1446: Don't Know What To Do With Your Life AND Deep Habits: Pursue Clarity Before Pursuing Results by Cal Newport

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Time for strong performance with the new Galaxy Watch Ultra.

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER_00]: No matter if you are an opportunity athlete, training junkie,

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_00]: a free time athlete or a real sports cannon.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_00]: And also no matter if you want to jog a round, run a trail marathon,

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_00]: dance through the night or follow the Tour de France.

[00:00:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Get the best out of yourself with the new Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra with Galaxy AI. Let's go!

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_02]: With your life? Seek Bargains by Cal Newport of calnewport.com

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_02]: A Career Crossroads

[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_02]: In the early winter of 2004, I was a senior at Dartmouth College and in the fortunate

[00:00:43] [SPEAKER_02]: position of having two good job offers. The first was from Microsoft. It paid by 2004

[00:00:50] [SPEAKER_02]: standards about as much as you could possibly earn right out of college, around $85,000

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_02]: per year. The second offer was to join the computer science PhD program at MIT.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_02]: It paid considerably less, around $28,000 in stipend, but promised near complete freedom.

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_02]: MIT is quite unstructured and entrepreneurial. I had no clear preference for which job to take,

[00:01:14] [SPEAKER_02]: they both seemed exciting. But in my effort to make a decision,

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I stumbled on a key tool in the Career Craftsman Toolbox.

[00:01:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Follow a Lifestyle, Not a Passion

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_02]: In my last post, I argued that the right way to build a remarkable life is to first identify

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_02]: the traits that define your vision of remarkable, then pursue only jobs that will reward you with

[00:01:36] [SPEAKER_02]: these traits if and when you master rare and valuable skills. But here's the snag, what if

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_02]: you don't know what these traits are? This is a problem common to students and recent

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_02]: who have not yet had enough life experience to figure out what's possible and what resonates.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_02]: This was also my situation as I pondered my competing offers in the fall of 2004.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_02]: At the time, I was ambitious and optimistic and had a great sense of potential,

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_02]: but I was also clueless about how best to direct this energy. This is what I did.

[00:02:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Both jobs, I determined, would reward me well if I built up career capital by mastering

[00:02:15] [SPEAKER_02]: rare and valuable skills. At Microsoft, if you stand out, you gain the ability to acquire some

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_02]: desirable career traits. If you make it to project leader on a hot product, for example,

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_02]: you can have impact, recognition, creativity, and low-level autonomy, in other words,

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_02]: freedom from a direct boss dictating your day-to-day. In an academic track, however,

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I determined that mastering rare and valuable skills would offer an even wider variety of

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_02]: traits to choose from. If I made a name in the world of research, not only is impact,

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02]: recognition, and creativity available, but so is a much, much higher degree of autonomy.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Successful professors are able to craft any number of exotic work setups.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: It also would allow for the possibility of taking a leave to start a company,

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_02]: as well as continuing with my writing. I had just submitted the manuscript for my first book.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know which traits I ultimately wanted in my career, but I appreciated that MIT would

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_02]: offer me more options for the career capital I generated, so I turned down Bill Gates and

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_02]: went to work, ironically, in the Bill Gates Tower at MIT. The value rule.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_02]: The main idea captured by this story is simple. When in doubt about which specific

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_02]: desirable traits you want to pursue in your working life, choose the available job option

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_02]: that offers the greatest variety of these traits in exchange for career capital.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Keep in mind the availability of these traits are irrelevant if you don't first build up capital

[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_02]: by mastering rare and valuable skills. No one gives away such value just because you feel

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_02]: passionate about it, but as you advance in this quest to become so good they can't ignore you

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_02]: and along the way add sophistication to your value system, it's likely that you will,

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_02]: as I do now, appreciate the greater flexibility this rule adds to your career crafting process.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Deep Habits. Pursue clarity before pursuing results. Also by Cal Newport of CalNewport.com.

