Ep. 382: Is the Internet Becoming Television?

Summary

Deep Questions with Cal Newport – Episode 382

“Is the Internet Becoming Television?”
Release Date: December 8, 2025

Overview

In this episode, Cal Newport explores the provocative thesis from journalist Derek Thompson: that all digital media is converging into a form of “television.” Cal unpacks, analyzes, and expands upon Thompson’s arguments, delving into how social media, podcasts, and even AI are increasingly adopting video-driven, continuous, and algorithmically curated experiences reminiscent of traditional TV. He then offers his own nuanced take, three predictions for the future of internet-based media, and practical advice for listeners grappling with distractions and digital overload.

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Main Discussion

What Does “Everything Is Television” Mean?

• Derek Thompson’s Thesis (00:22, 02:02, 09:18):
  • “A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television.”
    — Derek Thompson ([00:22], [02:02])
  • “When I say everything is turning into television, what I mean is that everything is turning into the continuous flow of episodic video.”
    — Derek Thompson ([09:18])
  • Media, regardless of origins (from Facebook to AI), now trends toward endlessly streaming, non-specific, algorithmically-selected short-form video, just like TV’s ‘flow.’

Thompson’s Three Main Examples

1. The Death of Social Media as “Social” ([02:16]–[04:39])

   • Most time on Facebook (80%+) and Instagram (90%+) is now spent watching videos from strangers, not socializing.
   • Data from the Financial Times: Hours spent on social media peaked in 2022, especially declining among youth; reasons to connect and share opinions are dropping, while “following celebrities” and “filling spare time” are rising.

2. Podcasts Are Becoming TV ([04:45]–[05:11])

   • Video podcasts are growing twice as fast as audio-only ones.
   • Pressure for all podcasters (including Thompson) to add video.

3. AI-Generated Video Content ([05:11]–[06:27])

   • Tools like OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes are producing endless, audience-tailored video streams.
   • “Even AI wants to be television.” — Derek Thompson ([05:26])
   • Cal and Jesse describe surreal AI-generated video scenarios (ASMR podcasts with Renaissance paintings, self-insert Oscar speeches, etc.).

---

Theoretical Framework: What Defines “Television” as a Cultural Form?

• Raymond Williams’ Concept of “Flow” ([06:46]–[08:53])
  • Before TV: Media was discrete (books, plays). TV: continuous, nonspecific, multi-modal stream (“planned flow”).
  • Williams: “This phenomenon of planned flow is… the defining characteristic of broadcasting… as a cultural form.” ([07:55])
  • Cal argues TikTok, Sora, or auto-playing YouTube replicate this flow, not serving specific content but a constant stream.

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Implications and Concerns

• Is This Bad? ([13:09]–[14:08])

  • Not inherently about images or video, but when this ‘televisual grammar’ dominates all media, Thompson worries:
    1. Degrades Mental Habits: Moves us from a “culture of literacy to a culture of orality” (Walter Ong).
    2. Increases Loneliness: Classical TV was isolating (Robert Putnam, “Bowling Alone”). Phones + video = more isolation, per new data.

• Cal’s Take: Not Everything Becomes TV ([18:05]–[20:26])

  • Legacy media like books and movies continue to thrive; only internet-based media gets drawn into the “TV attractor.”
  • “The real way to state this headline would be: Internet-based media is becoming television.” ([20:14])

---

Why Did Internet Become “Television”?

A Perspective Shift: Economic, Not Technological Determinism
([20:31]–[27:21], [24:02]–[25:35])

• Television’s 20th-century Ubiquity
  • By the 1980s, American TVs were on >7 hours a day per household (CSM, 1985).
  • TV filled moments of boredom and downtime—a “massive, highly lucrative market” ([24:24–24:36]).
• The Role of the Internet and Smartphones
  • “The biggest economic activity in the Internet age has been building a better version of television.” ([26:01])
  • Internet and smartphones: More portable, algorithmically curated (better distraction), targeted ads.
  • Result: Entrepreneurs followed the money, building upgraded “TV” on new platforms.

---

Cal’s 3 Predictions for the Next “Television Age”

([28:00]–[35:43])

1. Video Is the Cost of Entry for Major Internet Media

   • Podcasts/newsletters will add video to stay relevant; podcast-video deals with Netflix/YouTube will proliferate. ([28:09]–[29:57])
   • Cal highlights his own foresight: “I insisted on video for the podcast.” ([30:16])

2. Existing Social Media Giants Will Suffer

   • Their moat was “social graphs”; as they shift to video, this advantage evaporates. Platforms become easily replicable, just TV networks competing for attention. ([30:52]–[33:01])
   • “When Internet media moves towards television… it’s a much more aggressive sort of competitive landscape.”

3. Opting Out Will Get Easier

   • As internet media resembles TV, abstention is no longer “weird”—it’s normal and increasingly valued (as with TV). ([33:09]–[35:15])
   • “It’s going to make it easier for you to live a deeper life because what you’re moving away from is going to be more clearly coded as just distraction. It’s Maury Povich.” ([35:15])

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Television seems to be the attractor of all media.”
  — Derek Thompson ([10:20])
• “Making a single radical change… might make a lot of other areas of your life worse… you add these things up and you end up net negative.”
  — Cal Newport on grand-goal vs. lifestyle-centric planning ([59:17])
• “The biggest economic activity in the Internet age has been building a better version of television.” ([26:01])
• “Be the change you want to see in the world… Demonstrate life without it so they see it going on in you.” ([54:13])

---

Listener Q&A & Case Study Highlights

Managing Web Distractions as a Programmer

([38:32]–[43:52])

• Use AI tools (like Claude app) integrated into workflow to avoid browser distractions.
• Core takeaway: Avoiding distraction is easier with time-block planning—when you define when and what to focus on, you’re less likely to let your mind wander.

Productivity in High-interruption Jobs

([44:03]–[47:19])

• For automation engineers or similar roles, constant interruptions are “the job.”
• The key is intention over completion: keep adapting your time-blocks without resentment, always planning for “what can I do now?”

Media Consumption Overwhelm

([47:31]–[49:16])

• Don’t stress about creating perfect lists of what to read/watch. As long as you’re regularly engaging with interesting content, you’re doing fine.

Dealing with Family’s Screen Habits

([52:50]–[54:41])

• You can’t force change; model alternate behaviors and later share recommendations, but don’t judge or lecture.

Case Study: Deep Life Pitfall—Grand Goal vs. Lifestyle Planning

([56:11]–[63:08])

• Listener “Jeff” describes failing to find satisfaction through “grand goals” (prestige jobs, passion pursuits), and ultimately discovers contentment by designing his day-to-day routine around values—reading, family, exercise.

---

Book Segment: Five Books Cal Read in November

Grouped by Theme:

• Disney/Biz:
  • Realityland by David Cohen
  • Becoming Mary Poppins by Todd James Pierce
• Religion/Philosophy:
  • What Is the Bible? by Rob Bell
  • Tradition in an Untraditional Age by Jonathan Sacks
• Culture:
  • Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway

Cal discusses his continuing “Thriller December” tradition—planning to (re)read Michael Crichton's Airframe and other thrillers.

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Memorable and Lighthearted Moments

• Cal jokes about “knocking phones out of relatives’ hands yelling deep work and running out of the room” ([53:11]).
• Banter about video podcasts, TV technology, and children breaking TVs on Black Friday ([36:00–38:10]).
• Humorous remarks on Michael Crichton’s career: “After 1994, almost every Michael Crichton book involved, at some point—usually in incongruous ways—dinosaurs.” ([76:02])

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TL;DR: Key Takeaways

• Media is converging toward TV-like, continuous, algorithmically-curated video.
• Legacy media (books, movies) persists, but internet-based media is caught in the “television attractor.”
• This trend is driven by economic (not technological) incentives—“follow the TV money.”
• Expect more video in all major internet content, social platforms to burn off their old advantages, and for it to become easier (and less “weird”) to opt out.
• The “deep life” is more possible than ever—if you choose intentional engagement with media and design your daily routine with care.

---

For more on creating focus and depth in a distracted world, check out Cal Newport’s newsletter at calnewport.com.

Transcript

[Cal Newport]

Back in October, the journalist Derek Thompson.

[Jesse]

Published an intriguing essay on his substack that was titled Everything Is Television now. It created a bit of a stir among those who study technology and the Internet for a living. Here's Derek actually, in his own words, summarizing the thesis of this article.

[Derek Thompson]

A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television.

[Cal Newport]

So what did Derek mean by this? This is the question we're going to answer today. I'm going to both unpack and expand.

[Jesse]

On Thompson's arguments and then add my.

[Cal Newport]

Own conclusions, including three predictions about what.

[Jesse]

I think is going to happen next. Hopefully, by the end of our discussion.

[Cal Newport]

You'Ll have a brand new way of understanding the sort of vaguely distressing but difficult to define changes that seem to.

[Jesse]

Have been happening in Internet culture in recent years. Have some ideas about what to expect and what to do to best react to the future.

[Cal Newport]

So let's get into it, as always.

[Jesse]

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions.

[Cal Newport]

Today's episode is the Internet becoming television?

[Jesse]

And what does this mean for you?

[Cal Newport]

All right, so I want to start.

[Jesse]

By really diving into the big points from Derek Thompson's articles to see if we can make sense of what he's saying here.

[Cal Newport]

Fortunately, on a recent episode of Thompson's.

[Jesse]

Podcast, Plain English, which is really good.

[Cal Newport]

And you should listen to it, especially.

[Jesse]

The episodes where I've been a guest, Thompson read his piece out loud so we can actually hear passages from his article read in his own voice.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so I want to go.

[Jesse]

Back and I want to replay that initial clip, because this is where Thompson started his article. So, Jesse, let's hear that original clip again.

[Derek Thompson]

A spooky convergence is happening in media. Everything that is not already television is turning into television.

[Cal Newport]

He then goes on in the article to immediately give three examples of what.

[Jesse]

He meant by that claim. All right, example number one, the death of social media. Thompson references a brief that was filed last August by Meta as part of the antitrust trial that the FTC brought against it. In the brief that is publicly available now, Meta made what Thompson described as a startling claim, which was the fact that their social networks, namely Facebook and Instagram, really aren't that social anymore. Let me give you a couple statistics from that brief.

[Cal Newport]

More than 80% of time spent on.

[Jesse]

Facebook, they revealed, and more than 90% of time spent on Instagram is now.

[Cal Newport]

Dedicated to watching videos, most of them.

[Jesse]

Being videos created by people who the users do not directly know.

So he's noting social media is now less about socializing and more about watching content from people you don't know, like you would do on television.

[Cal Newport]

Over at the Financial Times, John Byrne.

[Jesse]

Murdoch, as you know, he does so.

[Cal Newport]

Well, has some nice data visualizations that.

