Kind: captions
Language: en
deep work itself is a skill
that has to be trained
but by doing that and really being
conscious to maximize the pleasure of
each part of the breath cycle i'm there
with my breath and there with the
pleasure of just breathing
we have no gene for science science is
an acquired case yeah you gotta sit down
and have butt problem you gotta sit down
and sweat blood sometimes
it really is much more like playing the
guitar that if you haven't been
practicing you shouldn't expect
that's going to sound very good
[Applause]
[Music]
how can people get into
flow
assuming that they like carve out
they're they're not doing quick checks
residue isn't the problem how can they
get themselves into a state of flow yeah
well i mean in general we're really bad
at figuring out how to get a good return
on human brains
and one of the reasons why we're so bad
is that we've adopted this workflow when
we had low friction communication
electronic communication tools come
along we adopted this workflow of let's
just have a constant unstructured
conversation
like let's just do what we would do when
it's the three of us in the savannah
hunting the mastodon we're just you know
talking as needed on the men hey go
there go there what do you see over
there we try to scale this into our
companies the problem is that requires
that the service this ongoing
unstructured conversation you have to be
constantly checking in on these
communication channels and everyone is
feeling the same
fingers on the blackboard that you're
feeling because it you can't do anything
else with your brain if you have to
service these conversations so so to go
to your your follow-up question so let's
say you've
you've somehow been able to
find some space from this like how do
you actually then
make the most of these deep work
sessions well something i notice is a
lot of people who are good at this have
rituals
so they always have a ritual about how
they get started examples well like for
darwin for example like d darwin v
darwin charles darwin uh he built this
path
through his estate the downhouse outside
of london right and he called it a sand
walk because it was paved with sand and
and he had it go past the most scenic
parts
of his property and the way that he
would get ready to do his work on the
origin of species every day is that he
did a certain number of laps of this
and in fact so he would start doing the
laps and this would start easing his
brain into like okay let me get it in
the thinking mode let me clear out the
other let me clear out the residue let
me start loading up into my ram like
what it was i was thinking about and you
had a set number of laps he wanted to do
and so he would lay out that many rocks
on the path so that he wouldn't have to
waste mental resources keeping track of
the count
and every time he would pass by the
rocks he'd kick another one
off and so when he kicked the last rock
off he would then detour into the study
and now i'm doing my whatever doing my
writing doing my reading or whatever
that's actually really common
a lot of deep workers have some sort of
ritual like that something they do do
you have one
yeah i mean it depends on what type of
deep work i'm doing like what location
i'm using but like in my in my house for
example i have a study where i do my
work and it's different than where i
keep my computer
and so i had a library table made
because i've spent a lot of time in
university so i have an old-fashioned
library table with library lights and my
my books in the
mahogany
bookcase next to it and so when i work
in there there's a whole ritual clearing
everything off and getting the lights
right
making it seem like it seemed back in
the day when you're in the the room in
the library as an undergraduate studying
or something like that to me that puts
me
in the mindset let's start doing deep
work and so those type of rituals are
important so setting aside iq for a
second if you had to identify what in
your life has been the personality trait
that has helped you the most
what trait would you put your finger on
gee that's tough well aristotle once
said that all of man's problems stem
from the fact that he cannot sit in a
chair still for hours in other words we
get distracted
how many of us can sit in a chair and
single-mindedly work out one problem
no after a few minutes we begin to get
fidgety we want to turn on the tv set
and listen to music or whatever
but uh yeah irish arnold said all of
men's problems can be consent for the
fact that we get distracted so i think
one of the things i teach my kids is
when i teach physics to students
i teach them that you have to have butt
power
you have to have the ability to sit down
because what i tell the kids
sit down
work on a physics problem till blood
comes out of your forehead
you see we have no gene for physics
there's no gene for science we have a
gene for gossip we have a gene for
superstition we have a gene for jumping
to conclusions and making fools of
ourselves
we have no gene for science science is
an acquired taste there's no gene for it
therefore when i teach kids how to
become a scientist
yeah you got to sit down and have butt
power you got to sit down and in a quiet
room with a book and sweat blood
sometimes
and was that something that came easily
to you or it's an acquired taste
[Laughter]
and that was all driven you just had so
much interest in past like broccoli you
have to sit down grit your teeth and do
it i realized every time i was
struggling with all these equations
there was that pot of gold out there i
wanted to understand einstein i wanted
to understand the quantum theory i
wanted to be the cutting edge of science
even if it meant that i had to
you know not go play outside i had to
sit in my chair and simply crank out the
math how do people get
good at deep work itself
