Podcast Summary

Deep Questions with Cal Newport — Ep. 389 Title: Is the Internet Hijacking Ambition? + Escaping Messaging Hell
Host: Cal Newport
Guest: Brad Stulberg (author of The Way: A Guide to True Greatness and Deep Satisfaction in a Chaotic World)
Release Date: January 26, 2026

Episode Overview

The episode centers on how the Internet affects our ambition—does it enable authentic excellence, or does it hijack our inherent drive and redirect it toward shallow, performative pursuits (what Brad Stulberg terms "pseudo excellence")? Cal is joined by Brad, whose new book explores pathways to genuine greatness and fulfillment in a world dominated by digital distractions and hustle culture. They dissect common Internet phenomena, analyze motivations behind online hustle, and provide concrete strategies for escaping digital distraction and cultivating real ambition. In the second half, Cal presents actionable advice for breaking free from overwhelming email and messaging routines, sharing his top five tactics to restore focused, meaningful work.

Main Discussion — Is the Internet Hijacking Ambition? (00:00–59:08)

The Nature of Ambition and the Internet’s Role (00:00–05:31)

• Ambition as a Deep Human Instinct:

  • Cal: “We all have an instinct to want to accomplish things that are hard and impressive. This is something that comes from our Paleolithic genes.” (00:01)
  • The Internet offers two divergent paths:
    • Positive Path: You can now immerse yourself in virtual tribes and communities with similar passions, which could support authentic ambition (e.g., finding other serious readers in podcast/book communities).
    • Negative Path: The Internet “hijacks” ambition by channeling it into unhealthy or unproductive directions (hustle culture, biohacking extremes, etc.).

• Introduction of Brad Stulberg and 'Pseudo Excellence':

  • Brad defines "pseudo excellence" as the pursuit of performative routines and practices that look impressive online but do not lead to true mastery or meaning.
    • “Pseudo excellence is more about the elaborate dance. Actual excellence is about caring deeply and doing the thing that matters to you.” (05:10)

Breaking Down "Pseudo Excellence" Online (05:31–29:54)

• Performance vs. Substance:

  • Cal and Brad analyze online personalities who showcase elaborate daily routines—early wake-ups, extreme supplementation, cold plunges, etc.
  • Brad: “Are we just running around exerting energy for the sake of running around, or are these things actually working towards our values and goals in developing skill and competence in mastery?” (07:07)
  • Many influencers are more focused on attention and monetization than excelling at any real-world craft or discipline.

• Idea Management and Creative Routines:

  • Cal reflects on writers’ obsession with sophisticated idea-capture systems as another face of pseudo excellence.
  • “Many of the best idea people that I've been around…their idea capture system is a pen in a notebook. It's pretty low tech.” (09:22, Brad)

• Analyzing Examples from Social Media:

  • Exhibit A: Fitness influencer claiming to work 18-hour days, exemplifying hustle culture’s absurdity.
    • Brad: “That's going to lead to a degradation in quality of work and also a degradation in your longevity because you are going to burn out.” (10:35)
  • Exhibit B: 3 a.m. start, complex morning rituals.
    • Brad: “If it takes you a two hour routine to feel primed and ready to go, honestly, I'd say that you're quite fragile.” (13:38)
  • Muscle as Signaling:
    • Social media exploits evolutionary admiration for strength but gives viewers a proxy (routines or supplements) rather than the hard work behind real strength (and often actually relies on steroids, not sustainable practices).
      • “Steroids work very well. And I don't think that either of those two gentlemen would ever be able to compete in any kind of sanctioned athletic event with drug testing.” (16:27)

• Pseudo Excellence Beyond Fitness:

  • Applies to female-targeted content (body image, extreme study routines), “trad wife” culture, and “study hacks” among students.
    • Brad: “It's the performance of the thing versus actually doing the thing.” (29:47)

Understanding the Appeal and Impact (22:42–35:31)

