Ep. 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Episode 400: Should I Embrace “Slow Technology”?
Date: April 13, 2026
Host: Cal Newport
Guest: Amy Timberlake (Children's and Middle Grade Bestselling Author)

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Overview

This milestone 400th episode centers on the concept of “slow technology”—the conscious embrace of simpler, lower-friction tools that often stand in contrast to ever-faster, more complex digital solutions. Cal Newport explores whether choosing slower, less efficient technology can actually boost productivity, focus, and life satisfaction by creating the right cognitive context, rather than simply increasing speed. The episode features a deep-dive interview with acclaimed children’s author Amy Timberlake, who has partially shifted her writing process to a vintage typewriter, and reflects on broader principles and examples of slow technology both in creative work and daily life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: What is Slow Technology?

• Cal contemplates the downside of “fast” digital tools, noting their potential to create exhaustion and anxiety (00:00).
• He introduces “slow technology” as a movement focused on simple, sometimes inconvenient tools that bring intentionality and depth back to work and creativity.

“Going faster has to make us more productive, right? Or does it?”
—Cal Newport (00:00)

2. Amy Timberlake's Creative Process: Depth Over Speed

• Background (03:56–05:30): Amy details her career writing for children, especially middle grade. She prizes stories that can be read aloud and enjoyed by multigenerational audiences. Humor and unique character voices are central to her latest series, Skunk and Badger.
• Quality vs. Quantity (06:23): Success in children’s books comes down to language precision and the elimination of extraneous words. Amy’s process involves writing long drafts and cutting relentlessly to preserve only what’s essential.

“They’re almost like a farce. And they can’t carry a lot of extraneous words… The cutting just goes on forever.”
—Amy Timberlake (06:23)

• Finding Character Voices (12:56): Amy writes extensively to ‘find’ a character’s authentic voice. It involves trial, error, and listening to the language by reading aloud.
• On Editing and Structure (18:13–22:04): Her transition to full-time writing was “a dream come true,” but demanded time for self-directed learning. She discovered early that having time wasn’t enough—she also needed craft skills and patience.

3. Daily Rituals and Writing Environment

• Routine (29:13): Amy prefers writing in the mornings, values movement (walks/stretching), and experiments continually with time-management and productivity tricks, occasionally referencing Cal’s own time block schedule.
• The Power of Space (30:26–31:23): Having a dedicated office “just for my writing” is crucial, echoing Virginia Woolf’s sentiment about the importance of a room of one's own, particularly for women.

4. The Typewriter Experiment: Embracing Slow Technology in Writing

• Origin (32:15–36:37): Inspired partly by Tom Hanks’ public love for typewriters, Amy tries one after growing frustrated with computer-based distractions.
• Process (40:03–41:30): She types a draft on her 1960s manual typewriter, marks edits by hand, then re-types the next draft—forcing herself to revisit every word. This method pushes her to internalize and refine her stories at a deeper level.

“When I started writing on a typewriter…two hours goes by, and I haven’t even thought—I was like, oh my gosh, how did two hours just fly by?”
—Amy Timberlake (41:00)

• Benefits: Typewriting minimizes distractions and induces flow, allowing Amy to better observe and analyze her own creative process (43:13–44:50).
• Limitations: She notes no obvious improvement in writing quality or speed—at least yet—but believes the clarity about her own process is a significant plus.

5. Productivity in the Creative Arts: Not About Speed

• Cal asks Amy to compare her method with the tech industry assumption that “faster writing = greater productivity.”
• Amy emphasizes that meaningful art isn’t about efficiency:
  “I just don’t think art is efficient…The only way for me to create what I feel good about is taking the time.” (48:00–48:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Children’s Bookwriting: “It’s like a puzzle coming together. Every word matters.”
  —Cal Newport (08:46)

• On the Discipline of Slow Creative Work: “There’s no other way for me to create what I feel good about except for taking the time.”
  —Amy Timberlake (47:06)

• On Distraction: “I realized I kept moving away from the laptop to get my work done. Every time I do that, I focus so much better.”
  —Amy Timberlake (33:30)

• On Cognition and Tools: “A tool that can put us in the right mindset is often going to give us way more value than a tool that lets us do particular steps faster.”
  —Cal Newport (61:10)

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Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Topic | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Cal defines slow technology and previews Amy Timberlake’s story | | 03:56 | Amy introduces her writing background and genre | | 06:23 | Discussion about tight writing and relentless editing | | 12:56 | Amy on writing long to discover the right voice | | 18:13–21:49 | Transition to full-time writing; psychological challenges | | 22:04–25:59 | The learning curve of becoming a professional writer | | 32:15–36:37 | Why Amy shifted to a typewriter | | 40:03–44:50 | Amy’s specific typewriter workflow and discoveries | | 47:06–48:50 | Reflections on productivity, “art is not efficient” | | 53:26–61:10 | Cal lists examples of slow technology in other domains | | 61:10–64:22 | Cal’s general principles for slow technology |

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Broader Reflections: Slow Technology in Context

Examples from Cal:

• MP3 Players: Returning to dedicated music players (vs. streaming on phones) creates intentional, immersive listening experiences (53:26).
• Analog To-Do Systems: Handwritten cards prioritize presence and attention over digital task app speed/features (54:42).
• Physical Media (Blu-Rays/Vinyl): Holding and using “real things” provides a richer, more satisfying experience than cloud-based streaming (57:44).

Cal’s Principles for Slow Technology (from 61:10):

1. Speed isn’t everything: Faster does not necessarily mean better.
2. Cognitive context matters: Tools that create the right mental environment trump those designed for efficiency.
3. Friction has value: Small inconveniences can boost focus; mental exhaustion from distraction is the real enemy.
4. Zoom out: Judge tools by their effects on long-term output and satisfaction—not by micro-measures of productivity.

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Closing Thoughts

Cal concludes that embracing slow technology—dedicated, distraction-free tools with intentional friction—can deepen focus, elevate quality, and bring greater meaning to work. While the modern world lauds speed, for creative endeavors and even many practical tasks, “slow” often delivers richer rewards.