and
your early books were a lot about like
how to be effective at studying and you
were saying you thought it was just so
bizarre that people don't try to
optimize their ability to study yeah so
one how do we optimize our ability to do
that and then how do we begin to carve
out that space to really be successful
at going deep
yeah so so deep work which is just my
term for
concentrating very intensely right where
you give something intense focused
without distraction so you don't glance
at things
no phone no browser tabs you're just
focused in
this skill is essentially the answer to
the question that my readers had about
so good they can't ignore you which was
okay how do i become so good i can't be
ignored and in a lot of fields this
ability to concentrate very intensely
first of all that's necessary for
deliberate practice deliberate practice
requires you to be in a state of deep
work
and deep work is also just what allows
you to produce very effectively if you
want to use your skills to produce high
quality work you want to produce it
at a high quantity for time spent very
concentrated effort
is what's important but but what i
discovered working on that book is that
it's a skill that has to be trained so
it's a little bit circular
if you're good at deep work you can pick
up skills very quickly but deep work
itself is a skill
that has to be trained
which a lot of people think of it more
like a habit like flossing their teeth
right i know how to do deep work i just
don't do enough of it but it really is
trained it really is much more like
playing the guitar that if you haven't
been practicing you shouldn't expect
that's going to sound very good
[Applause]
[Music]
meditation is one of the most important
things that i've added to my daily
routine i'm not joking when i say that
i would say it saved my life that's
probably a bit of hyperbole but whoa did
it keep me from getting myself into real
emotional trouble in the hardest periods
of my life and the most stressful where
there was the most on the line it was so
comforting to know that i was never more
than 45 minutes away from total
equanimity and the only way for me to
achieve that is through meditation so
meditation is a critical part of my
daily practice it is really simple so i
do what's called just breathe meditation
so i'm going to take my shoes off here
any couch will do anything that's
comfortable any chair wherever you're
going to be comfy and i sit just in a
nice simple
cross-legged style in a position that i
think i can maintain usually i can
maintain sitting like this for about 20
to 30 minutes
before my feet start going numb uh and i
found for whatever reason that when i
touch my hands together
that it creates this sense of like the
the energy looping i don't know that
feels so silly to say but it was one
where i started out doing this and then
i just found myself wanting to do this
to rest my hands not interlaced or
anything just really simply
in my lap i sit comfortably i don't over
try to you know
have like really strict posture i
actually find the more i sit up the
harder it is to breathe from my
diaphragm so i have a slight curve to my
spine
i sit super comfortably
and
then i just breathe now
the key thing for me is these bad boys
so i'm not sponsored by a headphone
company but
having the headphones over my ears that
really blocks everything out i listen to
the sounds of nature so i'll either do
uh if it's a rainy day outside i'll do a
thunderstorm if it's a nice day outside
i'll do the sound of waves crashing if
it's really early and so i sort of get a
pic what kind of day i'll usually do a
thunderstorm there's something about the
thunderstorm that i find
really locks me in i think it's because
the actual sound of the thunder comes at
random intervals and so that reminds me
to be really present with my breath to
not let my mind wander or start thinking
about things you're really just trying
to breathe
um i do a simple four-part cycle that i
learned from mark devine
i do it differently than he does
what he does is a four equal parts
breath so you do an inhale an inhale
hold
an exhale and an exhale hold and i found
that by trying to make those four equal
parts which is known as box breathing um
that i felt a little out of breath which
was not making me relax and so finally i
just said what if i tried to maximize
the pleasure of each part of the cycle
so i would hold the inhale hold for
instance for only as long as it felt
good i would exhale in a way that felt
good so for me it's just a release i
don't try to time it or prolong it
and then i found for whatever reason the
exhale hold was actually the most
pleasurable part of the cycle so on the
inhale i might only hold
i don't know four seconds three or four
seconds it's really quite brief
but on the exhale i found myself holding
for 10 15 seconds
and
again i would just start breathing again
the moment
it stopped being pleasurable to hold
that exhale
and by doing that and so the the length
of time may vary as i'm doing the
meditation but by doing that and really
being conscious to maximize the pleasure
of each part of the breath cycle then
i'm not my mind isn't wandering i'm
there with my breath i'm there with the
pleasure of just breathing
and by doing that
sometimes if my mind is really going
crazy it might take me you know five or
ten minutes to get into a zone when i
first started and my life was incredibly
stressful like i said it could take up
to 45 minutes for me to finally get lost
in my breath
but the fact that i knew that if i just
sat there long enough
doing that just bringing my thoughts
back to the breath every time they would
wander back to the breath back to the
breath nothing complicated about it
that i was good
[Applause]
[Music]
all right everybody
one of the most important things that