• Deeper Drives, Not Vanity:

  • Brad rejects the idea that pseudo excellence appeals to shallow vanity, instead suggesting it taps into an ancient drive for accomplishment, mastery, and mattering.
    • “I actually don't think most people are vain. I think a lot of people feel confused, lost, numbed out, alienated… You come across videos like those and they're extremely motivating.” (23:57)

• Format and Technology Matters:

  • Virality and engagement-focused platforms reward extremes ("shirtless at 3am") far more than discussion-based or slower-growth media.
    • “If you have a podcast that is dependent on virality... you're going to end up reverse engineering your shows to chase whatever is the most attention grabbing and viral on the Internet at that moment.” (25:58)

Pathways to True Excellence (29:54–53:13)

• Mindset Shifts:

  • Excellence as Process, Not Standard:

    • Brad: “Excellence is not a standard. It's a process of becoming... a process of ongoing pursuit.” (33:24)
    • True excellence comes from “involved engagement” (deep, intentional focus) on pursuits aligned with your personal values and goals.

  • Choose for Yourself:

    • “It's not go on the Internet and look at what everyone else is doing. It's ask yourself, what are my values?... What challenges do I want to undertake that are going to help shape me as a person?” (33:57, Brad)

  • Examples From Life:

    • Brad on powerlifting: “It's not about picking the bar up from my feet to my hips. It's about all of those things [patience, mentorship, community].” (37:37)
    • Interviews with experts: For top performers (like Lane Norton, Gregg Popovich), it's about growth and relationships, not medals or status.

• Practical Advice for Different Stages:

  • Young Adults:

    • Be willing to step into the arena, risk embarrassment and failure for things you care about, not just what social media rewards.
    • Brad: “It kind of took that leap of faith to be like, no, like that's not who I am. At least it's not who I am anymore.” (41:18)

  • Mid-life/Parents:

    • Excellence can be found either at work (if you craft your job to be meaningful) or in outside hobbies/crafts.
    • Cal: “What I would say is that you can have a craft in your leisure time… the activity doesn't matter. What matters is that you have this thing where you can put your concrete, effortful exertion in and see progress that you can trace back to yourself.” (45:55–48:15)

• Role of the Internet in Excellence:

  • Use the Internet as a "way station," a tool for information or community that supports real-world pursuits—but don’t let it be a terminal destination.
    • “The Internet should be a way station instead of a terminal endpoint.” (51:38, Brad)

Notable & Memorable Quotes

• On Viral Hustle Content:

  • Cal: “There's a sort of safety in this sort of checklist productivity of like, I'm doing things… and I'm just going to get reward by doing a large quantity of them.” (06:36)

• On the Internet’s seduction:

  • Brad: “People just are desperate to exert themselves and to feel good and to try to find mastery and skill and meaning and mattering in their life. And you come across a video like that… very alluring and very enticing and very motivating.” (23:57)

• On Parenting in the Age of Internet Fame:

  • Brad: “Let your young child see you pursuing some sort of craft... The best way to role model a life orientation or a philosophy of excellence in your kid is to do it in yourself.” (54:18)

• On True Excellence:

  • “What matters is who you become along the way and the relationships that you forge.” (Basketball coach Gregg Popovich, as quoted by Brad, 37:37)

Final Takeaways

• If you want genuine satisfaction and meaning, abandon performative "pseudo-excellence" cycles.
• Embrace crafts and pursuits that are hard, matter to you, and have a real-world locus.
• Leverage the Internet only as a tool, not the goal—build tribes and get information, but make your excellence analog.
• Demonstrate these values for future generations by living them openly yourself.

Practice Segment: Escaping Messaging Hell (59:10–83:49)

Focus:
Cal delivers his updated 2026 playbook for conquering the overwhelming tide of workplace email and messaging, based on insights from Microsoft’s latest Work Trends Index.