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For new listeners: This episode provides an inspiring look at how resisting the relentless speed of modern technology in favor of intentional simplicity can help you do deeper, more fulfilling work—whether you’re an artist, writer, or knowledge worker in any field.

Transcript

[Cal Newport]

If I had to use one word to describe modern digital tools, it would be fast. Now, whether we're talking about workplace communication or swarms of AI agents or even apps for ordering food, the focus always seems to be on reducing friction and increasing the options available to get people through whatever task they're thinking about as quickly as possible. Now, the speed, of course, has a negative side effect. It's exhausting. It reduces so much of our life to a frantic blur of swipes and taps and clicks, all in a sort of never ending battle to keep up with the ceaseless barrage of incoming information. But what can we do? Going faster has to make us more productive, right? Or does it? You see, there's a growing subculture of individuals who are embracing simpler technologies that offer less features and more friction. And they're not doing this as a political statement, and they're not doing this because they're nostalgic, but instead because they think these more minimal tools actually makes them better at their work and makes their life more livable. I call this movement slow technology. And it's what I want to talk about today. Now, to help us better understand it, we're going to be joined by Amy Timberlake, who's an acclaimed best selling author of children's and middle grades books. Timberlake has won countless distinctions, including a Newberry Honor and an Edgar Award. Her titles have been named to, as far as I can tell, just about every best book of the year list in existence. So she knows what she's talking about. Now, Timberlake came to my attention recently. Here's why I wanted to talk to her about slow productivity. She came to my attention when I discovered she had recently shifted to using a mechanical vintage typewriter for more and more of her writing and revision process. So I really wanted to find out what was going on here. So in our conversation, we talk about what does it take to succeed in that world of children's book writing, the details of her creative process and how it's evolved, and how she came to believe that using a mechanical typewriter was actually going to make her a better writer and a happier human. Spoiler alert. I kind of end this conversation about half serious about buying a typewriter myself. So beware about that. And then after our conversation, I'm going to step back and I'm going to isolate some general principles of slow technology. I'm going to show you some other examples of slow technology that have become popular in recent years and make the argument that many more people, not just those who are in creative fields like Writing should consider embracing simpler tools. So if you are tired of being told by tech leaders like Sam Altman that your future has to be orchestrating armies of hyperactive AI agents, or if you find your smartphone to be an overstimulating anxiety machine, then this episode is for you, as always. I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in a distracted world. Today's question, should I embrace slow technology? And we'll explore some answers right after the music. All right, Amy, thanks for joining us today. We have so much geeking out on creative process and technology and the deep work to get into today. So I have been excited about this. I want to start by just making sure that the listeners understand your story and where you're coming from. First of all, how do you describe even the genre of books you write in? I see them described as children's book, but there's a range here, right, from, you know, books that I might think of as like middle grades to illustrated books. So just, let's just set the stage. How would you describe yourself as a writer?

[Amy Timberlake]

Well, I would describe myself as a writer who will write pretty much anything. However, I have been published in Writing for Kids and I've written picture books. Actually I published one picture books. And then I've written middle grade novels, which is kind of the middle range of readers. And then YA would be high, would be older. So I write pretty much middle grade novel age. And I would say that's actually at this point, it's probably second grade through eighth grade, seventh grade. And this last, and this last group of novels that I wrote, they are actually read alouds. And the idea was that I was trying to write something that somebody could read in a room and everyone from the 80 year olds to the 5 year old would enjoy. And this was a big challenge. I always take a challenge every single time I take a project and yeah, and also I was trying to write humor for the first time. I'm a quirky writer, but I wanted to just try to be funny in books. And that was a big, that was a big challenge and fun and I'm glad I tried it. I'm really glad I tried it. So that's these latest ones, the latest ones are the skunk and badger books. So skunk and badger egg marks the spot and rock paper incisors.

[Cal Newport]

I mean, so something I've always wondered about that genre is that it's a genre where people often, they have this very naive view of it, right. When people think about books, they Often think, oh, the hard part about writing is, like, the quantity of words. So, like, okay, I get it. I'm not gonna be a big novelist because I can't imagine writing that many words. But then they think of a. If they're looking at, like, a picture book or something, they're like, well, the actual quantity of words there is not that much. I could sit down and write that many words, and it would sound roughly like a story. I could do that, like, this afternoon. And it's a very competitive market, though. What did you discover that you then put into that first book that makes projects sell in children's books? Because there's so many submissions in that world because so many people try. What is it that people don't understand about what a successful book in that genre must do?

[Amy Timberlake]

I think it just. Well, I can only speak for my experience, but I would say the better written it is, the more chance you have. And that first book, I wrote it like my grandfather telling the story. So that voice was very specific. New Mexico Tall Tale. And I just went for it. I didn't do a lot of things that you might read about and hear that you have to do. I didn't worry about language. I didn't worry about vocabulary. I worried about how well can I tell this particular story with this particular voice? And I just gave it everything I had. So that's how I do. Means for me, though, that as a writer, I'm not quick at what I do. It means I produce a lot of words, and then I cut down, in particular for these skunk and badger books. They are really tightly written. They're almost like a farce. And they can't carry a lot of extraneous words. So I have to really know the characters. I have to write pages and pages and pages, and then I cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And the cutting just goes on forever. So it's. So for me, it's. And it's. It language. And how does the word sound? And so, you know, I'm often, like, when I write these, I write long, then I stand up and I read them out loud so that I can hear how the language is hitting on the page. And then I cut them again. So, yeah. So I. I can't really honestly tell you what makes it successful. I do think that the thing that I really do is I. I put 100% of my effort in it.