you were ever going to do
in your routine is to get your diet
right
i think that this
outside of having a loving relationship
with my wife i think my diet is the most
important thing that i do
and focusing on
loving relationships
diet and sleep like those are going to
be your top three things so getting your
food right is critically important
because
this is the easiest way for me to anchor
people around why diet is so important
so first of all you literally are what
you eat literally at a cellular level
you are made of the things you consume
so every cell in your body is from
something that you ate so let that one
sink in
and then on top of that the largest
nerve in your body known as the vagus
nerve 85 of the signals traveling on
that nerve are from your body to your
brain not your brain to your body so we
all have this illusion that we are this
consciousness that controls everything
when in reality the two work in concert
and that the vast majority of the
signaling
is coming from the body so your
microbiome is a huge thing and when you
disregulate your microbiome by eating
things that cause disruption
then
you're now getting all these signals
that your brain is forced to interpret
okay this is one of the read lisa
feldman barrett's book how emotions are
made all of the things that you feel
whether it's happiness sad um anger
frustration hopelessness all of that
stuff is your brain interpreting the
signals that it's getting from your body
from the outside world and once you
understand that emotions come from the
body first and then your brain goes hey
the last time that i got these
sensations from all over my body what
did that mean and then your body a sorry
your brain excuse me assigns
a story
to that feeling and now all of a sudden
when you have a dysregulated microbiome
and the microbiome is crying out for
this that or the other all of a sudden
your brain adds a story and i'll give
you an easy one anxiety in my own life i
will tell you that i've struggled
profoundly with anxiety only to at first
think this is entirely in my head and
then finally to realize no no this is
largely how largely
this is again a hypothesis but i have a
god
that this is
anxiety is probably
your diet
and then
what you're thinking about meaning
what you think about is stepping on the
gas but if there's no gas in the gas
tank then you're not going to go
anywhere and by disregulating your
microbiome through the things you eat
you put gas in the gas tank of anxiety
and then your thoughts step on it boom
there's plenty of gas and now you're off
to the races so i'm not saying that your
thoughts aren't important or what's
going on in your life isn't important to
triggering anxiety i'm saying it won't
escalate the way that it does
if you
are eating a diet that keeps your gut
flora
nice and happy so that's something i
think a lot about emotion should never
stop you from achieving your goals so if
you feel stuck overwhelmed low on
confidence you're beating yourself up or
you feel like you're not deserving of
the things you want in life i have
something to tell you emotions are not
facts and you should never let them hold
you back and yet i find that people do
this all the time they mistake that
feeling for objective truth and it sends
them this downward spiral
reaching greater levels of success in
life means knowing how to use your brain
and if you're in a rut right now or if
you've been struggling for a while to
achieve your goals then i've pulled a
class from impact theory university to
help you get back on track it's called
six steps to getting unstuck and it's
for anyone who wants to know the exact
steps to achieving big goals when life
puts challenges in your way if you want
to check it out go to
unstuck.impacttheory.com
to get access it's a free preview
alright guys i'll see you on the inside
now let's get back to today's episode
do you feel like when you
are on like right now right this is the
recording
do you feel like you've built that skill
set
um well so i on this thing in particular
the ability to stay focused and to let
go i am i am constantly practicing but
yeah i think that i am pretty good at it
i'm pretty good at it though because i
do things in my life all the time that i
look at as practice and one that i'll
give people that that this is
you want to talk about something that's
overlooked and a big part of this is
because
um i failed to turn siri off so uh that
my bad so she may every time i say h-e-y
she's going to pop up um so
growing up in the 80s video games were
frowned upon parents were like you're
going to rot your brain and all this
stuff and then of course we watched you
know people generate enormous fortunes
it eclipsed the film industry is just it
has become a beast of such untold
proportions i don't think people
understand really how big video games
are
and part of the reason is there's
there's real neurological training
that's going on so i play first-person
shooters or i should say i play a first
person shooter called destiny 2. [ __ ]
love it man it is so much fun i have a
ton of fun with lisa and my sister and
we're a fire team it's amazing so
there's that right the family bonding
but the part that i use all the time is
i know on the other end of that is a 14
year old kid in ohio that wants to kill
me and then tea bag my body
and that is so frustrating and it's so
obnoxious and it [ __ ] literally
lights a fire so in those moments i'm
like this is a perfect time because if
you elevate like if you click into fight
or flight if you let yourself get
panicky then your performance goes down
so it's like
literally every weekend
for
three hours a day i'm in this mode of
i'm practicing staying calm and what
could be a sort of fight-or-flight
moment
the cool thing about video games is like
i'm constantly asking myself okay this
