforced Errors: The Internet Story.
• [09:41] Techno-selectionism.
• [18:06] Why YouTube and podcasts aren’t ideal bedfellows.
• [23:03] Amish technology and Steve Martin.
• [28:07] What prompted Cal to write Slow Productivity?
• [31:35] Becoming a better writer through blogging.
• [36:54] The benefits of obsessing over quality.
• [40:54] How did Cal decide to identify himself as a writer?
• [52:02] People who exemplify slow productivity.
• [58:45] Trade-offs on the path to 21st-century slow productivity.
• [1:03:16] Push systems vs. pull systems.
• [1:04:34] Quota systems.
• [1:06:08] Why slow productivity isn’t a zero-sum game.
• [1:09:33] Language that clarifies.
• [1:13:17] Sender filters.
• [1:16:20] What people might miss about Slow Productivity‘s message.
• [1:21:24] How Cal defines productivity.
• [1:25:36] Derek Sivers and money as a neutral indicator of value.
• [1:28:34] Contemporary slow productivity champions.
• [1:33:18] Asynchronous vs. real-time conversations.
• [1:35:51] Making group scheduling less hellish.
• [1:40:13] Cal’s problem with Frederick Winslow Taylor.
• [1:42:01] How The New Yorker maintains its old-timey charm where other publications fail.
• [1:49:05] Cal’s dream publications.
• [1:51:07] Mental models for cultivating a slow productivity mindset.
• [1:56:27] The consequences of playing the algorithm game.
• [2:03:14] The renewed viability of newsletters.
• [2:08:03] Parting thoughts.

MORE CAL NEWPORT QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“You can’t be busy and frenetic and bouncing off the walls with 100 projects if you’re obsessed about doing something really well.”
— Cal Newport

“As you get better at something, the more say you get over the way your life unfolds.”
— Cal Newport

“You’ve got to just not want to get started until you can’t help but get started. And I think that’s frustrating for a lot of the internet generation because it takes a really long time.”
— Cal Newport

“There was no hustle culture. That’s the interesting thing. When you go back and study people producing things of real value, using their brain, they were smart and they were dedicated and they worked really hard, but they didn’t hustle and they didn’t work 10-hour days day after day. They didn’t work all-out, year-round. They didn’t push, push, push until this thing was done. It was a more natural variation. They had less on their plate at the same time, and they glued it all together by obsessing over quality.”
— Cal Newport

“There’s nothing more quixotic than the overburdened worker who is trying to not say no, but get the person who’s giving them the work to voluntarily agree to not give them the work. It never works. If someone’s trying to get you to do something, and you’re like, ‘Well, I guess I could, but I am pretty busy,’ they’re never going to say, ‘You sound busy. Don’t do this.’ They’re like, ‘Yeah? Good. Well, I’m glad you can do it. Here you go. Get this off my plate.’”
— Cal Newport

“Slow productivity produces good stuff. It doesn’t just make the workers happier. It doesn’t just make you happier. You produce better stuff. I mean, your company has more profit. Your clients are happier. You can charge more for the services you offer, so it’s not zero sum. It’s more win-win than anything else.”
— Cal Newport

“Busyness doesn’t produce high value.”
— Cal Newport

“Don’t try to convince people of new things. Explain to them what they already know in a way that lets them take better action.”
— Cal Newport

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