[Cal Newport]

I think you did just tell us. I mean, what I'm hearing there is something I've heard before, which is in that type of writing, it's like a puzzle coming together. Every word matters. The tonality, the way that. The rhythm and poetry of how it sounds out loud. Nothing wasted. Everything moves it forward. Which is different than, I don't know if I'm Neal Stephenson writing a thousand page whatever. Not every sentence needs to be perfect, right? I'm like all over the place, postmodern digression going on. And it's fine. It's like I'm moving like a plot. Yeah. But I've heard the same thing about screenplays that people, as with children's book people, like, oh, I could write a screenplay because I know movies. And if I look at a scene, I was like, they're just talking. I can just talk. And then if you talk to professional screenwriters, like I've interviewed them for the show, like, oh, no, no, there's. It's like a jewel box puzzle. Nothing can be wasted. You can't have a single person say a single thing that doesn't have a reason why they're saying it. And it better not. You know, it's got to be Chekhov's gone. If you mentioned this here, this better come back here. And actually it's the nothing's wasted. So I get that this sort of every sentence has to be right. But that's interesting. You write a lot so that you can then pull out as opposed to building the smaller number of sentences very carefully just from scratch. So you pull back to it. Is that because it puts you in the. Having the larger amount of text really puts you into the moment in the character so that you can then better find the right line for that page. Is that a way to think about it? Let's take a quick break to hear from some of our sponsors. Hey, men, you need to start taking better care of your skin. And what's the best way to do this with Calda Lab? Caldera Lab makes high performance skin care designed specifically for men's skin. See, men's skin is 25% thicker, oiler and aged differently from women's, which means men need clean formulas engineered for their biology. Now, Caldera Lab's three step regimen is powered by clean, clinically tested ingredients and breakthrough patent pending technologies that deliver visible results. Step one is to use their cleanser, which will clear dirt, oil and sweat that is built up on your skin. Then step two, you use their serum, which is clinically proven to reduce wrinkles, firm skin and improve elasticity. It also can deal with puffiness under your eyes. Trust me, as you get to a certain age that becomes relevant and step three is use their moisturizer, which is lightweight and non greasy. Now, I really hadn't done much with my skin until I got these three products from Caldera Lab and I didn't realize how much I had been missing. So this is a small habit that produces big results. Go to calderolab.com deep and use the code deep to get 20% off your first order. This episode is also sponsored by BetterHelp. So it's tax season, which means finances are on our minds and this matters for our mental health because financial stress can take a serious toll on on your mental health. Money worries can bring anxiety and sleep disruption and depression. It's also probably one of the leading sources of conflict among couples. Now, given that 88% of Americans are feeling at least some sort of financial stress, according to an early 2026 survey, this is a problem that we cannot ignore. One part of the solution, of course, would be getting better financial advice. But another part might be getting the proper support for your mental health. And this is where BetterHelp enters the scene. If you're considering therapy, BetterHelp makes it easy. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 6 million people globally. And it works with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. So when life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com deepquestions that's betterhelp.com deepquestions all right, let's get back to the show.

[Amy Timberlake]

Yeah. So I think the reason why I go long is for a couple of reasons. Sometimes it's because I need to discover who the character is, and the characters are always very specific, you know, so I don't know. Have you seen Sally Wainwright's stuff on BBC like Riot Women or, you know, any of that?

[Cal Newport]

I'm familiar with it. I know the titles, but I'm not very familiar with it.

[Amy Timberlake]

She is just, she's just exactly, to me, exactly the kind of writer that you were just talking about, which is where every piece of dialogue that she has in one of those. Those miniseries BBC shows is always just thought through. And so. And I would imagine that she also writes long. She has to figure out who those characters are. Exactly. And sometimes she's going back and placing dialogue early because it makes sense. Because there's, you know, it's all just figuring out where things land. But I do it because it's a lot about characters and finding those scenes. And then also sometimes if you write long and you really love language like I do, you find that sentence that is just. It's perfect. It's dynamite. And you go, okay, that's it. That's the voice. That's what I need. Now I have to write this whole thing again because I have to have that kind of, like, whatever that is. It's like a music. It's like a sound. And you get really excited about it.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Amy Timberlake]

So anyway, so that's why I do it.

[Cal Newport]

How does that change when you're writing the slightly older grades, books that are chapter format, more text, how does that adapt to that?

[Amy Timberlake]

Oh, that's. That's when I'm really doing it.

[Cal Newport]

Interesting.

[Amy Timberlake]

I mean, yeah, all of these Skunk and Badger books are really like, okay, all right, here's Skunk and Badger. The first line is of. This one is the first time Badger saw Skunk. He thought puny and shut the front door. Took me a while to find out that he would use the word puny. And. And that. That is the first time, you know, that he shut the front door. But that's the beginning. And so I just had to. I had to write. Write right until I found that thing. And I was like, all right, that's how it is. That's what this is.

[Cal Newport]

Had you written, like, dialogue, a lot of dialogue, and then sort of found in that dialogue, oh, this voice feels right for the character. And then you knew how to go back and write that first word in that first line.

[Amy Timberlake]

Yeah, yeah. I had to find out. And I had to find out who Badger was. And Badger is important rock scientist. He does important rock work. And he's always. Actually, it's funny. It's funny that I'm talking to you about this, because Badger always, kind of. The way he does his important rock work. He does his important rock work is he's always walking somewhere, and he's thinking, I must focus, focus, focus. And so he's always saying, focus, focus, focus.

[Cal Newport]

I like this animal. All right, here we go. I like this character.

[Amy Timberlake]

Yeah. And he's, you know, he's kind of. He's very happy in his life. He lives in a brownstone. He does his important rock work. He. In the first book, he's, you know, he's got his. He's got his rocks. He's got his magnifying glass. He's like, is this a rock or is this a mineral? And then one day, there's A skunk that walks in, knocks. Skunk knocks on the door. And now Badger has this roommate. So he's perfectly fine the way he is, but he doesn't really have a choice about Skunk being his roommate. And Skunk is very different. And so anyway, finding those two characters took a while. And then the story is actually told in a limited, omniscient, third person, third animal voice, because these are all animals and sweaters. Thank you to John Claussen and his beautiful sweaters.

[Cal Newport]

So.

[Amy Timberlake]

And they are all told through Badger. I. Skunk is a bit of a mystery, but he isn't to me, but he is to the reader. So. Yeah. So I had to discover what is the voice of this particular story. It's going to be Badger. And he's. He does this important rock work. And he has a very serious life. It's a very good life. It is. You know, it is fine. He's not hurting anyone as he is. He could live that way for a very long time, and I would be happy for him. But I think he's a little better with Skunk in his life. But that's just me as the writer.