whole practice idea how do you get the
stakes up because when there's no stakes
then you don't have the real emotional
reaction that you would and it's
actually dealing with the emotional
reaction is the very [ __ ] thing you
need to practice so you've said that
there's a big difference between
repetition and deliberate practice so
how
and
even i like a lot of what i do is
probably a little too close to just
repetition
and it's the far too rare moment where i
really stop and think about weight what
piece of this can i break off
and do until i'm good at that piece and
then reinsert it back into the hole so
i'm not just
repeating it yeah
so how can people conceptualize the
difference between repetition and actual
deliberate practice right because
repetition after an initial point when
you're completely new to something
repetition does not make you better
and this is not it's not obvious right i
mean there's actually this interesting
performance psychology literature
starting the 70s was trying to really
understand
how do people become masters at things
and repetition was one of the
hypotheses maybe you do it a lot turns
out that's not the case
other people thought it was
understanding the world maybe building
up the right mental models that's not
the case it's deliberate practice and so
what's the difference deliberate
practice stretches you
you stretch yourself
past where you're comfortable
with the just like you do with a muscle
right you have to tire out the muscle
exhaust it if you're gonna if you're
gonna get growth right but it's very
uncomfortable stretching is
uncomfortable
and that's why people don't do it but
like when i was trying to upgrade my
writing so my first three books i wrote
as a student and they were student
advice books uh paperback
and i wanted to be an idea book
hardcover idea book writer
i kind of went down to the wilderness
for a while and say i have to get better
at writing and what i was discovering
was like just writing on my blog for
example wasn't stretching me enough and
so i said i'm going to write for
magazines i found the magazine where you
know they paid for commissions and there
was an editor who was going to accept or
reject it so now i could deliberately
practice i had the stretch to try to get
my my assignments accepted and published
you know by this magazine right it
wasn't just repeating what i was doing
before now i was trying to stretch
myself and i did that for a year
and it made a big difference
and so that's deliberate practice
speaking was always the thing that i got
early wins in so even when i was young i
was able to
talk fairly rapidly but
ultimately you're getting to the point
where you've maxed out your natural
ability and now you're trying to push it
you're trying to go beyond
and that got hard as hell for me and i
spent a lot of hours practicing
practicing always at the edge of my
competence which the real danger being
at the edge of your competence if you
don't have a growth mindset is it makes
you feel badly about yourself which
makes you want to go into the
psychological immune system and begin to
protect yourself from that so as you're
doing math problems that are hard for
you and really start making you feel
stupid which is exactly what happens
you're going to want to back off you're
going to want to go into places that
you're better stronger that you have
you're dipping into your more natural
talents and you're not pushing those to
the edge of your abilities but that's
the way to keep your life small that is
not the way to become extraordinary so
you really just have to admit this is
going to be hard this is going to make
me feel stupid this is going to make me
feel badly about myself but on a long
enough timeline if i keep doing this if
i keep practicing i keep pushing myself
what i'm doing is extending
extending that region of where you start
to feel stupid
[Applause]
[Music]
so is it kind of like meditation where
i'm learning to extend those periods of
time where i'm able to focus or
what is at work right well it's a very
unnatural activity actually so so giving
sustained concentration doing deep
thinking uh it's not something that has
a long evolutionary history
and so it's actually really the
invention of the rented word in
particular that helped make the ability
to think deeply more widespread you say
the rented word the written word that
makes a lot more sense yeah well because
reading itself right is also a very
unnatural activity and it requires an
incredible amount of training to
basically
get your brain able to do this activity
that we didn't evolve to do but what you
get out of doing reading is that your
mind becomes comfortable with this very
unnatural activity of keeping intense
focus on something right
so so in some sense it's not something
that we are evolved to do and so if we
don't practice it our mind wants to do
what it did in the the paleolithic
savannah what's going on like i want a
survey is there is there like a mastodon
over there is there like my tribe member
in trouble over there except for now
it's is there someone on twitter is
there someone but it's the same that's
that same instinct
and so it's something that has to be
practiced
we used to get this practice sort of in
our schooling right because when you're
going through college for example before
we had let's say wireless internet or
cell phones it was just a lot of time in
a library and it was you in a book and
and there was no distractions around you
you would have to walk all the way back
to your dorm or something so like we
would get hours and hours of just sort
of practicing reading deeply
concentrating but we've lost a lot of
that now because you know even in like
the college environment you're you're
constantly doing this you're constantly
doing this
while you're looking at things and so we