[00:04:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Shallow September. I track my deep work hours using a weekly tally,

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_02]: so I have a good sense of how my commitment to depth varies over time.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_02]: A trend I've noticed is that my deep work rate hits a low point around this time of year.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_02]: The obvious explanation is that the start of the fall semester adds extra time constraints,

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_02]: but I don't think that's the whole story. My deep work tends to increase as the fall continues,

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_02]: even though my teaching commitments also increase during this period, once there are problem sets

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_02]: and exams to grade. In thinking about this mystery, I've begun to better understand a

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_02]: crucial but often ignored aspect of working deeply on important things. The necessity of

[00:04:52] [SPEAKER_02]: clarity. My Research Cycle. In my life as a distributed algorithm researcher, I experience

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: a rapid-fire set of important research deadlines that begin in the late winter and end mid-summer.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_02]: If all goes well, this period clears out my research larder, leaving me by mid-July,

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_02]: ready to start a new research cycle. This reality explains why my deep work

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_02]: dips around this period. It's not clear what I should be working on.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_02]: When I have a well-developed problem and I have a sense of what the solution should look

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_02]: like, and I can feel that my attacks are getting closer to the core, it's easy to

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_02]: accumulate hour after hour of deep thinking. By contrast, when I only have a hazy idea for

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_02]: a type of problem that might be interesting, but I'm not sure exactly how to define it,

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_02]: or if it's something I can solve, it's easy to push aside deep hours for other,

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_02]: more concrete concerns. In the fall, in other words, I'm rich in haziness and poor

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_02]: in clarity. There's nothing wrong with this. All projects require this haziness stage.

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_02]: High output rates, therefore, will force you into this stage frequently.

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Prioritizing Clarity

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02]: The conclusion I've been developing is that I need to think more systematically about

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_02]: minimizing the time to get from haziness to the level of clarity that accelerates depth.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_02]: In more detail, when in a period of haziness, I'm becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_02]: that much of the time that I might usually spend on traditional deep work, concentrating

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_02]: without distraction on a well-defined problem, will instead be spent trying to clarify hazy

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_02]: ideas to a point where such depth is possible. In my particular line of work, the following

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_02]: activities seem to help. Agree to give a talk on the topic. Go visit or invite to visit a

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_02]: collaborator to bounce around the idea. Set up a bounded series of meetings or phone calls to see

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_02]: if the idea can be kneaded into something pliable. Read, read and read related work

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_02]: and capture the notes in an annotated bib, a tip that has arguably doubled my research

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And finally, once ready, spend a half day or so trying to write up a problem document that

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_02]: captures a clear description of the problem, a collection of simple results and a list of some

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_02]: next results that seem promising and tractable. This is like a business plan for a research

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_02]: problem, and usually something I like to develop before committing to long-term time investment.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_02]: The specifics of these activities will differ depending on your job, but the big idea here

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_02]: is that by dedicating some deep work time to seeking project clarity when projects are hazy,

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_02]: you'll end up with more quality results in the long run. You just listened to the posts titled

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't Know What To Do With Your Life? Seek Bargains and Deep Habits Pursue Clarity Before

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Pursuing Results, both by Cal Newport of calnewport.com. This show is sponsored by

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_02]: BetterHelp. We're all marveled at how quickly kids learn and that sense of wonderment they

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_02]: have while doing it, but as adults sometimes we lose that curiosity. Well, if there's something

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: you've been wanting to learn, know that therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_02]: because your back-to-school era can come at any age. And make no mistake, therapy is for

[00:08:07] [SPEAKER_02]: everyone. Whether or not you've been through significant trauma, therapy can be a great tool

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_02]: for setting boundaries, learning new skills and ultimately becoming the best version of

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_02]: your self. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online,

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_02]: designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_02]: questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_02]: additional charge. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash

[00:08:37] [SPEAKER_02]: work daily today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, h-e-l-p dot com slash

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_02]: work daily. And a big thanks to Cal who wrote this post today. He typically writes about

[00:08:50] [SPEAKER_02]: learning hacks and productivity, so you're going to hear him narrated pretty frequently

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_02]: over on Optimal Living Daily. So you can check that show out for a lot more from him.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Cal is the author of the books Deep Work and A World Without Email. And you can learn more

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_02]: about those books. Plus check out his blog, other media and podcast over on his site,

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_02]: calnewport.com. That's calnewport.com. But that is it for me today here at Optimal Startup Daily.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I thank you so much as always for being here and also for subscribing to the show and sharing

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_02]: it with others when you get a chance. So have a great rest of your day and I'll see you back

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_02]: here tomorrow, where your optimal life awaits.