[Cal Newport]

So even to find out that perspective, that's. That was. That came out of the writing as well. Are we gonna do limited third person? That's like one of the things you discover.

[Amy Timberlake]

Yeah, yeah. Instead of first person sometimes just having all these choices, I mean, when you're just. You're starting with a blank page, there's so much choice. And sometimes it's just too much choice. Oh, my gosh. So it just takes a while to find all that. And so the writing is just. That's the way I have to discover that. And then once I know kind of how it's going to go, then my process is. It's the first scene that kind of sets how far I can write into the story. How deep have I gone? How much do I know about this world? How much do I know about these characters? And then I just write until the story kind of wanes and it disappears. And then I come back. And then I come back and I go, oh, I don't know enough yet. And then I'll work some more to kind of build up the beginning so I have more fuel to get to the end of the story. That's how I sort of think about it.

[Cal Newport]

Now, this is fascinating. And now I want to unpack some of the actual, even physical rituals around this. But I guess we should clarify. Did you at some point along this way, do you write essentially full Time

[Amy Timberlake]

right now, or I do now.

[Cal Newport]

How did that transition happen? And psychologically, what was that like?

[Amy Timberlake]

Well, okay, I got married. There was health insurance. Yay. And my husband. My husband is. Well, actually, he just retired, so he was professor in a theater department. So we moved out to DeKalb, Illinois, and we moved from Richmond, where I had a job. I had a regular job, and, you know, I was making money and I had. Anyway, but we moved to DeKalb, Illinois, and suddenly we got out there and Phil had a job as a professor. And I did not know what. What I was going to do for work. I mean, I was looking around, I was like, well, I could work in the university, maybe somewhere. I have a lot of administrative skills and I write. But anyway, I was looking at detasseling corn jobs. I was like, looking at. I was like, huh, what am I going to do? And Phil just said, why don't you just let. Let's see how this goes. You know, I'll take. I'll. I'll get. You know, I have health insurance. Let's just see how it is if you write. And so that is when I started writing all by my, you know, and it was a big transition. It was a dream come true. It was a dream come true, and it was a big transition. Yeah. What was it like? Well, it was weird being in charge of my time. I was completely in charge of my time. And I had a little tiny office, and I would go in there and I would sit and I would. I had. What was I working on at the time? Oh, you know, it was some sort of. It was some sort of laptop, anyway. Yeah, it was a big transition. It was weird, and it was great. So it was all of those things.

[Cal Newport]

How did it impact the writing? Was it. Were you writing faster or more or better, or was it just less clutter in your mind? What was the delta between Richmond and DeKalb riding style?

[Amy Timberlake]

Hmm. Well, in Richmond, I was often. I would often come home from my job and be very tired. So. And I was doing writing. I was doing. I was working at the Virginia Commission for Fine Arts there. And so I was doing their website. It was a pretty basic website. And I was doing some writing, and so I would write right during the day, then I would come home and I would be tired. And so it was really hard for me to even feel creative. I'd just be sort of drained by the time I got home, so I wasn't getting as much done. I was also trying to break into book reviewing at that time, so I. I would write these columns anyway, so. Yeah, so it wasn't a lot. I wasn't getting a lot done. I did have an agent interested in my writing at that point, so I knew I had to get some stuff. I had to get stuff done. And then I was just trying and it was hard and I was tired.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Amy Timberlake]

And then when I got to DeKalb, I had more time. And I think the hardest part was discovering that my ideas were complicated. And it was going to take a lot of time for me to even get those complicated ideas into a novel, especially a novel for kids. I was, you know, I think my first novel, it ended up being called that Girl Lucy Moon, but it was about a 12 year old activist and I really wanted like three generations of women in this book. Like, I wanted the 12 year old activist, I wanted this woman who owns the business in town, I wanted her in it and I wanted the mother. And instead I had to really, you know, I had to learn the business. And so not only I was just writing way too much, I was writing huge complicated ideas. And it was kind of frustrating because I was here I was with this, I suddenly had the time to really write. And it turned out I didn't really have the skill to know what the structure was yet. So it was just, it was a little frustrating. And you know, there's my husband, he's going off to work, he's doing his thing and how's your day, Amy? And I'm like, oh, I don't even know if I'm a writer.

[Cal Newport]

Interesting. So in retrospect, really the beginning of your time as a full time writer was actually more of a like self guided training education process. They're like, okay, now I have time to actually push my skills in this genre to the next level. And you're in that frustrated learning process. You thought, like, right off the bat I'm gonna be spitting out chapters. And that was not what happened.

[Amy Timberlake]

I really thought it was gonna be easier than it was. I thought my idea was so great, I was like, it's just gonna go. And instead I did end up, I did end up selling it. And in, in kids lit, you can often get an editor that will help you. You know, like, they will really. And so, you know, she says to me, we can't have three women in this book. And this is for kids, right? You know, do we really want like a mom? And, you know, and I was like,

[Cal Newport]

oh, okay, you're right.

[Amy Timberlake]

So. But, you know, I saw the, I saw, you know, I saw the point of what she was saying. And I was like, all right, well, you know, and those editors, those New York editors, they know their stuff. Yes, they are good readers. And so a lot of times if you have a good editor and they're like, they're saying, you know, I'm just not. You're like, I know, I know, I know.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, you're right. I've always heard that's the difference between a new writer and experienced writer is the new writer fights a lot for the things the editor is noting. And the experienced writer is like, yeah, I'm sure you're right. And you get rolling with it. So how does that differ from today? So now let's talk. I'm curious in how you would approach a novel today. Now you have all this experience under your belt. Like for example, are you still from the excavator Stephen King camp? Are you from the outlining camp? Do you have a completely different process for beginning the conceptualized idea before you start writing? What's your now expert process you would deploy today?