[Jesse]

Capture this shift from social media to video. Let me put one of these graphs up here on the screen. This is for people who are watching instead of listening. You can see it and I'll describe it for everyone else. This is a graph from the Financial Times. The title is Time on social media peaked in 2022 with young people cutting back first. And what we see here on the far left is average numbers of hours spent on social media per day seemed to peak in 2022, around two and a half hours, and it's been going down ever since then. The biggest drop, when you break it out by ages is young people. Older people are kind of stuck at that peak because, I don't know, I think they're still updating their friendster profiles. I think the older people aren't necessarily up with it.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so it is true.

[Jesse]

There's data to back this up. There's another chart I can show here from the Financial Times. This is one that Derek had in his essay as well. This is labeled social media has become less social. And what we're seeing is change in share of people reporting each reason for using social media. So the reasons to meet new people, to keep up with friends, and to share my opinion have drastically fallen since 2014-2024, while the reasons to follow celebrities and to fill spare time have both increased somewhat notably since 2014.

[Cal Newport]

So, yeah, Derek is right about that.

[Jesse]

As he supports with that type of data, social media has become more about watching videos from strangers.

[Cal Newport]

All right. His second example he gave to back up his claim is that podcasts are moving towards video. Thompson notes that podcasts used to be.

[Jesse]

The radio for the Internet, but now he quotes an analyst who says the consumption of video podcasts is growing twice as fast as as audio only. He talked about his own pressure to film his own podcast, which was just on audio. So it's another example of a technology.

[Cal Newport]

That made sense as not a visual.

[Jesse]

Thing, just becoming more visual.

[Cal Newport]

His third example was AI videos. Thompson references the rise of OpenAI, Sora and Meta Vibes, which are these AI tools that are organized around watching endless.

[Jesse]

Videos generated by artificial intelligence.

[Cal Newport]

As Thompson concludes, even AI wants to be television. For those of you who haven't seen.

[Jesse]

What this sort of AI, what this actually looks like, this AI video revolution.

[Cal Newport]

Let me just Put a clip up.

[Jesse]

Here on the screen. I won't play audio, but you can just watch it. All right, these are examples of SORA videos. So now we see someone having. Bob Ross was painting one of his.

[Cal Newport]

Paintings on his face. Here is the person.

[Jesse]

This is just like the person who generated the video is now on stage giving an Oscar acceptance speech. Here is an ASMR podcast with characters from famous European paintings from the Renaissance interacting and drinking tea. Here's another bespectacled normal guy who's put themselves into the Braveheart scene.

[Cal Newport]

So yeah, this is.

[Jesse]

There's a cat skateboarding. There we go. This isn't exactly the future that we were promised by Star Trek, but that's what's going on. Even AI is now just producing video content.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so that's what he.

[Jesse]

That's what Thompson is arguing.

[Cal Newport]

That's what he means.

[Jesse]

His examples of things becoming television.

[Cal Newport]

But what does he mean by television? Right? I mean, how is watching a cat skateboarding on SORA the same as like.

[Jesse]

In 1997 watching an episode of American Gladiators on your TV?

[Cal Newport]

Well, to help make this connection clear, Thompson draws from an interesting book.

[Jesse]

It was written by Raymond Williams in 1974, which is called Television Technology and Cultural Form.

[Cal Newport]

It's actually a really good book if you're someone who's studying the academic, the.

[Jesse]

Academic study of technology studies.

[Cal Newport]

It has a really good upfront explanation.

[Jesse]

Of the difference between technological determinist explorations.

[Cal Newport]

Of technology versus social construction based consumptions perspectives. He's much more on the social construction side. Anyways, Thompson draws from Williams's book to make a couple key points. He notes that Williams says in that book before TV entertainment was discreet, like books or plays, something that had a beginning and an end.

[Jesse]

And when it was done you could.

[Cal Newport]

Discuss that specific thing you just saw. Television by contrast, became defined by the.

[Jesse]

Fact that it was continuous and streaming and multimedia. Williams called this flow. It's not like a discrete thing, it's just sort of something that flows by.

[Cal Newport]

Let me read you.

[Jesse]

I pulled some passages from Williams book here.

[Cal Newport]

Here's William talking about this concept.

[Jesse]

Here's William's words.

[Cal Newport]

In all developed broadcasting systems, the characteristic.

[Jesse]

Organization and therefore the characteristic experience is.

[Cal Newport]

One of sequence or flow. This phenomenon of planned flow is then.

[Jesse]

Perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting simultaneously as technology and as a cultural form.

[Cal Newport]

In a later quote, he emphasizes the.

[Jesse]

Non specific nature of television versus something like a book or a play as being critical to its operations.

[Cal Newport]

I'm going to read a quote here. Yet for all the familiarity of this model, the normal experience of broadcasting, which.

[Jesse]

When we really consider it, is different.

[Cal Newport]

And indeed this is recognized in the.

[Jesse]

Ways we speak of, of watching television.

[Cal Newport]

Listening to radio, picking on the general.

[Jesse]

Rather than the specific experience.

[Cal Newport]

This has been true of all broadcasting.

[Jesse]

But some significant internal developments have greatly reinforced it.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so Williams had this model of like, the right way to think.

[Jesse]

About why television is unique is that it gives you this flow of sort of non specific multimedia visual content. You watch television more than you come to the television to engage with a particular discrete element of, of whatever you would call it, entertainment or content.

[Cal Newport]

And that's really pretty similar to what we're seeing with like TikTok or these Sora videos.

[Jesse]

It's just stuff that's flowing by that's like it's on. It's interesting. You watch TikTok, you don't talk about going to TikTok to consume a very specific piece of content.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so let me play, go.

[Jesse]

Back to Thompson here. Here's Thompson summarizing the move towards this definition of television.

[Derek Thompson]

When I say everything is turning into television, what I mean is that everything is turning into the continuous flow of episodic video.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so where does this leave us? I want to go back to Thompson.

[Jesse]

Here and he's going to elaborate his summary of this entire state of affairs.

[Derek Thompson]

Whether the starting point is a student directory like Facebook radio, or an AI image generator, the endpoint seems to be the a river of short form video. In mathematics, the term attractor describes a state toward which a dynamic system tends to evolve. So to take a classic example, drop a marble into a bowl and it will trace several loops around the bowl's curves before settling to rest at the bottom. In the same way, water draining in a sink will ultimately form a spiral pattern around the drain. Complex systems often settle into recurring forms if you give them enough time. Television seems to be the attractor of all media.

[Cal Newport]

Right.

[Jesse]

So here's Thompson's overall summary of what he's arguing is that media in general is just inexorably heading back towards this Williams notion of television as a continuously, like nonspecific stream of video content. This is some sort of attractor state for media, and this is where the Internet itself is heading.

[Cal Newport]

The past might be methane circuitous, but.

[Jesse]

It'S something that attracts it in.

[Cal Newport]

Now I have to do a little bit.

[Jesse]

I can't help myself, Jesse.

I do a little bit of nitpicking on the use of dynamical system theory here. I've done A little bit of publishing on dynamical systems.

[Cal Newport]

This is kind of the right use.

[Jesse]

Of the word attractor, but maybe not quite exactly accurate. So in dynamical systems you're often thinking of attractors would be like things like strange attractors, which comes out of chaos theory. A key thing about strange attractors though is in the most visible variable, they're not the recurrence or the collapse onto like a steady recurrent state is not visible. It's only when you create a more complex state space that includes multiple other sort of related variables that you actually find the structure going on. So it's like a structure that's hiding behind the visible chaos. So this is why I think the.

[Cal Newport]

Marble moving around the toilet bowl, that's.

[Jesse]

Probably not a great example of a strange attractor. That's actually a physical system. That's just what you see. Just like the position of that marble is very predictable because it's obeying laws of physics in a really clear way. A classic dynamical like chaotic system might be like a Lorenz system, which measures sort of fluctuations in temperature and sort of climate systems. And there famously, if you look at the main variable that people care about, which is the temperature variation itself, that seems chaotic. Like I can't predict this, it's all over the place and it's very sensitive to initial conditions. You make a little change to the initial conditions, this thing goes off somewhere else. But if you take that one variable of temperature variation, you combine it with two other carefully selected related variables. And I don't know them exactly, but one is like temperature variations vertically through strata and one's about like a horizontal temperature distance. And you plot that as a three dimensional point in three dimensional space. Now suddenly you see a structure that's like spiraling around something and there has structure. So not the nitpick, but in dynamical systems often attractors are not visible to the naked eye. There's something that exists in the mathematical substructure that is only visible when you plot points that are outside of just like the main information.

[Cal Newport]

I thought that was important, Jesse, that.

[Listener/Caller]

I thought that was great.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, I think it's an important clarification.

[Jesse]

This is why my articles aren't as popular because I have the two page thing about dynamical system theory.

[Cal Newport]

But anyways, it's a good, the idea.

[Jesse]

Is good, it's a clear idea.

[Cal Newport]

Media is pulled back to the state.

[Jesse]

So it's inevitable that the Internet would.

[Cal Newport]

Be pulled back to the state of.

[Jesse]

The Williams style definition of television. This continuous nonspecific Flow of visual media.

[Cal Newport]

Is this a problem?

[Jesse]

Like do we care about it?

[Cal Newport]

It's a natural follow up question. Thompson gets into this. Let me play a quick clip of him setting up this discussion.

[Derek Thompson]

My beef is not with the entire medium of moving images. My concern is what happens when the grammar of television suddenly conquers the entire media landscape.

[Jesse]

Right.

[Cal Newport]

So it's, it's not bad that we.

[Jesse]

Have really interesting YouTube videos like this one or that. You know, maybe there's some interesting stuff happening on TikTok.

[Cal Newport]

But the idea that all media is.

[Jesse]

Going towards this form he's worried about. He points to two particular consequences.

[Cal Newport]

One, that we get worse at thinking.

[Jesse]

As we quote, move from a culture literacy to a culture of orality. That's a Walter Ong type of idea.

[Cal Newport]

A lot of data backs that up.

[Jesse]

That, yeah, as we use especially short form video in particular, people have a harder time concentrating and thinking. So we do lose something. If that's what everything becomes, we lose mental abilities that are important.

[Cal Newport]

His second issue is we know that.

[Jesse]

Classical television made people lonely. As he points out, this was at the core of Robert Putnam's famous book Sociologist from Harvard's famous book Bullying Alone. That traditional television made people more isolated. And as we have television now being delivered through our phones, as the Internet becomes television, we get even more isolated. We see this in the data as well. So it's not that video content itself is bad, but if everything becomes short form distracting video content, Thompson's pointing out, there's real consequences of that. All right, well, overall, I think Thompson has this a really smart idea and a smart take. Like any good article, it gets you thinking and helps explain something you don't understand before and gives you new things to think about or argue about. I want to get into my reaction. So I agree with most of this, but there's some places where I would want to complicate or caveat his explanation. I also want to make some predictions. I have three predictions about what is going to happen next in the world of media based on these trends that maybe will give you some ideas about what you should do to prepare for that.