actually are missing a lot of the
necessary training that i think you need
if you're going to be comfortable but i
argue it's really worth it
because so few people are actually
training their ability to concentrate
that if you're one of the few to do so
you have a huge competitive advantage
[Applause]
[Music]
when you wake up in the morning you are
in a perfect position to what i call
receive the download of all the work
that your neural circuitry has been
doing the night before but if you
immediately go to a sensory experience
especially a rich sensory experience of
stuff scrolling by you're actually
missing the information that you
processed at night and even more
importantly that second half of the
night during rem sleep is when the
emotional weight of things
start becomes
let's say
you put it on the shelf properly things
that are important to emotional
emotionally register
get put in one shelf things that were
like the comment you got on twitter that
was triggering doesn't seem like such a
big deal after a good night's sleep and
that's because that second half of sleep
is actually when you re-experience these
things but your body can't secrete
adrenaline it's kind of an internal form
of therapy or even trauma therapy and
that's why people who don't get that
sleep are very you know they're easily
agitated they feel like the world is
crushing down on them so when i wake up
in the morning i want to receive ideas
that i want to learn from my learning
and if you take in new information you
are not in a position to do that and 60
minutes is a tough one so i give myself
two no goes for the 60 minute block if i
can do it and i'll tell you a lot of
mornings i fail tom i don't do it
interesting i just i found that shocking
but i heard you say that in another
interview and i was like well i mean i'm
human you know there are mornings where
um i get enticed or worse
worse i find myself reflexively picking
up without having made the conscious
decision and that's when
i realized that
you know we are all deep in this process
and i think
uh we have to regulate it the the
experiment i'd like to do maybe you'll
do this with me as a challenge because
the challenge is always good is in the
new year i actually want to take every
odd waking hour of the day off the phone
so even hours of the day
as long as it's waking i'm willing to
have it on and work with it but odd
hours just turn it off no matter what
i don't know if this will destroy most
of the relationships
but just to see can i do it on a rigidly
externally imposed schedule because if
you think about most of the growth in
life comes from these rigidly externally
imposed schedules and we hate them
but they are where we learn restraint
okay any routine whether it's morning
your full day it all starts the night
before getting a good night's sleep i
cannot stress this enough as somebody
who absolutely resents needing to sleep
it's still the number one thing that i
prioritize so
that is critical that you prep for that
so number one i start wearing blue
blocking glasses at least three hours
before bedtime i actually use a little
device that zaps me but i'll save that
for another video since i'm on the board
the advisory board of that company
but i
do everything that i can to make sure
that i sleep optimally including cooling
the room down
to very chilly so we sleep with our room
at 68 degrees
and that way you can snuggle up in your
blankies and there's something about
when your body temperature drops that
triggers you to get sleepy um so getting
the room nice and cool is another
big tip i go to bed at 9 00 pm every
night like it is a religion i should say
sunday through thursday night i go to
bed at 9 00 pm i allow a little bit
later bedtime on friday a little bit
later bedtime on saturday but other than
that 9 p.m and i don't
set an alarm
ever unless i have like a super early
flight or something like that
um and i've been doing that for like 17
years now or something like that so i
built multiple successful companies
without setting an alarm so trust me it
is possible now the reason i do it is so
that i'm optimizing my cognition get as
much sleep as i need
so for me that's about
seven and a half hours probably on
average i sleep with headphones right
next to my bed in fact as you can see
they are right here
and i do that because
i oftentimes wake up in the middle of
the night
put these bad boys in
and i can fall right back to sleep
listen to a book
very very low volume
so that just so that i could put a tiny
bit of pressure on my ear
that i can hear it and then that way as
i roll around
it will come ever so slightly out
and then i just fall asleep and i forget
that the book is there so that was a
game changer for me i don't know if
that'll be as useful for anybody else
but i usually lie in bed for hours
in the middle of the night trying to
fall back asleep
this
has been a game changer and that's it i
sleep in nice loose clothing um mouth
tape
oh
yes so here it is i'm so glad
that you reminded me of that this is why
my wife is here filming it i tape my
mouth closed every night
i did an episode with james nester you
should check that episode out he talks
about
breathing through your nose and how
important it is so i literally tape my
mouth closed that also
significantly improved my sleep so i
wouldn't believe that until i tried it
so now literally every night
i kiss my wife i tell her i love her and
then
i put tape over my lips a single piece
about that long i'm going to just
put it over my mouth shall we and yeah
all right
here we go
take
this is just uh medical tape first aid
tape
looks like uh
1.5 centimeters
and i do a piece about
that long
that's it
i tell my wife i love her and i love you
baby baby and then
i type up
tafe so all right guys until next time
be legendary take care
you