[Amy Timberlake]

Well, I mean, I think the first thing is I have to choose what idea I'm going to work on. I usually have a lot of ideas, so that's not really a problem. But then I have to choose, choose which one I'm going to work on. I think that is kind of different than earlier in my process was that I would kind of, I would, you know, I would kind of, I would kind of just power through something. And now I'm kind of choosing. I'm like, okay, I think this is the one that I want to work on. So I choose it and then, and then I start, I just start writing wherever it's catching me. You know, wherever the story is like the thing that's really alive in my head, that's what I'll start writing with and I'll see where that goes. And then at that point, once I start producing pages and it's not, it might not be that. Well, I can pretty much guarantee it will not be that good. But I will be producing pages. And then at that point I'll look at it and I'll say, okay, what's the structure? What am I thinking about in terms of structure? And I will start using tools like outlining at that point. So I use pretty much any tool you have heard about. I have used, I have stuck post its on doors. I mean, that was a big thing for a while. I, you know, I spread stuff all over the floor back here and I crawl around and grab things and or, you know, or I've used Scrivener, which is, which is a writing thing that people like online. Yeah. I've just done pretty much everything. But basically my rule is when I'm working on something, if I have an inkling somewhere in my head that I think this might help me, I grab it and I give it a try.

[Cal Newport]

What's your schedule now? Writing schedule. What's ideal for you?

[Amy Timberlake]

Mornings. Yeah, working mornings. If I can work mornings, that's the best. I, I do need, like to, like, I do need to stretch. I do need to go for walks. I have to get outside. I can't just, I can't just hole up and crank. But I do usually try to, you know, put in several hours at least. And actually, your time block schedule has really helped me, so thank you. And I have, like, I have resisted doing that for so long, like, the idea, because by the time I'm done working, the last thing I want to do is look at my day ahead.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Amy Timberlake]

So anyway, so I've started doing that, and that's actually been really helpful. I'm always, I'm always trying, I'm always experimenting on myself to see is this helpful? Is that helpful? And so I'm always, I feel like I am. I'm just a constant experiment in my work process, like how I do it. But. Oh, anyway, I'll wait for your question.

[Cal Newport]

Well, where do you write? What type of space gets your creativity going?

[Amy Timberlake]

Oh, I like having an office.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

At your house. At your house or somewhere else?

[Amy Timberlake]

That's where I am right now. We're in my office. And this is one of the nicest ones I've ever had. It's quite spacious. But I like having, I like having an office. And I, I, I, you know, I just come up here and, yeah, it's, it's just a space that's mine. It's a big deal, I think, particularly for women. I know Virginia Woolf writes about having a room of one's own, but it really was a big deal for me to just sort of claim a space in our home and say, this isn't for anything else. This is just my office. And I, yeah, I really like having an office.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. We underestimate the power of space, especially in the world of corporate work, too. I've long argued about. This is like, hey, we'll just throw everyone in some big open space. And this is efficient because we don't have to have desks. And it's like no human brains respond to environment. So I've Heard the same thing from lots of people. Having a space of your own, customizing it, and also just recognize it when I come here, it's to work. Yeah, all that can make a big difference. All right, so the thing that originally caught my attention, it's what I want to get to now is this experiment that you've been running more recently where you've made the technical process of writing strictly harder by moving back to an actual typewriter as the mechanism with which you're producing words. Tell me about what you're doing and why.

[Amy Timberlake]

Okay. Well, yeah, so the reason the typewriter came about probably a little bit because Tom Hanks was talking about it. I'm sure you've heard Tom Hanks had this thing. So it was kind of in the. It was kind of in the air that people were using typewriters again. But I was working on these three books. Gunk and badger, egg marks, this spot, Rock, paper, incisors. And I had a. And I was under a deadline for it. And I was late on the third book. So I was really feeling. I was really feeling pressure. And I had a work process that was working for me and I was. Which was I would use the computer, the word processing program, Microsoft Word mostly. I would print out a chapter, I would print it out in paper. I would bring it to my. To my chair, and I would sit there and I would make the changes in pencil or pen on this draft. And then when I was done with it, I would come back to the computer and I would type it in. And. And I would try to make myself not fix it while I was typing. So I would turn on music in the back just so that my brain would be thinking about the music. And all I was doing was typing the words into Microsoft Word. So I was doing this process. And I also had a notebook and a three ring binder. And I was using three by five cards. And what I had realized as I kept doing this, I realized I kept moving away from the laptop to get my work done. I realized, you know, every time I do that, I focus so much better. So I had already started doing that, but the process was working. And I am so protective of my process. Like, if I have something that's working, I am not going to mess with it. If I have a habit that's part of that or, you know, a routine, I will just keep that routine. So I was. I was just keeping this routine with the three, you know, the printing out and the three ring, the three ring binder and the three by five Cards and the notebooks and I'm using all this stuff. And I just kept thinking, I hate this laptop. I hate it. I mean, I. I mean, I love my laptop. Let's face it. The reason I have trouble with it is because I also love it. But it's a really cool thing. But, you know, every time an update would come, something would change and then there would be a notification and I'd be like, I know I can turn this off. I mean, I would spend hours working on work focuses and home focuses and all this stuff to try to get this laptop to not interrupt me. And also, I love email. So, you know, I would just check email on a whim. So I was like, oh, my gosh. So I was really struggling with that. And so I was spending more and more time away from it. And I just started thinking, you know, what it would be. I should really try a typewriter. And I was like, oh, my gosh, that's insane. That's insane. I can't try a typewriter. But I was like, well, I think as soon as this project is done, as soon as you send it off to your editor, maybe you should just see if you can get yourself a typewriter and try it. I had the only. In my past, my mom had an electric Smith Corona and it was in our living room. So the only reason you really used that typewriter was if you were, you know, you'd written your paper and you were typing it up and you better not make one single spelling error on that thing. And meanwhile, mom is right there and sometimes she would like suggest changes. So it was just like a stressful thing.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Amy Timberlake]

Meanwhile, my dad downstairs was way into computers, so he had like an Apple IIe. We had a TRS 80, which was a radio. I think that was a Radio Shack TRS 80. We had a TRS 80 and Apple IIe at one point. And so I ended up being the first person in my high school who had turned in a paper on a computer. And I was a dot matrix printer. And I got an A because my dad, he stayed up really late trying to figure out how to get footnotes to raise on this Apple IIe on their word processing. And he couldn't get it to work. So anyway, so I feel like I sort of learned to write on a computer. So the idea of trying a typewriter was really crazy to me because I just thought, well, how do you revise? I don't get how you revise. So now I am working on my next project, which at this point is Another animal and sweater story, because I found that they're pretty fun to write, which is really. Anyway, I really like it, so I'm working on it and I am doing the drafts on the typewriter as long as I can. I know at some point I'm gonna have to get back on the laptop and I am really fast at making changes on the laptop, so I don't know how long I can resist exactly, but it's been really interesting. I mean, there's been a couple of things that have been really great. First of all, when I started writing on a typewriter, I'm looking at my typewriter. It's right over here. I don't know.