[Cal Newport]

Before we get to my take and predictions, however, I have to take a.

[Jesse]

Quick break so we can hear from some of the sponsors that make this show possible.

[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

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[Cal Newport]

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[Jesse]

Writing from start to finish. Visit Grammarly.com podcast. That's Grammarly.com podcast. All right, Jesse, let's get back into our deep dive. All right, let's go on with my take and my predictions here.

[Cal Newport]

Look, I love this article. We had original ideas that helps us make sense of a phenomenon we're all living through. Let me add on a few additional thoughts. All right, here's thought number one.

Not everything became television. There's actually a lot of media that did not become television.

[Jesse]

Now I'll explain in a moment why I think this is important, but let.

[Cal Newport]

Me just justify this point first. Right. A Corey D. And Thompson's piece is that this sort of television style flow of undifferentiated video is an attractor state.

[Jesse]

That eventually draws in all media.

[Cal Newport]

That was his words. But that doesn't seem quite right because of the existing legacy media types that have basically stayed the same from the time before television existed to today and are actually doing fine as industries. They don't seem to be in states of collapse. Consider, for example, the global book market. In 2025, that market reached $151 billion. And that market's been growing steadily, so it's not showing signs of collapse. That's a big market. It's roughly, it's a little smaller than the combined market of Meta and TikTok, but it's kind of in the same ballpark. So books are still books and they're doing fine.

[Jesse]

They continue to grow.

[Cal Newport]

Movies are still around as well. The total domestic box office in 2024 was $8.7 billion. So we're at a lower order of.

[Jesse]

Magnitude in things like books and social media.

[Cal Newport]

But that's non trivial. In 1974, when Raymond Williams wrote his book Television, the total domestic box office was 1.14 billion. If you adjust that for inflation, in.

[Jesse]

Today'S dollars, it's about 7.5 billion.

[Cal Newport]

So, you know, it's like we can think of the global box office since.

[Jesse]

Like the rise of television as we know it today. I mean, the domestic box office and.

[Cal Newport]

Today it's like kind of the same.

[Jesse]

Or it's grown modestly.

[Cal Newport]

So like movies are still around now. Of course, to be fair, in the.

[Jesse]

90S, movies got way bigger than that.

[Cal Newport]

And have kind of shrunk back down again. But they're not below, adjusted for inflation.

[Jesse]

Where they, where they were back when television began taking its move.

[Cal Newport]

But these are media that exists in.

[Jesse]

The same form as they did before.

[Cal Newport]

Television, and they're doing More than holding their own. So it's not really the case that all media becomes television. I think the real way to state this headline would be Internet based media is becoming television. Okay, but this is still really interesting. So why is this particular type of.

[Jesse]

Media so attracted to the television form?

[Cal Newport]

This brings me to my second thought. To understand why the Internet in particular is becoming television, we have to remember the relationship that we used to have with television. A lot of people, I think the.

[Jesse]

Younger members of my audience.

[Cal Newport]

When they.

[Jesse]

Think of television, they're probably thinking about growing up in the brief golden age where there was appointment viewing and on Sunday night you would watch the Sopranos on HBO.

[Cal Newport]

But back in the 70s and the.

[Jesse]

80S and the early 90s when television became this massive market, the time when Raymond Williams was writing his book Television.

[Cal Newport]

Our relationship with screens was different than.

[Jesse]

A lot of people actually remember.

[Cal Newport]

I want to load up an article here.

[Jesse]

I'll put on the screen for those who are watching instead of just listening. This comes from the Christian Science Monitor, was published in June of 1985, all right, and it's looking at television back in the 80s. So let me just read to you from the beginning here.

[Cal Newport]

The figures are staggering. In 1984, 84.9 million American households, 98%.

[Jesse]

Of them had television sets.

[Cal Newport]

They kept them in use seven hours and eight minutes a day, making television.

[Jesse]

Watching far and away the most popular.

[Cal Newport]

Leisure time activity ever. Even if those households had only one.

[Jesse]

Person watching for those seven plus hours, which is a very conservative estimate, the.

[Cal Newport]

American public would have invested 217 billion.

[Jesse]

Hours before it sets last year.

[Cal Newport]

That's more than double the number of.

[Jesse]

Hours spent by the American armed forces fighting in World War II for a full year.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so this is what television.

[Jesse]

Was in the 80s. In the 90s and the 70s, it.

[Cal Newport]

Was just on all the time. Everyone had television. On average, that television was on in your household over seven hours a day. I think we forget how staggering those numbers are. Now here's what's interesting if we dig deeper. So this article is really cool because what it does is they say, where did that number come from? How do we know that the average.

[Jesse]

American household has the TV on 7.8 hours a day?

[Cal Newport]

It actually came from the Nielsen company using a tool called an audiometer. So it was actually like a tool.

[Jesse]

With a microphone that they would put in a random sampling of houses so.

[Cal Newport]

It could listen to hear if the.

[Jesse]

Television was on or not. Because people lie when you ask them to write it down. The audiometers Were the ones that were measuring this average of 7.8 hours a day a television. At least one television was on in these houses.

[Cal Newport]

Now, they make a key point in this article that doesn't mean that for.

[Jesse]

Seven hours and eight minutes a day there was someone sitting in front of that television watching intently. The audiometer doesn't know who's there or not. Just whether or not the television is.

[Cal Newport]

On and what they're capturing is a.

[Jesse]

A truth. We forget about how television was used.

[Cal Newport]

You would put it on in the background in your house while you did other things. And sometimes you'd be sitting there watching.

[Jesse]

A show all the way through if.

[Cal Newport]

It was one of your favorites. But also you would just have it on if you were doing other things like housework and during, like, boring moments. You would just kind of, hey, what's.

[Jesse]

Going on over here? Or if, like Oprah had on a.

[Cal Newport]

Particularly good guess, you might stop for.

[Jesse]

A little bit to watch that interview.

[Cal Newport]

So if you think about it, the way we were using television in the 1980s was exactly the way we use something like TikTok today. It was a tool we used to.

[Jesse]

Banish or eliminate any moments of downtime or boredom, at least in the household context. So I could just have it on.

[Cal Newport]

And when I didn't have something interesting.

[Jesse]

In front of me that I was dealing with, like I was on the phone or like trying to figure out something difficult, I could just immediately turn.

[Cal Newport]

My attention to whatever it was showing. Because it was in that flow that Williams talked about.

[Jesse]

It's just you just had it on. You weren't watching a particular show.

[Cal Newport]

It was just there to fill in the moments that turned out to be. That's a very lucrative business model. I went and tried to look up these numbers. The global television and video market today, remember books. With 150 billion meta plus TikTok is.

[Jesse]

A little shy of 200 billion.

[Cal Newport]

The global television video market is over $730 billion in 2025. This is a massive, highly lucrative market.

[Jesse]

Right?

[Cal Newport]

So what I think happened, here's my argument, is that as the Internet infrastructure.

[Jesse]

Grew out in the 90s to include broadband and then the smartphone infrastructure built out in the late 2000s, early 2010s.

[Cal Newport]

This made possible the creation of an upgraded version of exactly what people were.

[Jesse]

Doing in televisions within 1980s and 90s.

[Cal Newport]

It made upgraded television possible. Upgraded in three ways, it was now more portable.

[Jesse]

So you had access to it not just in your house, but wherever you went, because it was on a smartphone, upgraded because it had Algorithmic curation.

[Cal Newport]

So now its ability to satisfy your distraction needs was better because before you.

[Jesse]

Would just go through a few channels, and now, of course, we have algorithmically curated content. So it's just like, it's a more pure distraction environment.

[Cal Newport]

And because the ads are now targeted.

[Jesse]

Much better than you could get on a broadcast medium like television. So they've become, you know, much more lucrative.

[Cal Newport]

So I think what happens is we had this massive market that was built on.

[Jesse]

It was the TikTok of the 1980s.

[Cal Newport]

We had this massive market that was built on. You don't have to be alone with.

[Jesse]

Your own thoughts or bored. Just there'll be something to kind of take the edge off of the ennui of just like, I'm here sweeping and.

[Cal Newport]

It'S kind of boring. And it was this massive market. And once we built this infrastructure for other purposes, right, that we built the Internet infrastructure, thinking about the web and.

[Jesse]

Expression and connection and being able to get information from anyone around the world, all just like distributed, you know, that.

[Cal Newport]

Was our vision for building that infrastructure. We built smartphones because Steve Jobs said we shouldn't have to carry a separate.

[Jesse]

Ipod and a separate RAZR Motorola RAZR phone.

[Cal Newport]

Let's put them in the same device so that you can make your calls and listen to music on the same device. Right? That was the point of smartphones. But these two things came along and other entrepreneurs were like, well, the money's in tv, let's do that. So in this particular technology, it was possible to build upgraded television. And when you see the size of the television market and how dominant that was, of course you're going to pursue that. That has become the biggest economic engine, the biggest economic activity opportunity in the Internet age has been building a better version of television. So let me refine my take even further here. I would say the existing.

[Jesse]

This is my headline instead of everything is becoming television.

[Cal Newport]

The existing television industry is so large and lucrative that it's not surprising that when a new technology came along that enabled the creation of an upgraded television experience, a lot of investment energy went towards these goals. So to me, this is not a tale of technological determinism, which is a.

[Jesse]

Tale of like, all technology is going to come back to this form, but.

[Cal Newport]

Instead a tale of economic determinism.

[Jesse]

There is a lucrative market over here.

[Cal Newport]

And this particular technology made it possible to compete. So of course people would use it to compete. So it's not an argument about all media is going to become television so much as it is the Internet, plus smartphone Infrastructure revolutions have been co opted by media entrepreneurs.

[Jesse]

That said, now we can take a run at competing with television.

[Cal Newport]

So it's sort of specific to these particular technologies.

Those are just the details. Thompson's big point still stands, which is.

[Jesse]

A lot of Internet based media is converging towards this other model. That's kind of the interesting observation, regardless of why that's happening.

[Cal Newport]

So our question is what is that.

[Jesse]

Going to do to us in the future?

[Cal Newport]

So I want to end with, here is three predictions for the future of Internet based media as it continues this.

[Jesse]

Convergence towards a television model.

[Cal Newport]

All right, prediction number one, if you participate in Internet based media, then you have to be aware of this shift because it's going to be consequential. Major podcasts are going to have to have video to be a serious player. I think even other types of Internet.

[Jesse]

Media that we don't think about as.

[Cal Newport]

Being multimedia at all, like newsletters are.

[Jesse]

Going to eventually need to have some.

[Cal Newport]

Sort of video content if they want to be a part of the full like entertainment, entertainment ecosystem. To be a little bit more specific, here's a couple things. Here's something I think you're going to see.

