Based on extensive feedback from listeners and new research, Cal is ready to unveil his new and improved version of the Deep Life Stack, his foundational approach for transforming your life from shallow and distracted to deep and remarkable.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Deep Dive: The Deep Life Stack 2.0...

A viral video making the rounds recently argues that the key to promoting learning is to deliver education in apps that are equally addictive as social media. Cal takes a closer look at the brain science behind this claim and argues why it is fundamentally impossible to beat attention engineered apps at their own game. We shouldn’t, however, give up hope, as our brain has a completely unrelated motivation system, built on a behavior called episodic future thinking (EFT), that we can leverage...

In this episode, Cal reviews what he believes to be the four essential tools for feeling on top of everything you need to do. If you’re missing one of these, you might struggle. If you use all four, you’re probably safe never thinking about “productivity” again. Cal is then joined by friend of the show, New York Times bestselling author David Epstein, to answer listener questions about their personal struggles to take control of their lives.    Below are the questions covered in today's...

Much of the advice we discuss is about how to improve things right now. But what are the right strategies for ensuring that we’re happy about where we are five or even ten years in the future. How do we ensure, in other words, that we won’t look back at major swaths of our lives with regret? In this episode, Cal discusses three big ideas for playing the long game when it comes to cultivating a deep life.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your...

An increasing number of people are suffering from “super distractions” that rise above the level of harmless diversion and instead start to actively hold them back in their life. Some of the common culprits cited include social media, online pornography, and alcohol. In this episode, Cal takes a closer look at what creates super distractions and uses this insight to come up with an effective game plan for fighting back.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their...

After an episode in which Cal reviewed ancient wisdom on cultivating a deeper life, he turns his attention back to more recent advice. Focusing on three of the more unconventional but unambiguously effective ideas that he has proposed in his twenty years of professional writing on these topics.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode: ...

Stoicism seems to be all the rage at the moment. In what ways is it relevant to our question to live deeply in a distracted world? And in what ways is it not? Cal takes a closer look at Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and discusses his relationship with the philosophy more generally.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode: ...

Knowledge workers increasingly describe themselves as exhausted and burnt out. Why is this happening? In this episode, Cal argues that some of the obvious answers aren’t enough to explain the phenomenon. The real answer is both less expected and perhaps more fixable than we expect. Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia Deep...

Do we need to move to a ranch in the middle of nowhere to take control of our technology habits? Cal argues that these types of extreme examples are counter-productive, making it seem like real changes are close to impossible. He offers instead an alternative approach based on zero-based budgeting your technological life.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s...

In this episode, Cal visits eight of the most influential books in personal productivity, identifying for each a single idea that ended up most resonating both with his own work and the culture more generally.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep Question: What productivity ideas from other authors are the...

Change is unavoidable. You can either fear it or learn to master it. In this interview episode, Cal talks with longtime friend of the show, Brad Stulberg, about his new book, “Master of Change.”    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    INTERVIEW: How to Master Change (with Brad Stulberg)...

Too many people believe that the New Year is the right time to undertake major improvements to your life. In this episode, Cal argues that it is instead right now, at the beginning of fall, that is the best time to turn over a new page. He lays out a detailed 4-month journey through the deep stack that will have you done with a major overhaul by the time everyone else is just getting started early next year.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get...

When it comes to generating fantastic ideas – the type that can make your career – you don’t have to passively wait for inspiration to strike. You can, instead, *hack* the creative process to increase the odds of coming up with something great. In this episode, Cal explores one of the more powerful forms of “creativity hacking”: making use of strange locations. Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link:...

In celebration of the newly released *second* edition of the Time Block Planner, Cal provides some additional expert tips for getting the most out of a time blocking discipline before answering listener questions on the general topic of time management. He closes by discussing the recent claim that phones are ruining peoples’ ability to watch movies.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link:...

One of the most popular (and widely forgotten) slogans of the ancient world was Festina Lente, or, “Make Haste Slowly.” In this episode, Cal looks deeper at what this phrase meant, and in doing so uncovers an ancient version of slow productivity.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep Question: What can Octavian...

Do you ever feel completely overwhelmed by everything you have to do? The writer Oliver Burkeman recently experimented with an unexpected response to this common sensation: he decided to work much less. In more detail, he wanted to see what would happen if he reacted to overload by restricting his work to only four hours per day. In this episode, Cal reviews what Burkeman discovered in this experiment and what it teaches the rest of us.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode...

Do history’s greatest thinkers care about time management? In today’s episode, Cal analyzes the system that the mathematician and philosopher, Kurt Godel, used to structure his days, weeks, and years to produce meaningful work over a long period of time.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep Question: How do...

Sometimes the most effective way to contain your workload is to simply declare how long you’re willing to work and then refuse to violate your pledge. In this episode, Cal revisits this “fixed-schedule productivity” strategy, which he first introduced way back in 2008.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep...

In Cal’s new “deep life stack” the first layer toward finding more meaning is to develop discipline. Why does this come first? In this episode, Cal dives deeper into the importance of starting with discipline.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep Question: Why does cultivating the deep life start with...

Over the past twenty years, “productivity” has come to be synonymous with using digital tools to speed up non-essential parts of knowledge work. As cal argues in this episode, this “cybernetic” approach has proven to be a complete failure. He explores why speeding up isn’t working and what this teaches us about what we need to do instead.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video...

Some of the most interesting and impactful people in the world build their work around a commitment to doing only a few things very well. No one remembers that it took Newton decades to finish The Principia, they just know that he wrote a book that changed science forever. In this episode, Cal defines some concrete laws for successfully implementing a shift toward doing less – but doing what you do better – in your own professional life.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode...

In this episode, Cal is joined by Laura Vanderkam (author of Tranquility by Tuesday and co-host of the Best of Both Worlds podcast). Cal and Laura tackle a collection of your questions about the struggle to make time for the various things that matter most, from your career to your family to your hobbies. Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today’s episode: ...

How do you leave a life of superficial distraction and cultivate something deeper? In today’s episode, Cal describes “The Deep Life Stack,” an approach to cultivating a deep life that starts with overhauling the person before making the big decisions.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s Deep Question: How do I...

Productivity YouTube is filled with breathless videos about optimizing systems and squeezing every ounce of speed out of your common habits. But does all of this efficiency really end up improving the quality of the most important things you produce? In this episode, Cal takes a deeper look at the different ways that productivity systems and tools can help your professional life, separating the boring but effective from the exciting but over-hyped.    Below are the questions covered in...

The art of thinking – plain, old-fashioned, hard concentration on useful ideas – is rapidly vanishing as our culture recasts humans as the custodians and recipients of digital computation. In this episode, Cal explains why this is a problem and what we should do in response.    Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvo    Video from today’s episode:  youtube.com/calnewportmedia    Today’s...