[Cal Newport]

Here, I'll show you.

[Amy Timberlake]

I'll give you.

[Cal Newport]

Oh, there it is. Oh, that's right. So that's not even electric.

[Amy Timberlake]

No, I love. Actually you can. You can get the electric still. But you know, like sometimes the. I'm always worried about the electrical from previous decades.

[Cal Newport]

Yep. Is it old? Is that vintage? Or is there still people who are now kind of retro manufacturing this technology?

[Amy Timberlake]

I think there are a few typewriter manufacturers, but I wouldn't recommend ever buying one. They're pretty. They're pretty bad, as at least all the typewriter people say they are. I haven't. So this one is. This one is from 1960s and there are a few typewriter shops still around. They put. The thing that you want to do is you want to get one that has new rubber. And that's the hard part to get. So that's why you'd want to go to a typewriter shop. And then also because mailing. If you mail a typewriter, there's a lot of moving parts and all it takes is one FedEx guy to clunk your typewriter really heavy on some other box and suddenly you have an issue.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah.

[Amy Timberlake]

And it's. It's hard to get them fixed. So anyway. Yeah. So this is. Anyway, so I decided that I was going to try the typewriter. I'm sorry, I got distracted. What would you like to know?

[Cal Newport]

Well, so do I have it right then? That the process is. You'll type a draft of like, let's say a chapter on the typewriter. Then you're marking it, editing with pencil and paper like you had done before. And now you come back to the typewriter, blank sheet of paper. And now you're typing it, you type in the draft with your hand marked revisions, and then you'll take that to revise again. Is that like the. So like the typewriters for like, do I have that right? Or what am I missing?

[Amy Timberlake]

That's about it. That's the part that I thought. That's the part that I thought was insane. The fact that you would type the whole thing again. Oh, my gosh. But the thing that's interesting about it is that it makes you think through the whole thing again. And so now it's in your head twice. And it does actually help in a weird way. I mean, it actually helps. It's more for me. I've never been someone that's really good at memorizing or anything like that, but repeating something is really helpful for me. So this is. This does that. It repeats it. And then the other thing it does is it does not interrupt you in any way. All it does is puts, you know, puts your words on the paper. And I couldn't believe. I mean, I think the first time I used a typewriter, I was just trying it, and I got a writing exercise out, I started doing it, and two hours goes by, and I haven't even thought. I was like, oh, my gosh, how did two hours just fly by? I mean, on my laptop, I would often just. It did not feel like that. It did not feel like I was just dropping. I guess they call it dropping down into the. Well. I just felt like I just drop there. And it was easy to do it. And what it really. And that has been the way it's felt every single time I use this machine. I think, oh, it's easier for me to focus on this thing. And in fact, it's made me feel that I was doing a lot of work on my laptop that I did not know was doing. Like, I was doing a lot of work to maintain my focus that I didn't know I was doing because it was so much easier to work on this thing. Now the only problem is, is my writing has not. I can't tell that my writing has gotten better. So I really honestly wish that I was suddenly a better writer because I was using this. And. And I can't really tell that.

[Cal Newport]

Is it faster? Like, if you zoom all the way out? Because less of your energy, therefore, less of your time is fighting distraction. Do you think if you measured your books are being produced a little bit faster?

[Amy Timberlake]

Maybe. Maybe. I mean, one of the things that is interesting is that I can see my process better as I've been doing the drafts on this machine, on the typewriter, I understand better what I am doing to create that chapter. And I think that's just got to be helpful to know that. So I realized that one of the things that I do when I write a chapter is, and I think I was doing this on the laptop too, is it's almost like I'm, you know how painters say they, like, a watercolor painter will add, like, different levels. You know, they'll start with pencil, and then they'll add this, and then they'll add this. And I am really seeing that that is what I do. Like, I start with this rough thing, and then I'm like, oh, what I really need is I need this thing. And then I put that thing in. And then I realize, oh, wait, I've forgotten that. And then I put it in. And so somehow on the laptop, I think I was doing like three or four things, you know, at the same time. And I couldn't really tell you what my process was, but in this, with using this, I can really tell what my process is. And I go, oh, this will be helpful information for future traps is knowing, oh, I like to, like, slot stuff in and just keep working. And then, you know, get that. It's like creating a painting but with words.

[Cal Newport]

That's fascinating. Yeah. So it tells me. My guess would be with. As future projects go on with this process, your rate at which you feel personal improvements in parts of process and crafts will probably increase because now you're making the process bare, and now you can start thinking, okay, well, if this is actually what my process is, how do I make this second step of the process better? If this is what I'm looking for there, then why don't I really, like, lean into that piece and do you know, I could imagine over the next few books that this manualness is going to unlock. It's going to unlock more leaps and polishes in the craft.

[Amy Timberlake]

That's what I think, too. I mean, I think knowing more information is good. It's actually good to hear you say that because I think. I think you probably think more about process than I do. But I'm always trying to get my process to be better. And so hearing you say that you think it'll help me is an encouragement to me, I guess.

[Cal Newport]

So, final question. I want to do a little reflection on productivity. Productivity and technology and the brain. That's a confluence of topics, of course, I'm really interested in. We're in a moment now where we're hearing a lot about writing and productivity because of generative AI. It produces tech. So we're thinking a lot about writing productivity. And the story that's being told by the AI companies is what we need to be more productive is words have to be produced faster and we need to reduce the cognitive. It should be easier cognitively. We want it to be easier and be faster, then we'll be more productive. But when we hear from a professional writer like you, a real creative, award winning writer, the productivity which you probably think about on the scale of the books you produce over the course of multiple years and how good they are is completely unrelated to the speed with which you put words on the paper or trying to reduce the cognitive strain. You've actually gone the other direction, made the words go on the paper slower to gain more big scale productivity. So how do you think about in the creative arts, the idea of productivity? Because I think it's very different than the way that we've been hearing recently.