[Jesse]

The move of podcast on the streaming video services is going to be a big thing in 2026.

[Cal Newport]

This is already starting to happen. The ringer just did a deal, I.

[Jesse]

Believe, with Netflix, where they're going to have more of their podcasts show up on there.

[Cal Newport]

We're going to see a lot more of this. The economics just makes sense. Podcasts have loyal audiences and if you can just raise the production values a little bit, which is not that big.

[Jesse]

Of an investment, I mean this is, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars per episode, which is nothing if you are producing television for something like Netflix.

[Cal Newport]

They have loyal audiences and they produce.

[Jesse]

A lot of content.

[Cal Newport]

So if I'm a big fan of.

[Jesse]

A, you know, you're a big fan of my show and it's on twice a week on Netflix with good production value. Not that the HQ is not good production, but even better production values than the HQ.

[Cal Newport]

And you're, you're going back and forth between YouTube and other sorts of things in your TV anyways. Like that might be a reason that you stay subscribed to Netflix. That's incredibly valuable to them. And it's much cheaper to build like an upgraded version of the HQ and.

[Jesse]

You know, pay me some whatever fee.

[Cal Newport]

That's still going to be much cheaper.

[Jesse]

Than doing eight episodes of Nobody Wants this, which is only going to give.

[Cal Newport]

You eight episodes of content and you.

[Jesse]

Know you're going to have to spend $20 million on that or $10 million. I don't know what it costs, but.

[Cal Newport]

Costs a lot of money to get Kristen Bell. She doesn't get out of bed for.

[Jesse]

Less than $4 million in a cut of the merchandising. That's what I hear.

[Cal Newport]

The same with Jesse. He makes those same demands. Yeah.

[Jesse]

Every day he comes in and said.

[Cal Newport]

I'm not gonna get out of bed.

[Jesse]

For less than $4 million in a cut of merchandising.

[Cal Newport]

So that's my prediction. You know, note I made this prediction.

[Jesse]

Not to pat myself on the back.

[Cal Newport]

But back in 2020, Jesse, you'll remember this.

[Jesse]

When you first started working for me.

[Cal Newport]

I insisted on video for the podcast. I said, I can't tell you exactly why.

[Jesse]

It's not like I have a plan for in 2021. Like, why are YouTube channels gonna be important?

[Cal Newport]

I just said, video is gonna be.

[Jesse]

The future of Internet media because of the. The power of.

[Cal Newport]

We've seen that video has over people.

[Jesse]

And the way that television just ate to lunch a radio and didn't even look back. Video is going to be. So I made that prediction. That's why We've been on YouTube since the beginning.

[Cal Newport]

It's like we just.

[Jesse]

I was like, we have to be conversant in that. That idiom.

[Cal Newport]

All right, prediction number two. I think this convergence of Internet media towards television is bad news for the.

[Jesse]

Existing social media giants.

[Cal Newport]

Now, this is an argument that I made in that 2022 article in the.

[Jesse]

New Yorker that I talk about all the time. TikTok and the follow social media giants.

[Cal Newport]

I reference it all the time because I think it's like the most important.

[Jesse]

Article I've written that no one's read.

[Cal Newport]

But it actually was getting at some really core ideas. So I keep coming back at it. To push the big point there is that the competitive advantage that the social.

[Jesse]

Media giants had that the Facebooks and the metas and the Twitters of the.

[Cal Newport]

World had, was their social graphs.

[Jesse]

The fact that people painstakingly, as first.

[Cal Newport]

Adopters, put in the effort to click on people they wanted to follow or they knew. And as long as those services were.

[Jesse]

Built around using those social graphs to.

[Cal Newport]

Produce interesting content, they had a moat.

[Jesse]

That other competitors couldn't cross.

[Cal Newport]

Once the early Facebook excitement was gone.

[Jesse]

The early Twitter excitement was gone.

[Cal Newport]

No one was going to bother to.

[Jesse]

Like, go through all that work of following people and building their friends on another platform.

[Cal Newport]

When Internet media moves towards television. You got to throw out those social graphs. It's not really that relevant anymore. And this is exactly what we see Instagram doing.

[Jesse]

It's exactly what we see, you know, Twitter trying to move towards.

[Cal Newport]

They want to be like TikTok. What was the numbers we had before? It was something like only 7% of.

[Jesse]

Time spent on Instagram is looking at content produced by a friend or keeping up with a friend. Everything else is just watching videos created by other people.

[Cal Newport]

Yes, that moves you more towards television.

[Jesse]

Which is very lucrative.

[Cal Newport]

But now you're a television network without.

[Jesse]

A competitive advantage that other people can't replicate.

[Cal Newport]

You're competing now with all other sources of short form video content, all the.

[Jesse]

Podcasts that are producing short form video.

[Cal Newport]

Content, all the streamers like actual television that are putting hundreds of millions in the short form video content. Upstarts like TikTok was an upstart because they didn't need a social graph. They had a peer experience and a better algorithm. We have Sora now we have Meta vibes. They're trying to compete with Sora. Like it is a incredibly competitive world. It's a world where you don't have competitive advantages anymore when you move away from your social graph, but you have to in the television world. So legacy giant monopoly social platforms that their, their time is cooked in a.

[Jesse]

World where the Internet media moves more.

[Cal Newport]

Towards television is going to be a.

[Jesse]

Much more aggressive sort of competitive landscape with winners and losers shifting much more tumultuously.

[Cal Newport]

Third prediction is, I think there's a.

[Jesse]

Silver lining here for us as individuals.

[Cal Newport]

I believe that abstention.

From a lot of this becomes a lot easier as.

[Jesse]

The Internet based media moves towards television.

[Cal Newport]

Why? Because this is what happened with television. Like we know what television is and it became very culturally normal. But yeah, it's maybe on average people have your TV on 77 hours a day. But like if you were talking to.

[Jesse]

You know, Noam Chomsky, he'd be like, yeah, I don't watch a lot of tv.

[Cal Newport]

Like, yeah, of course you don't. Like you have other things you're doing that are more like intellectually demanding and you read more books or whatever. It was very normal to be like.

[Jesse]

I don't watch a lot of tv. No one questioned it. And in fact, by the generation of.

[Cal Newport]

Our kids, things had shifted. And parents think a lot about screen.

[Jesse]

Time and like, I don't want you to watch too much tv. Like that's not good for you.

[Cal Newport]

We're very used to this idea that it's not that TV is poison, but.

[Jesse]

You probably don't want to do a ton of it. And it's completely normative to be like I self define. By not watching a lot of TV.

[Cal Newport]

For a while, Internet based media had.

[Jesse]

Grabbed this sort of cultural high ground where they would basically argue this is necessary to function in civic society, that somehow these services, these social media services.

[Cal Newport]

What you were doing on your phone.

[Jesse]

Was just part of being an informed citizen. It's how politicians were elected and news was spread. It's the new digital town square.

[Cal Newport]

It's where people are being expressed, where.

[Jesse]

People could find other groups which were activism happened.

[Cal Newport]

There's this moment where it was like.

[Jesse]

You have to use all these services, right? Or it's somehow weird or disengaged or eccentric not to. But as the Internet based media moves more towards tv, it'll be so much easier not to use it or use less of it. No one is like, what do you mean you don't listen to Bravo? Like, no one would say that in 1996. Like, you don't watch Surreal Housewives. What's wrong with you? No one would say that.

[Cal Newport]

Whereas today they're like, oh, you don't use TikTok.

[Jesse]

It still seems a little bit weird.

[Cal Newport]

I think that will change once things with tv. We know how to deal with tv.

[Jesse]

We know it is not vital and we're completely okay with the idea of not being big TV watchers.

[Cal Newport]

So for people who listen and watch this show, this is good news.

[Jesse]

It's going to make it easier for you to live a deeper life because what you're moving away from is going to be more clearly coded as just distraction. It's Maury Povich.

[Cal Newport]

It's.

[Jesse]

I'm trying to remember all those shows, the fight shows, the talk shows. Gary Springer. Yeah. Maury Povich is a deep dive. Jerry Springer, Phil Donahue, you're like, yeah, it's. It's light and actually good for you for not watching it.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so there we go. Jesse, no separate takeaways this week because.

[Jesse]

I think my whole thing was a takeaway. But yeah, that's it.

[Cal Newport]

I think it was a cool article.

[Jesse]

And that's how I would. But that's how I would evolve it.

[Listener/Caller]

Do you watch any podcasts personally, on video?

[Jesse]

No. I'm trying to think. Neither do I. Yeah, but I don't.

[Listener/Caller]

I would never consider. I mean, I know it's important, but personally I would never do it.

[Jesse]

I mean, I'm just thinking it through. I've seen clips, the clips of Podcast, I'll watch the video. If it's like an interesting clip, I'll watch the video.

[Listener/Caller]

Like you put it on when you're working out or something. Or you.

[Cal Newport]

Well, no more if like I'm researching.

[Jesse]

Something or like I'm at my computer and I'm, you know, writing about whatever. Like if there was an interview.

Like a clip from a podcast interview about the thing I'm researching, I would prefer to watch it than like, if I had the choice, I'd prefer to watch it than listen. I don't watch a lot of TV.

[Cal Newport]

In general, but I think part of.

[Jesse]

The thing that's happening is that people that like actually, which a lot of people do, spend more time in front of a TV like normal people, more of what they're doing is like they're loading up the YouTube app and watching like, I'm going to watch a podcast episode instead of like a show on Netflix.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So I think that's one way, one way that's being consumed.

[Cal Newport]

I do think the video podcast numbers.

[Jesse]

Are somewhat inflated because of generationally Gen Z will often use YouTube as their podcast player.

[Cal Newport]

So in theory, in their pocket the.

[Jesse]

Video is playing just like it does on Spotify. But they're not watching it like they're listening while they do other things.

[Cal Newport]

But it is.

[Jesse]

I mean, I've looked at our numbers. The watched on TV numbers is growing because they can tell what device the podcast is download to.

[Cal Newport]

It's not as high as I've seen.

[Jesse]

For other people I've talked to.

[Cal Newport]

But we're on our way out.

[Jesse]

It's number three. And it's like computer phones and tv and TV is like in the mix. So I think I don't.

[Cal Newport]

But I don't watch.

[Jesse]

The main things I watch is movies, to be honest.

[Listener/Caller]

Yep.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it's got a new tv. Actually.

[Listener/Caller]

A lot of people did Black Friday last week.

[Jesse]

Yeah, well, ours got broken. And by got broken, I mean one of my son's friends broke it.

[Cal Newport]

But it was an excuse to get.

[Jesse]

The latest OLED technology.

[Listener/Caller]

And plus the new TVs aren't that. That expensive, right?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

I mean, unless you go if you want like a really good movie, if.

[Cal Newport]

You start to care about filmmaker, if you use the term filmmaker intent and.