Key Insights

• The modern office worker is inundated:

  • 117 emails/day (most barely skimmed)
  • 153 Teams messages/day
  • Half describe their jobs as “chaotic and fragmented” (61:30)

• The main drivers of overload are process failures, not the wrong notification/filter settings or lack of AI summarizers.

Top 5 Tactics for Taming Messaging

(1) Eliminate Threads

• “Anything that requires more than one message in response should be moved to synchronous (real time) communication.” (69:22)
  • Use office hours, phone “zones,” or quick phone calls for back-and-forth conversations—don’t let email become a place for sprawling discussions.

(2) Relocate for Deep Work

• “Protecting deep work on your calendar helps; relocating to a different location… is even better.” (74:59)
  • Go somewhere you can’t check email/Slack.
  • Your mind will learn that certain locations = uninterrupted focus.

(3) Batch Group Discussion

• Use 2–3x weekly “docket clearing meetings” in place of endless email chains.
  • Collect everything in a shared document; process them together.
  • Eliminates 90% of group email threads, 50% of ad hoc meetings.

(4) Create Processes

• “Spend more time in the moment to prevent many distractions down the line.”
  • For every task, clarify: Who? What? Where? When?
  • “It is worth taking more time. It is worth taking more time.” (80:22)

(5) Reduce Active Projects

• “Each active project generates messages. Therefore, reducing active projects reduces messages.” (81:34)
  • Differentiate between projects currently active and those in a holding pattern.
  • You can’t solve overload with better filtering—you must say “no” (or “not yet”) more.

Notable Quotes – Practices

• “Sometimes the problems created by technology aren't solved by more complicated configurations of your technology, but… by having better processes.” (82:11)

Q&A and Listener Comments (83:49–102:00)

• AI’s Real Impact: Is it Overhyped Outside Programming?

  • Cal reviews an online forum’s collective examples and notes that—except for programming—most use-cases are incremental, not revolutionary (e.g., summarizing text, auto-generating slides, better customer service bots).
  • “If we put this in scale… the stuff that... what’s changing your mind? People are using this like a better version of Google. Now this doesn’t mean much bigger changes aren’t coming, but… so far, it’s not massive yet.” (96:40)

• Listener Wisdom:

  • Several comments reinforce the power of boundaries and constraints—“the one who will win is not the one who has better tools, but the one who has better boundaries.” (Yaroslav Markovich)

• Tech Minimalism and Role Modeling:

  • Both Cal and Brad recommend actually living your values (using basic phones, having real-world crafts, demonstrating boundaries) rather than lecturing children about them.

Conclusion

• Book Recommendations:

  • Brad Stulberg’s The Way (https://wayofexcellencebook.com)
  • Cal’s “A World Without Email” (for further strategies on digital overload)

• Parting Thought:

  • “If you want to go deeper, check out A World Without Email. Problems created by technology often require a process change, not a tool change.”

• Stay Deep:

  • “Thank you for listening. We’ll be back next week with another episode. Until then, as always, stay deep.” (107:36)

Quick Reference — Key Timestamps

• 00:00 — Cal’s introduction: What’s the impact of Internet on ambition?
• 04:18 — Brad Stulberg defines “pseudo excellence”
• 13:38 — The myth of elaborate morning routines
• 23:57 — The Internet is hijacking a deep human drive, not just vanity
• 33:24 — True excellence as a process, not a standard
• 54:18 — Parenting for true ambition
• 59:10 — Practice segment: Escaping messaging hell
• 69:22 — Eliminate threads: Move complex convos out of email
• 74:59 — Relocate for deep work
• 81:34 — Reduce active projects to reduce overload
• 83:49 — Q&A: What has AI actually changed?
• 99:45 — Audience comments: Tech boundaries, minimalism, the Amish
• 106:04 — Cal’s book picks & conclusion

This summary preserves the insight, language, and playful tone of the episode, offering a comprehensive guide for listeners seeking practical strategies and a deeper framework for pursuing meaningful ambition in a distracted digital age.