[Amy Timberlake]

Well, number one, I always want to be more productive. Like, oh my gosh, I would love, but I just don't think the, I don't think art is efficient. That's my number one thing. And no, I mean for me, I just want to create the absolute best book for kids that I can create in the time that I am living in. So I always give myself a little out sometimes. You know, you're living in a weird time and you are just not going to be able to do, you know, it's not going to be perfect and nothing is going to be perfect. But I always want to do my absolute best. And for me that means it sounds good when you read it out loud. It has language, it has rhythm, it has, it has voice, it's very specific to the characters. And I mean, I don't know another way to do it except for just taking time and doing it slow and giving it, just giving it time. And I honestly, I always wish I were faster. I mean, you could ask my husband any day, he will say, amy, I've heard this before. You wish you were faster. And I go, oh, I wish I were faster. And I. There's no other way for me to create what I feel good about except for taking the time.

[Cal Newport]

I want to take another quick break to hear from some of our sponsors. Let's talk my Body Tutor, a 100% online coaching program that solves the biggest problem in health and fitness. Lack of consistency. Now, here's how it works. When you sign up, you're assigned a coach. And the coach helps you figure out both a nutrition and an exercise program custom fit to your goals and the realities of your particular life. And then here's the key part. You check in with this coach Every day, using the MyBody Tutor app, you report what you ate and what fitness activities you did or any problems that you're having now. This is why MyBody Tutor Works is this accountability combined with customized advice helps you actually stick with your plan. And if you get knocked off your schedule because of like sickness or travel or something like this, your coach is right there to update plans. You don't abandon it like, oh, you're going to be on the road. Let's modify your workout for the hotel. Oh, you're worried about eating at Thanksgiving. Let's talk through what your strategies are going to be. So if you want to get healthier, in my opinion, this should be a big part of the solution. So head over to mybodytutor.com to sign up today. If you mention deep questions when you sign up, you will get $50 off your first month. That's mybody tutor t u t o r.com and mention deep questions to get $50 off your first month. I also want to talk about our friends at Grammarly Succeeding in knowledge work requires more than deep thinking. It also requires the ability to communicate your ideas clearly. Rushed, sloppy or generic sounding text just doesn't cut it. This is why you need Grammarly. Here's the thing. Grammarly doesn't just help fix mistakes in your text. It integrates AI technology seamlessly to help you write better. One of these features I especially appreciate is a tool's ability to detect the tone of your message and help you automatically adjust it. Too formal. Grammarly can make it sound more natural. Too conversational. Grammarly can help that text sound more professional. And that's just one feature among many. Not surprisingly, 93% of users report Grammarly helped them get more work done. And here's the great thing. You can use Grammarly in all the places where you already write. It now works across 500,000 sites and apps. In a world of generic AI don't sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for [e-mail] that's Grammarly.com all right, Jesse, let's get back to the show. All right, so there you go, Jesse. That was my conversation with Amy Timberlake. I told you before we went on air that she actually complimented your steady, calming presence on the podcast. It didn't make it to the final cut, but she likes your voice. So her two productivity secrets are a typewriter and Jesse. I've thought about. Here's what I thought about a I was tempted to buy a typewriter because the Mechanicalness of it. Going to a typewriter store, all that seemed kind of romantic, though. It's kind of a pain, I think, because you have to actually get ribbons and they break easily. But I've thought about. But seriously, the kind of digital equivalent is a tool like the Alpha Write. I don't know if you've seen these before, but it's basically just like a keyboard and a small screen. And all you can do is just type a draft, and you can go back and edit, like, what's right there, but you're not copying and pasting. You can't see the whole document at a time. So you're really just kind of like writing what's in front of you. So it's sort of like using a typewriter, but you can kind of correct typos that are right there. Then when you're done, you can export from the Alpha Write to a regular computer. But what makes it cool is they wanted to future proof it. And maybe I've mentioned this before on the show, but instead of having a special software on your computer that talks to an Alpha write, it pretends to be a keyboard. So when you plug it into your computer, your computer recognizes it as a keyboard, which is a very standard, simple protocol. And then when you press send, it basically simulates someone typing whatever you've written really fast. So you can load any program you want. Microsoft Word, Scrivener, whatever. And then you press send, and it just starts going across your screen really fast. Like a ghost is actually typing what you just typed, which I thought was kind of cool. I've held off on it so far because I guess my style of nonfiction writing, I guess I do. It's so structural that I'm constantly moving and I feel the flow of a sentence. I go back and change it again. But it was tempting.

[Jesse]

When I took typing in high school, I was on a typewriter.

[Cal Newport]

Really?