[Jesse]

Are looking at the color correction options, it starts to get more.

[Cal Newport]

Not crazy, but expensive. More 2x than it needs to be.

[Jesse]

I would say it's probably 2x than what? But it's worth it. We got a nice Blu Ray player, so I can really get the highest you know, good HDR10, perfect contrast, color resolution. Like just what the filmmaker wanted. Happy about that.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so anyways, let's move on to some questions.

[Listener/Caller]

Sounds good.

[Jesse]

All right, who we got first?

[Listener/Caller]

First question is from js. As a software engineer, I have a web browser open constantly. This distracts me a lot. I started using Claude app instead of my browser. This has basically eliminated my distractions. What do you think about this?

[Cal Newport]

All right, so I have a specific answer for you and then a larger.

[Jesse]

More general answer for people thinking about their work in general.

[Cal Newport]

My specific answer is, look, I think that's great, right?

[Jesse]

If you had your browser open, because.

[Cal Newport]

I'm assuming you had it open because.

[Jesse]

You were looking up just to give some context for non computer developers to look up things that were relevant to the coding you were doing. This used to be the standard rhythm of doing computer coding is that you would often have a site like Stack Overflow open and you would search for.

What'S the function call here? How do I do this? And so now you had a browser open, you could look at other things.

[Cal Newport]

If you're using Cloud app, you could.

[Jesse]

Do things like tab complete, etc. Where it will give you these answers, like directly in the thing where you're writing the code. You don't have to go over to a web browser and look things up. Ironically, it was language models tuned in part on these humor interactions that kind of just sucked it all in and replicating it to some degree.

[Cal Newport]

So I think that's good. If you start using code agents, you're.

[Jesse]

Gonna have a separate problem. So not to just to like quickly differentiate this. There's kind of two ways that AI is intersecting development. One is what I think of as like the auto complete, tab complete type of tools, which is where you're writing computer code and you can say like, hey, finish this function for me, or can you fill in this function header and it you like press tab and it like does it for you behind the scenes. That's all implemented by a single call to a language model.

[Cal Newport]

So the thing you're typing in makes.

[Jesse]

A prompt to a language model. Hey, here's the existing code. Can you finish this with a function that does whatever language models are good at that you get the answer back and then the editing environment puts that right in there.

[Cal Newport]

Agents, on the other hand, coding agents.

[Jesse]

Are going to do many steps on your behalf. So this is where you say.

I need to build this prototype. A simple application to do something internally is going to be useful and you're.

[Cal Newport]

Going to actually have a program that.

[Jesse]

Goes in a loop and it's going to ask the language model, like, okay, give me a plan, like a multi step plan for doing this. And then the program takes that plan and it's like, great, we're now going to do step one. And so then I'll tell the language.

[Cal Newport]

Model, okay, here's the first step we want to do.

[Jesse]

Give me the. Maybe it's produced code for whatever, give me the code for doing that. And language model sends it back and then it.

[Cal Newport]

And you go in this loop where.

[Jesse]

You continually prompt the language model step by step. What do you want to do next? What do you want to do next? Until it thinks it's done. So coding agents allow you to sort of have AI automate longer, more complicated steps than you can get with just asking it one time to do Something I've heard from a lot of developers who use those for producing prototypes or more complicated code is that there's downtime, it takes a while. There's a lot of back and forth with the language model. And language models aren't fast in returning their answers. And so they have downtime while they're waiting for their agents to finish things. So you need a good deep distraction for those downtimes. If you use a coding agent, something that's not going to be emotionally arousing and something whose context is very different than your work. That's usually my advice about deep distractions.

[Cal Newport]

Don't look at your email because that.

[Jesse]

Context is very similar to the work you're doing. That's going to confuse your brain. MLB Trade Rumors is probably fine because it's like a completely different context. It's not going to have as much interference.

[Cal Newport]

All right, but here's the bigger point. And this, this applies to everybody.

[Jesse]

Why were you so distracted by having your web browser open?

Like, why. Why not just be. Say I don't look at other things on my web browser when I'm working on this. And the reason is because you're not time blocking.

[Cal Newport]

So the bigger point I want to make here is if you're time blocking, so you're like, this is what I'm working on and these are the minutes.

[Jesse]

I'm working on it during, like from.

[Cal Newport]

1 to 2:30, I'm working on code. When you time block, when you have a particular, you know what you're doing it for how long, it's much easier to say, here is my rule about time blocks. If it's like a deep work time.

[Jesse]

Block, I don't look at other things.

[Cal Newport]

Other than the work I'm doing. The only commitment you have to make.

[Jesse]

Now is do I follow my time block rule, my single rule. And so if you go off and you go to email or go to YouTube or something like that, it's very.

[Cal Newport]

Clear you're violating the rule.

[Jesse]

And you have to kind of live with that mentally. Like I guess I'm not able to, you know, obey my own simple rules.

[Cal Newport]

If you don't time block, you'd be like, let me just kind of like work on stuff. The problem is that it's very reasonable that at some points you need to take breaks. At some points you need to check email. At some point it makes sense you.

[Jesse]

Might want to go look at some YouTube. You can't just work like a robot all day long.

[Cal Newport]

But if you don't have a structure for your time, you have to figure out when those breaks or context switch.

[Jesse]

Happens on the fly.

[Cal Newport]

And now your brain is going to.

[Jesse]

Have a continuous argument with yourself.

[Cal Newport]

What about now?

[Jesse]

What about now? What about now? What about now?

[Cal Newport]

Like any minute is a possible minute you could be taking a break and that's not that unreasonable. And so now you're going to lose that argument like every six or seven minutes. And you get a much more distracted flow because there's no simple rule you're violating. Your brain's like, we're, we're going to take a break. We have to check our email at some point. And we checked it now. Like what did we do that was wrong? But if you time block, you say no, I have an email checking block at 2:30 and I'm in a deep work block and I don't check email.

[Jesse]

During deep work block.

[Cal Newport]

It is clear as day if you.

[Jesse]

Go and check your email anyways that you're violating a rule that you set up to make your own working experience better.

[Cal Newport]

So if you have that problem or.

[Jesse]

Generally whether you're a computer programmer or not, time block, that's one of the hidden advantages of time blocking is it makes it much easier to stay on task. All right, who do we got next?

[Listener/Caller]

Next up is Bert. I work as an automation engineer at a major technology company. I split my time between hands on mechanical work and debugging code. In my world, something like a single broken bolt could add hours to a task. And urgent breakdowns regularly interrupt any planned time block scheduled work. How do I adjust?

[Jesse]

Well, first of all, I want to.

[Cal Newport]

Make clear that in your position as you describe it, this idea of like.

[Jesse]

You deal with unpredictable but urgent interruptions and then do your best to get other stuff done in between.

[Cal Newport]

That's your job.

[Jesse]

Like, that's what they expect you to do. It's not as it feels like for a lot of knowledge workers that their job is X, but this other thing, which is, like, really not that important, keeps coming in and interrupting them from doing their job. And that's really frustrating because you're like, I'm measured on producing X, but you keep throwing, like, zoom invites at me for nonsense, and I can't do X. But you're never gonna know it's your fault. You're just like, why aren't you doing more X?

[Cal Newport]

Where in your job is like, no, this is like Bert's job.

[Jesse]

Handle physical breakdowns, and there's these other things he works on as he can.

[Cal Newport]

So, like, there's nothing to be frustrated about here.

[Jesse]

This is, like what you signed up for.

[Cal Newport]

So your goal is not to eliminate.

[Jesse]

The disruptions, because that's part of your job. Your goal is not to resent the interruptions because it's part of your job.

[Cal Newport]

It is to do the best you can with the time you happen to.

[Jesse]

Have in between interruptions, which some days.

[Cal Newport]

Could be very little and some weeks could be, like, a ton of. And the key there is intention. All right, I build a time block plan at the beginning of the day.

[Jesse]

So I have intention for my time that I can control.

[Cal Newport]

Then a bolt breaks, and I have.

[Jesse]

To go spend three hours fixing it. When I'm done, I come back and say, what's the best plan I can make for the time that remains? It'll look very different than your initial plan, but you have intention for what you're going to do with the time that remains in the day.

[Cal Newport]

That's the name of the game here. Intention, not completion.

[Jesse]

Your goal is not to create a plan you're able to stick with.

[Cal Newport]

It's that you keep coming back to saying, what can I do with the.

[Jesse]

Time I have that's going to be most useful?

[Cal Newport]

Now, if you multiply that over many weeks and many months, what you get.

[Jesse]

Is someone who's handling the urgent stuff.

[Cal Newport]

And is doing as well as anyone could possibly do, making the most of.

[Jesse]

The time that they have outside of it.

[Cal Newport]

So you want to return to intention.

[Jesse]

But don't have any qualms about, I have to fix my time block schedule three times a day because I'm constantly being interrupted by this other part of my job.

[Cal Newport]

The only exception would be if your bosses expect you to be doing more.

[Jesse]

With that other time. Than is possible.

[Cal Newport]

Like, you're being very intentional. Like, why didn't you do these other optional projects? Well, now you have a record.

[Jesse]

Like, oh, I time block.

[Cal Newport]

I keep track of my time. Let me show you what's going on here. On average, I'm getting like two interruptions.

[Jesse]

On the scale of like three to.

[Cal Newport]

Four hours per day, which is leaving.

[Jesse]

About like this many hours that is fractured between a few different stretches. I'm very organized with my time. I time block my time after every interruption. This is about how much progress I'm able. I'm able to put about like 10.

[Cal Newport]

Hours per week on one of these projects.

[Jesse]

These projects really take about 30. This is like a three week project. Like, oh, okay, well, you have the receipts. We get it. We get what you're saying. So if that's the case, bring the receipts.

[Cal Newport]

But probably people are just, you're. If you're doing this, you're time blocking.

[Jesse]

The time you have left. You're doing much better than everyone else there who's in a similar automation engineering position. And they're probably already very impressed.

[Cal Newport]

So again, your goal is to keep having intention.

[Jesse]

How do I make the most out of my time? Not to satisfy some sort of plan that you created earlier when you had a different understanding of what your day was going to be. All right, let's do another question here.

[Listener/Caller]

Next up is Scott. How should I develop and manage my list of what to read, listen and watch? I get overwhelmed and don't have a good system for execution and review.

[Jesse]

I mean, you really should only be reading my books and articles and watching this podcast. Let's be honest. And I don't want to be hyperbolic, but if you don't, if you watch and read other things, there's like a 14 to 15% increased chance that you die this month. My new marketing technique, Jesse, Threaten people with death if they don't watch our podcast.

[Cal Newport]

I'll tell you what, Scott, those type.

[Jesse]

Of lists stress me out. Some people love them. They stress me out.

[Cal Newport]

The way I see it is like.

[Jesse]

Look, do I always have something interesting to read? Yes. Do I have no shortage of interesting things to watch when the time comes around?

[Cal Newport]

Yes.

[Jesse]

Do I have no shortage of podcasts to listen to when I have downtime?

[Cal Newport]

Yes. Then I'm happy. Because the problem is I make list.

[Jesse]

Of all this stuff.

[Cal Newport]

Then I feel lost for not doing.

[Jesse]

The stuff on my list that I haven't gotten to.

[Cal Newport]

But the list, technically speaking, could be unending. I mean, there's no shortage of books.

[Jesse]

You could be reading. There's no shortage of like visual content you could be watching.

[Cal Newport]

So why create loss, right? I'm just like, what am I excited about?

[Jesse]

Let me do that now with my books. I definitely do this. It's like, what am I in the mood for right now as I get to this new book or movies? Like, okay, I have some time. Like, what am I excited about now?

[Cal Newport]

Because as long as I'm filling those.

[Jesse]

Things with stuff I'm happy with and is interesting, I don't want to feel bad about missing out on stuff on a list.

[Cal Newport]

So if it stresses you out, Scott, just get rid of the list, you know, or you can write down ideas.

[Jesse]

But don't stress about like crossing them all off.

[Cal Newport]

It's just like having as long as you're not just sitting there. Like, if I had, I don't know what to do. If only I had a list, but I don't. So now I'm just going to sit.

[Jesse]

Here and stare at the wall.

[Cal Newport]

Like, if you're not in that situation.

[Jesse]

I would just not sweat it.

[Cal Newport]

All right, we have some more good questions coming up. We also have a case study. We're going to talk.

[Jesse]

Someone's going to talk about their experience.

[Cal Newport]

With a deep life pitfall.

[Jesse]

We're going to learn a lesson from that.

[Cal Newport]

We also have Speaking of books and.

[Jesse]

List, I will talk about the five books I read last month because our first podcast of December.

[Cal Newport]

But first we need to take another quick break to hear from our sponsors. Jesse, we have to talk about Cozy Earth. As listeners know, I'm a huge fan of their bamboo sheets. I absolutely love them. We own three sets, but I also recently got a pair of their bamboo pajamas and I've really been enjoying these as well. Especially as the holidays are upon us and it's like officially pajama season and.

[Jesse]

Our household is kind of it's cold, the fire's going, it's thriller December, so we all want to sit in the.

[Cal Newport]

Living room and read. So I'm loving my bamboo PJs. They have a soft stretch knit that's really a game changer. Not only are they super comfortable, but if you sleep warm, these are going to feel a few degrees colder than cotton when you're in bed.

[Jesse]

So it's like a more comfortable sleep experience.

[Cal Newport]

They also have a 100 night sleep trial. So if you try out their sheets and you don't love them, you can return them hassle free. But trust me, you won't.

[Jesse]

They're awesome.

[Cal Newport]

They also have a 10 year warranty. Because once you feel this level of comfort, you'll want it to last a decade. So why don't you give the gift.

[Jesse]

Of everyday luxury this holiday season?

[Cal Newport]

Head to cozyearth.com and use my code DEEP for up to 40% off. Just be sure to place your order by December 12th to get guaranteed Christmas delivery. All right, so order by December 12th.

[Jesse]

To get that guaranteed Christmas delivery.

[Cal Newport]

Now if you're listening to this episode after the 12th, don't worry, my Code Deep will still work year round to give you 20% off. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention that you heard about Cozy Hearth right here. Give the gift of comfort that lasts beyond the holidays and carries into a cozy new year. Head over to cozyearth.com all right, I also want to talk about our friends that Indeed. Here's something I've learned as we've grown this plucky little media company over here. Hiring is hard. Finding the right people with the right skills is like trying to find a needle in the haystack. If that needle also had to be good at Adobe Premiere, Indeed makes this all easier.

[Jesse]

Here's why it's useful.

[Cal Newport]

You can give your job the best chance to be seen with Indeed sponsored jobs featured. This will help you stand out in higher quality candidates who can drive the results you need. The Sponsored Jobs will also boost your posts for quality candidates so you can reach the exact people you want faster. This works. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored.

[Jesse]

Jobs because you reach a bigger pool of quality candidates.

[Cal Newport]

This is why more than 1.6 million.

[Jesse]

Companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed.

[Cal Newport]

You need to hire. Indeed really is all you need. So spend more time interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Get less stress, less time, more results. Now when you use Indeed Sponsored Jobs, here's the good news. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get.

[Jesse]

Your job the premium status it deserves.

[Cal Newport]

If you go to indeed.com deep just go to indeed.com deep right now and support our show by saying you heard.

[Jesse]

About it on this podcast. That's indeed.com/deep terms and conditions apply.

[Cal Newport]

Hiring do it the Right way with Indeed.

[Jesse]

All right, Jesse, let's get back to some questions.

[Listener/Caller]

Next question is from Butterscot. As I become more aware of the attention economy and more intentional with how I spend my time, it's hard to see family and friends scrolling on TikTok as their main hobby and not feel Judgment towards them. It's especially hard during the holiday season when I spend lots of time with.

[Jesse]

Them, which I do usually.

[Cal Newport]

My recommendation, and do this as many.

[Jesse]

Times as you can, is when you see that, like a young relative or something that's on their phone kind of stuck in TikTok, come up quietly, knock the phone out of their hand, yell deep work, and then sprint out of.

[Cal Newport]

The room and just do that again. And, you know, it'll be kind of.

[Jesse]

Like a fun thing you'll be able to love for. It's a lot of, like, knocking the phone out of people's hands, yelling deep work and running out of the room.

[Cal Newport]

That's what I do.

[Jesse]

I'm not invited to a lot of parties anymore, but that's what I do.

[Cal Newport]

No, look, it is hard because you.

[Jesse]

Care about these people and you're like, this is not great. I have this feeling when I see my students or whatever or friends of my son just looking into this phone all the time.

[Cal Newport]

This is just not great for you. You're missing out on the world.

[Jesse]

This is just abusing your brain. It's. I don't know, you see a baby smoking a cigarette, it's funny. Don't get me wrong, I've given my share of babies cigarettes for the fun.

[Cal Newport]

But, you know, like, long term, this is probably not good for you. That's the way I feel about it.

[Jesse]

However, like with substance abuse or whatever, you can't force someone to change and lecturing them is not going to work.

[Cal Newport]

Demonstrate life without it so they see.

[Jesse]

It going on in you have gratitude for all that you are able to enjoy because you're not on your phone all the time.

[Cal Newport]

And then in like another occasion.

[Jesse]

So not in response to seeing them using their phone. You can mention like one of my.

[Cal Newport]

Books or send them one of my podcast episodes and kind of get them.

[Jesse]

Exposed to the world of deep living in a distracted world.

[Cal Newport]

But not as a luxury sort of haranguing like, hey, you're on your phone right now.

[Jesse]

You know, listen to Cal Newport. Like, that doesn't work well, but you.

[Cal Newport]

Can bring it up with them later.

[Jesse]

But again, it's hard to make people change. So be the change you want to see in the world. Who else have we got?

[Listener/Caller]

Next up is Josh. Have you come across anything saying that endless scrolling makes people less motivated to be physically active as well as adversely affecting their attention span?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, there's data for both.

[Jesse]

We've talked about both on the show.

[Cal Newport]

Mainly the attention span one.

[Jesse]

There's some good John Murdoch Data in the Financial Times. We did some podcasts about this earlier in the fall where as we get to the smartphone era, you see trouble with concentrating, trouble with attention just goes up. There's some new research out in September, big meta study looking at short form video in particular, like you get on TikTok or Instagram Reels, and they found a definite impact on attention. So your attention goes down the more that you use these, this, those particular types of content. So we know that's out there. John Haidt talks about the connection between more phone usage and spending more time indoors. So we spend less time outdoors as we spend more time on our phone. Scott Galloway, in his new book Notes on Being a Man, talks about this idea that the phone offers for like digital simulations of other types of stuff.

[Cal Newport]

We would normally do, including stuff outside.

[Jesse]

That's often where you get things like peace and challenge. It's relaxing. But also I'm building something. I'm racing, I'm running, I'm working on, you know, a project or whatever. Minma will just simulate this by like I got to the next level in my video game. So definitely there's a connection between the screens being more attractive, keeping us away from activities like being outside.

[Cal Newport]

So that's one of the many reasons.

[Jesse]

Why a life spent increasingly on screens.

[Cal Newport]

Really isn't a good one. All right, we also have a case study this week. This is where people ride in to.

[Jesse]

Talk about their own personal experience, grappling with the type of ideas and advice we discuss on this show. It's also our excuse to play the case study theme. Music.

Jesse, I think I cut the name off of this case study.

[Cal Newport]

Do you remember who this was?

[Listener/Caller]

Let me check. It was Jeff.

[Cal Newport]

Jeff.

[Jesse]

All right, so Jeff wrote in to talk about his struggles with trying to.

[Cal Newport]

Create a deep life.

[Jesse]

All right, here we go.

[Cal Newport]

Jeff says, five years ago, I sold.

[Jesse]

Part of my company when I was just 27 and effectively achieved financial freedom.

[Cal Newport]

However, unsure what to do with my.

[Jesse]

Life, I kept vaguely striving for more. And by doing so, I fell into one of the pitfalls that Cal talks about.

[Cal Newport]

After a year long break, I knew I wanted to do something ambitious. Applying the grand goal strategy, I pondered.

[Jesse]

Working in biotech or producing movies and eventually got a prestigious job in finance. I just wanted something big and was convinced an impressive enough job would make my life all around better.

[Cal Newport]

Over the following year, it became clear that this wasn't the case. While the role was prestigious, I didn't care for the work. During this time, the company I still.

[Jesse]

Own spun off a brand new a.

[Cal Newport]

New brand in the rock climbing industry. I was a passionate rock climber so.

[Jesse]

I thought that's what my real calling was and I should walk away from.

[Cal Newport]

Prestige prestige and instead work on something.

[Jesse]

I was passionate about. The first months were exhilarating, but then reality quickly set in and my day to day life consisted of the same company, related admin, I had successfully gotten out of years prior.

[Cal Newport]

I then stepped out of that business.

[Jesse]

Last year and took the question what to do with my life seriously. I was able to focus on what.

[Cal Newport]

My day to day should look like first.

[Jesse]

I got disciplined and organized. I was able to tackle a bunch of home admin stuff that was bothering me. Now I'm studying philosophy and literature basically.

[Cal Newport]

Full time sitting in cafes, reading or.

[Jesse]

Attending lectures and meeting with my study groups. I host short story dinners. I run every morning and play tennis several times a week. I'm spending more quality time with my kids. I only check my email on Wednesdays and Fridays. I leave my phone in the car after 5pm and I'm only reachable via backup phone. I've also reduced my total travel time. Overall, I'm calm and without haste most of the time.

[Cal Newport]

All right, this is a great example.

[Jesse]

Of lifestyle centric planning.

[Cal Newport]

So what we see in Jeff is.

[Jesse]

Actually two different philosophies. He ends up with lifestyle centric planning.

[Cal Newport]

But he begins with what he called.

[Jesse]

The grand goal strategy. In my new book, I think of this sometimes as the phase shift model, the deep life.

[Cal Newport]

This idea of like one big radical.

[Jesse]

Change will make your life all the way better.

[Cal Newport]

Oh, I'm now in a very prestigious.

[Jesse]

Job that will fix everything and we.

[Cal Newport]

Often think the radicalness of the change.

[Jesse]

Correlates to the radicalness of the improvement it will give.

[Cal Newport]

The problem is your life is built up of many different parts and what matters to how you feel is your.

[Jesse]

Daily subjective experience with these different parts of your life.

[Cal Newport]

So making a single radical change or producing or chasing a single radical goal, it might take one area of your.

[Jesse]

Life and like make it better, or.

[Cal Newport]

Maybe temporarily make it better, but it might make a lot of other areas.

[Jesse]

Of your life worse. Like we see this classically with like very prestigious jobs. This idea of like I have respect for what I do or what I do has like big financial impact.

[Cal Newport]

That goes up and that's good.

[Jesse]

But it might step on every other part of your life. Your time with your kids, your physical health, you know, your ability to like enjoy the world, other types of interests you have.

[Cal Newport]

All of those are made Worse than. And so you add these things up.

[Jesse]

Negative, negative, negative, negative, this one positive, and you end up net negative.

[Cal Newport]

So like the single change fixing everything.

[Jesse]

Doesn'T really make sense.

[Cal Newport]

I have self centered planning says, why don't I just actually survey my entire life and say what do I want.

[Jesse]

My daily experience to be like? So think about all these different buckets.

[Cal Newport]

What types of things do I want.

[Jesse]

On a regular basis?

[Cal Newport]

Great.

[Jesse]

How do I engineer my life to have those things?

[Cal Newport]

And that's what Jeff ended up doing. Finally. The details don't matter. What matters is he was thinking about.

[Jesse]

I want to be intellectually engaged, I want to spend time with my kids, I want to be on top of things, I want to exercise.

[Cal Newport]

He has this vision for a life and he's like, oh, I could make that happen because of my current financial resources or this or that. And that is making it much happier.

[Jesse]

Than pursuing a single thing that was very prestigious.

[Cal Newport]

So lifestyle centric planning can lead you.

[Jesse]

To all sorts of different places. There is no template for what a deep life looks like, but there is.

[Cal Newport]

A template for how to get there.

[Jesse]

Which is imagining the reality of your daily lifestyle across many different areas of your life and engineering towards what you want that daily lifestyle to be like. Making progress in the book, by the way, Jesse, I'm at, I'm in the most epic chapter of the book, which is you've figured out what resonates, what doesn't resonate. You've translated this into an ideal lifestyle vision.

[Cal Newport]

You've formatted, you know now what your.

[Jesse]

Plan, how to format your plan, like what it should, the different elements your plan for moving close to that vision should, should include. You figured out how to connect your plan into your life. Like, okay, how am I going to keep checking in with this plan and making sure I execute it now you got to fill in the details of what that plan is. And I'm in the middle of this like epic 15,000 word chapter where it's just idea after idea based on all sorts of different stories and examples in science about different tools and techniques or building plans that work or moving closer to your ideal vision. So it's like where all the fun stuff happens.

[Listener/Caller]

So whereas your last book, there was three rules per se.

[Jesse]

This one, there's, it's linear, the book is linear. It's like, do this now we're going to do this, now we're going to do this and now we're going to do this. And then at the end like, okay, and here's a couple things that not some complications, but really it's like, okay, let me explain to you why lifestyle strength planning is better than phase shift model.

[Cal Newport]

How do you figure out what you care about?

[Jesse]

Great, that's what we're doing in this chapter. We're going to get these journals, we're going to walk around, we're going to keep these notes, we're going to process them.

[Cal Newport]

All right, how do we translate that.

[Jesse]

Into a vision of your lifestyle?

[Cal Newport]

Because again we want to work towards a vision of your complete lifestyle, not just pursue a single goal. Well, let's get into it. That's what we're doing next. Here's how you format it, here's how you do it. Here's a bunch of examples, here's a bunch of lists. There, sent theirs in. Okay, now.

You filled your notebook. Now you have the plan. I mean not the plan, the vision. All right, well how do we now move closer to that vision? Well first let's work through just like how we format the plan. Here's what's going to be in it, here's literally where you write it. It's going to be written right under your vision. How do we connect this to your life?

[Jesse]

Okay, well you're going to start doing these sort of daily metric tracking grids and these weekly check ins to put.

[Cal Newport]

Stuff onto your calendar. Great. Now how do we figure out what actually goes in here?

[Jesse]

Ah, huge chapter of like now we're lots of ideas for how to actually fill that stuff in there.

[Cal Newport]

All right, how do we now like execute this and not get overwhelmed.

[Jesse]

Okay, let's break it down, let's go.

[Cal Newport]

Area by area so it's really like moving through linearly.

[Jesse]

Do this, do this, do this, do that and then a few things at the end where it's like this might not apply to everyone or like a.

[Cal Newport]

Lot of the what we would have thought of as like the lower layers.

[Jesse]

Of the deep life stack. I have coming towards the end of like.

[Cal Newport]

But what if after all now you have the step by step, what if.

[Jesse]

You don't feel at all capable? Like I can't do anything that's like my life's a mess. I'm not disciplined. Like I'm not.

[Cal Newport]

I'm never going to be able to execute these steps.

[Jesse]

All right, let's do a crash course becoming more capable. That's sort of at the end.

[Cal Newport]

Now let's just get the idea.

[Jesse]

What is lifestyle centric planning?

[Cal Newport]

How does it work?

[Jesse]

Let's walk you through it. And now you're fired up. That's the right time, I realized to be like, oh, and if you're feeling like your life's a mess, but you.

[Cal Newport]

Really want to do this, all right.

[Jesse]

Now we'll talk about becoming more capable, getting your discipline up, managing your time, stuff like that.

[Listener/Caller]

Have you contemplated writing a book on AI ever?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, I have an idea for my.

[Jesse]

Next book that would be in reaction to AI.

[Cal Newport]

It wouldn't be like this is just.

[Jesse]

About AI or a theory of AI, but it would be in reaction to AI. Yeah, I got that idea. Actually, I can't give any details about anything, but there's a potentially major article I'm writing in the new year that would for a big publication that would kind of introduce a lot of those ideas I want to tackle in that next book. So we'll see how that goes. Always something, Jesse. Always writing.

[Cal Newport]

All right, do we have a call this week?

[Listener/Caller]

We do.

[Jesse]

All right, let's hear this.

[Jennifer]

Hey, Kyle, My name is Jennifer. I'm probably one of your younger longtime listeners and readers. I graduated college last spring and this fall I moved across the country to D.C. to start grad school. Go Nats. My grad program is very demanding and I find myself engaged in a lot more deep work or focus time than I did in undergrad. Because of this, I decided to ditch Instagram, which was my only form of social media. I have been much more time efficient and focused since removing it from my life. This brings me to my question. Since my friends are still very active on Instagram and post pictures wherever we go, I often wind up in photos. But now I don't have a way to see, comment on or moderate the photos of me that are shared online. I'm wondering if you have any advice on how to deal with this. Thanks a bunch.

[Jesse]

Well, welcome to dc. Hopefully you're joining NAT fandom on an upswing. We could do a whole episode on the youth movement over at the nats, but we won't for now. A couple points. Good for you for leaving Instagram as a grad student. Right. Your job is to use your brain. That gets in the way of using your brain. It's smoking. To into a professional athlete. The grad program who brought you on.

[Cal Newport]

Is expecting you to use your brain.

[Jesse]

Don't do things to make you worse at doing that.

[Cal Newport]

So I think it's a really good idea for anyone to in one of.

[Jesse]

These sort of time limited, elite intellectual types of positions, like being a grad student, to be like, I really don't get near any type of algorithmically curated short form Content like, that's cigarettes to an athlete. And I'm trying to make the major league squat. I can't deal with that. So good decision. I'm not surprised that you're seeing advantages.

[Cal Newport]

All right, so what do you do.

[Jesse]

About your concerns of not being able to comment on or curate photos of you online? That's all fine. Don't comment on or curate photos of you online.

[Cal Newport]

Your friends will quickly learn, oh, she's.

[Jesse]

Not on Instagram right now because she stopped using it while she's at grad school. And they move on.

[Cal Newport]

That's it. Part of the issue that I would.

[Jesse]

Say part of what makes social media clever is maybe the better way of saying it. Part of what makes it clever was.

[Cal Newport]

It sort of sold us on this.

[Jesse]

Idea that I don't want to sound dismissive, but that we're more important than we are.

[Cal Newport]

And what I mean by that is it creates a sense of that you have an audience and even whether it's people, you know, even. Right. Not necessarily like a broad audience, but that, like, you're part of this is part of what made it so compelling.

[Jesse]

Early on.

[Cal Newport]

You have this audience, you're part of this great conversation, and they want to see what you're posting and they're commenting on and you're commenting on other people's stuff. And it's like, you're part of this great conversation and you'll be missed if you leave. But that's never really been the case. It's why in my 2016 book, Deep.

[Jesse]

Work, I had a chapter that said, quit social media.

[Cal Newport]

And what it really meant.

[Jesse]

If you read the chapter, it said.

[Cal Newport]

Leave it for 30 days without telling.

[Jesse]

Anyone and see if anyone notices.

[Cal Newport]

Because what would happen is people, in their mind, they imagine all these friends.

[Jesse]

And people who are commenting are essentially in the seats of a theater, really eagerly waiting for you to come out on stage and be like, look around really solemnly.

[Cal Newport]

And then say, photo of my dinner.

[Jesse]

And they're all like, ah, there it is.

[Cal Newport]

We've been waiting for that. And they're all like high fiving each.

[Jesse]

Other and like, you know, whatever.

[Cal Newport]

But that's not really what happens.

[Jesse]

It's actually a collectivist attention model where the Facebook was the one to innovate back in 2004, 2005. It's just like, I will comment on things you comment. If you comment on things I comment on, that's just the game. And then we all feel like people are commenting.

[Cal Newport]

And when people would do this experiment.

[Jesse]

From deep work, like, oh, God, no. One noticed I was gone. I wasn't at the center of this grand conversation. I wasn't this producer on stage that everyone was waiting for. It was all just sort of a game of showing fake attention to each other. No one cared. Great, I'm not going to go back. And I think you'll have a similar experience. Right. These services want to make you feel like it's very important what you're doing, but for the most part it really isn't. You will be fine. The few friends that notice will learn pretty quickly, like, oh, you don't use Instagram anymore, good for you. And that'll be that. So stay with the course. That type of stuff is not as important as it wants you to think.

[Cal Newport]

These are all the things that are.

[Jesse]

Going to hurt these companies as they move towards becoming television to go back to our deep dive. Because as you move towards television, those type of hooks disappear. You discourage people from creating their own content or participating.

[Cal Newport]

As you move towards television, you get.

[Jesse]

Higher minutes used per day because honestly, algorithmically curated short form video is more interesting than your friends photos.

[Cal Newport]

But you don't get that deep social hook like the thing that you're worried.

[Jesse]

About like my God, my friends are going to wonder where I am. That goes away with a service like TikTok.

[Cal Newport]

No one knows you're on there cares.

[Jesse]

And they lose their hooks. That's why I think it's going to become such an ungrounded competitive marketplace. It's hard to dominate Internet based television in a way you could dominate trend based Instagram. So I think it's a good case study in that dynamic that I'm worried about. All right, let's go on now to our final segment.

[Cal Newport]

All right, the first podcast of every month.

[Jesse]

I like to talk about the books.

[Cal Newport]

I read the previous month. I usually aim to read five books per month.

[Jesse]

I've grouped them this month, Jesse, by topic. Kind of like two major topics here, just kind of randomly, but that's the way I grouped them.

[Cal Newport]

All right, my first two, these are both Disney related because I guess that's.

[Jesse]

How I deal with my stress these days. That's my hard drinking is Disney related topics.

[Cal Newport]

I read David Cohen's book Realityland.

[Jesse]

It's a book about just the business history of the Florida resort as opposed to the California resort because I read that other book about Disneyland because we went to Disneyland. And so this was a book about Disney World and it was about how they got the land and how they acquired it.

[Cal Newport]

Growth strategy. And that stuff is my.

[Jesse]

It's so different than anything I do in life. It's very non stressful.

[Cal Newport]

It was very good.

[Jesse]

It was a very well researched book. I guess it's one of the big ones.

[Cal Newport]

Then I read the other Disney, Disney ish book.

[Jesse]

It was really about the Sherman Brothers.

[Cal Newport]

But it was called Becoming Mary Poppins. New book just came out.

[Jesse]

Todd James Pierce.

[Cal Newport]

It's about the making of that movie.

[Jesse]

In the early 1960s.

[Cal Newport]

But it's also a lot about this.

[Jesse]

Songwriting duo, the Sherman Brothers, who really helped innovate the cinema form of the family musical as a thing that became big again in the 1960s. And so it's interesting hearing about what the world of professional songwriting was like in mid century or prior to mid century. Their dad was like an early 20th century songwriter.

[Cal Newport]

That was really interesting.

[Jesse]

Some of the Disney stuff was interesting too. They really were kind of bedding the farm on this movie succeeding.

[Cal Newport]

It was interesting to hear also how.

[Jesse]

The Disney live action film studio was very small compared to the big major studios.

[Cal Newport]

They couldn't, they couldn't really do these.

[Jesse]

Epics on the scale that like a Paramount or Universal could do. And so like that stuff was interesting.

[Cal Newport]

Then I moved on to a pair of religious books. One, it was like they couldn't be more opposite.

[Jesse]

One is very, very popular audience. The other is an academic audience.

[Cal Newport]

So the popular audience when I read.

[Jesse]

Was Rob Bell's book what Is the Bible? So I've been reading these books about like how to understand and interpret the Bible. Like what, who wrote it? How do they wrote it? Like what about it is, you know, what about the writing is so interesting or profound because if you just kind of read it through a modern context, like these are weird stories, you don't.

[Cal Newport]

Get a great experience.

[Jesse]

I read that book a couple months ago. I like popular book. Rob Bell wrote a book on it.

[Cal Newport]

Bell's an interesting guy. I think he's a, he's a Christian pastor.

[Jesse]

I don't know if he's evangelical or not or with one of the mainline Protestant denominations.

[Cal Newport]

He's super well educated, right?

[Jesse]

Like I think he speaks Greek, he speaks Hebrew, he's really studied this stuff. But he writes definitely for a super mass audience. I mean it's like incredibly conversational with a lot of single line paragraphs and bolding and it's like really.

Simplified style.

[Cal Newport]

But some really good points captured in it. So it was a quick read, but.

[Jesse]

I found it kind of interesting.

[Cal Newport]

Then I went and read Jonathan Sacks.

[Jesse]

Book Tradition in an Untraditional Age. So I'm a big Fan of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. His public facing books that connect religion with other schools of thought in the broader world like science and religion, morality, culture.

[Cal Newport]

These are fantastic books.

[Jesse]

He's a fantastic writer.

[Cal Newport]

I wanted to get more acquainted with.

[Jesse]

His more academic style writing. So God help me, Jesse. I went back and found this book which is a collection of more like academic essays. He wrote really these essays were dealing with orthodoxy and its collision with modernity and grappling with a bunch of sort of like big thinkers in that field.

[Cal Newport]

450 page beast of a book.

[Jesse]

But even his academic writing, I was like, this is. I learned a lot. It was really interesting to learn about.

[Cal Newport]

I learned about this like the collision.

[Jesse]

Of modernity with other types of traditional thought worlds itself. I felt like was really useful even for like the techno criticism I do.

[Cal Newport]

So it's a more academic book.

[Jesse]

You know, you're going to hear about like these like very specific thinkers and it's.

[Cal Newport]

So it's.

[Jesse]

If you're not used to academic writing, I don't know. It's not like a fun read like Rob Bell's, but I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot.

[Cal Newport]

The final book I read was Scott.

[Jesse]

Galloway's new book, Notes on Being a Man. I like Scott, I like, you know, I've been on his podcast. I think he's a great broadcaster, interesting character.

[Cal Newport]

This book, you know, the book captures.

[Jesse]

Like the stuff he talks about in book form. It's exactly what you would want. It's like he writes in the style that he talks. So if you like his podcast, you're.

[Cal Newport]

Going to like the book.

[Jesse]

It's not a super bogged down in numbers though. He has statistics and it's not bogged down in stories of other people.

[Cal Newport]

It's really like him talking a lot.

[Jesse]

About his own life and his own thoughts and kind of riffing, which is.

[Cal Newport]

Probably the right format for Scott.

[Jesse]

I also think the book has been killing it because he's everywhere. His podcasts are super popular, but he's.

[Cal Newport]

Very good on tv.

[Jesse]

So he does like every remaining legacy TV show with an audience an author can go on. He did all of them. The morning shows, the View, Bill Maher, the Morning Joe, because he's very good on tv. So there you go. There's all of them.

[Cal Newport]

So that was good. There you go.

[Jesse]

So that's what I read.

[Cal Newport]

Thriller December is underway. I was going to start with the.

[Jesse]

Dan Brown book, you got me. But I got intimidated. It's 600 something pages and I was like, I need to get more momentum going into thriller. I can't start Thriller December on a book that I need to get a few under my belt quick. So I went back and I'm starting with Michael Crichton's 1990 Something Classic airframe.

[Listener/Caller]

Is that a reread?

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, they're all rereads but it's been.

[Jesse]

A while since I've read that one so I'm excited about it.

[Listener/Caller]

Milo Crane's your favorite author, right?

[Jesse]

Just for thrillers, okay. Yeah, for thrillers, yeah.

[Cal Newport]

The 90s stuff began to get kind.

[Jesse]

Of weird and reactionary but like right in through in 90s I liked prey, Timeline and Airframe. But like next and the climate change one like this disclosure.

[Cal Newport]

I don't know Rising sun is like some of those are a little.

Like you'd recognize it today as like someone.

[Jesse]

Red pilled back before that was a thing he was kind of.

[Listener/Caller]

So which is Red pill is the Matrix.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah but it means like you get.

[Jesse]

Exposed to like conservative ideas and realize like wait, I think all the media is like has a left wing leaning tilt and so like I am going to. I'm going to like I've been revealed that we've been like kind of had and I. So he kind of got. Which is fine, but it's not what I want in a thriller.

So it kind of petered out a little bit. But yeah, I've read. I'm a completist, a Crichton completist. I've read all of his posthumous ones and of course you know what the masterpiece is from his canon. The book is maybe one of the finest books of the last century. Eruption.

Co authored with James Patterson at the Volcano.

One of the worst books I've ever read.

[Cal Newport]

I should be nice though because the.

[Jesse]

Crichton family Foundation sent me a nice note after I wrote an article about him last year. I should. Outside of that I do like a lot of crate stuff.

[Cal Newport]

So I'm going to do Airframe. I have a couple other books I'm going to read. I'm reading.

[Jesse]

I got a used version of the Raymond Williams book Television we talked about. I want to really read that carefully. So I'm going to read that. I'm probably going to read Geraldine Brooks's book about the aftermath of her husband dying. So I have some non thrillery stuff in there.

[Listener/Caller]

Oh, she wrote that book Horse, right? Yeah, that was good.

[Jesse]

Yes, I'm reading her book after that. Yeah. So I have some non thriller stuff in there but I am going to read the Dan Brown couple other thrillers in mind. Will be good. I like thriller. Thriller, December. But Airframe is like perfect. That's like my sweet story from the 90s. I read it as a kid. It's like he brings you into like a world of like air traffic control and incident reporting after plane crashes and all this technical stuff is happening and there's a mystery and great, but like the stakes are low. I like it. I think there's a dinosaur in there. Or is that a different one? I don't know. I mix it up. Twist ending, little known fact. After 1994, almost every Michael Crichton book involved at some point in usually like very incongruous ways. Dinosaurs. Rising sun is like a lot about like financial tensions with Japan and like the COVID up of her murder. But also it's a tyrannosaur that does the murder. So like he did a lot of that disclosure was about gender power dynamics with sexual harassment. And also she was a velociraptor.

[Cal Newport]

So like, you know, he was really.

[Jesse]

Kind of pulling on what worked. You got it. You got to play the hits.

[Cal Newport]

All right, that's enough nonsense for now.

[Jesse]

We'll be back next week with another episode. And until then, as always, stay deep.

[Cal Newport]

Hi, it's Cal here. One more thing before you go. If you like the Deep Questions podcast, you will love my email newsletter, which.

[Jesse]

You can sign up [e-mail] each week.

[Cal Newport]

I send out a new essay about the theory or practice of living deeply.

[Jesse]

I've been writing this newsletter since 2007.

[Cal Newport]

And over 70,000 subscribers get it sent.

[Jesse]

To their inboxes each week. So if you are serious about resisting the forces of distraction and shallowness that.

[Cal Newport]

Afflict our world, you gotta sign up.

[Jesse]

For my [e-mail] and get some deep.

[Cal Newport]

Wisdom delivered to your inbox each week.

[Sam]

Sam.