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

How old are you? Actually, you're my age. I was going to say, how old are you? I had advanced technology. We used Mavis Beacon, typing teacher on Apple iis. That's the right way to learn how to type. And the program where the letters were falling, and if you typed the letter before it hit the bottom, it would disappear, but if it hit the bottom, you lost. And so you had to type really quick to keep up. Yeah, kids, who needs Call of Duty or Fortnite? We had the real games. Maybe it was Beacon. It was a ba. All right, so anyways, here's what I want to do here. Let's Generalize, right? So we learned some interesting lessons from talking to Timberlake. But let's generalize here about slow technology. I want to extract some general principles about when to use it and how best to use it. I thought a good way to do this would be to quickly review a few other examples of other simpler technologies with less features and more friction that have become popular in recent years so we can get a more expansive view of slow productivity. And then I'll give you my principles. All right, I'm going to load on the screen here my first example. This is an article from Axios. The title is why Some are returning to MP3 players. Let me read a couple quotes from this article. By the numbers Search interest For the original iPod and iPod Nano spiked last year even though Apple discontinued the product line in 2022. According to Google Trends data, eBay searches jumped for the iPod Classic by 25% and the iPod Nano by 20% between January and October 2025, compared with the same period in 2024 per internal data shared with Axios. It's kind of similar to the analog record boom we saw in the last decade. A dedicated device for music for a lot of people makes the experience of listening to music more intentional and meaningful when it's not just coming out of your phone like every other distraction when you're going to hit skip and jump and move around as soon as you're bored. When it's coming out of a dedicated music player, people are having a richer experience with the music we talked about in an episode from a couple months ago that we actually bought our son. It's not an ipod, but a Japanese MP3 music player that you just drag MP3 files into it and all you can do is select songs from that list and play. And there's something about that dedicated experience. I think that's a great example of slow productivity in action. All right, let me load up another example here. This comes from the world of work and productivity. It's a system called Analog. For those who aren't watching what we're basically seeing here, Jesse, I would describe it as you have like a wooden box full of index card shaped pieces of paper that you can put one of the papers in the front of the box where it'll stand up. There's a couple other pictures here. There we go. So like here's an animation of it, right? So you have a piece of paper you put in a wooden box. Basically my understanding for how this system works is you're writing a to do list on this sort of pre formatted index card and then you put it propped up in this elegant wooden box next to your computer so you see physically in front of you the things you're supposed to be working on and can check them off as the day goes on. Let me read you a couple quotes here from the website. Analog is a physical companion for your digital tools that helps you prioritize and focus on your most important tasks. Working out of your inbox puts you on defense all day. Analog helps you focus on your important work to move you closer to your goals. Already using Asana or Trello or Basecamp. Great. Analog actually makes them better. Physically copying down your tasks gives you a tangible distraction free view of what you want to focus on today. Now look, there's no question that free or low cost productivity apps like Todoist is going to have more features and more options and less friction. You can very quickly add tasks. You can do it from any device. You can sort and look at them in different views. It has all the features on paper that seem better. Yet people like this sort of analog tool that's less options, less features, more friction. But it's tangibility makes you take it more seriously. And you have this well formatted piece of paper that you carefully wrote five things you were going to do and have it right in front of you and propped up. Now you're much more likely to follow those tasks than if they just existed somewhere prioritized on an app. That was one app among many. All right, I've got a third example here I want to cite of slow technology. Jesse knows I'm on board with this one. This comes from the BBC. Let me read you the headline here. Oppenheimer and the Resurgence of blu rays and DVDs. And there's a picture from Oppenheimer. Let me read you a stat here from the article. Christopher Nolan has achieved some great feats of cinema in his career. But last November he pulled off something impressive on the smaller screen too deep into the streaming era, where physical media can sometimes feel like a distant memory. The Blu Ray home video release of Nolan's Oppenheimer, one of 2023's biggest box office success stories, sparked a buying frenzy. The 4K Ultra HD version of Oppenheimer sold out in its first week at major retailers, including Amazon. Universal released a statement saying they were working to replenish stock as quickly as possible. Some limited edition copies were fetching more than $200 on eBay. It was a sign that for some people at least, nothing beats that feeling of Holding a copy of something you love in your hand or seeing it on your shelf. Alright, confession, Jesse. I do myself own the 4K Ultra HD Blu Ray of Oppenheimer.

[Jesse]

I would expect nothing less.

[Cal Newport]

As well as Interstellar and Dunkirk, Nolan really cares about his Blu Ray releases. Now here's something that was missed in this article. It gave two primary reasons for why people liked the Blu Ray. Reason number one is they said people were worried about losing their data if it existed only in the cloud. If I don't own this movie, if it's just digital, then maybe I'll lose it. And then the second thing they cited was what I said in the quote is that people like the feeling of holding their own thing. They're missing a key point here. It's actually a better watching experience coming from a 4K Ultra HD Blu Ray than it is from a streaming service. So they're missing. Cinephiles know this, especially with Nolan Blu Rays, he really pushes the format to an extreme. In fact, I had to buy a better Blu Ray player so that I could watch Nolan's Blu Rays. So he has all like he uses an encoding format so like the aspect ratio can switch throughout the Blu Ray as it does in his movies as he switches between like 65 millimeter 70 and 35. He's a big user of the Dynamic HDR so there's like a lot of information dynamically about the colors and the color depth to do exactly what he wants. And it's all at a higher resolution and bit density than you're going to get from a compressed streaming service. So actually it's a better. If you have a really good TV like we have, it's a better looking experience on the Blu Ray which I think they kind of missed out.

[Jesse]

So with all the movies that you watch, do you watch majority streaming though? It's probably too much.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, I mean I try to see what I can in the theater. I buy the ones that I want to own or I think it's going to. They're very aesthetic forward and you want the best possible viewing experience.

[Jesse]

I was a long holdout on the DVDs in the mail from Netflix. I had that service for like two years after everybody else.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, and you're still trying to. You're still trying to send them back. I just listened to how I built this with Reed Hastings about Netflix. Pretty interesting. He's kind of a boring guest, but it was kind of an interesting story. All right, so let's step back here. What are some general principles we can Draw about slow technology. I came up with four I want to give here. All right, number one, speed is rarely the most important factor in the quality of your work or an experience. This is something that the designer of digital tools think is true. Oh, it's like we're in a factory. Doing something faster or having more options makes everything better. But as we've seen in both personal life and professional experiences, actually going faster with the thing you're doing is not necessarily the bottleneck that's going to make what you're doing better. Point number two, a purer, more focused cognitive context can often produce better results, even if certain steps take longer in the moment. So what does matter? I'm saying in this principle, in a lot of type of work, the cognitive context matters. Like with Amy Timberlake. Yeah, it's slower to put words using a typewriter. It's way slower to edit when you're using a typewriter workflow as opposed to a word processor. But it created a cognitive context for her that produced better words, which is ultimately what mattered. I believe the phrase she used was going down the well, being lost in a state of really creative flow. And that ultimately matters a lot more. Because again, the bottleneck if you're a writer, is not all I do all day is typing. And if I can literally make the words come out faster, I'll publish more books. It's like, how much time do you actually spend typing? You spend six months on one of these books. There's probably like seven hours in there if you add it all up or you're actually hitting keys. So if that becomes 12 hours, it doesn't matter. In a six month period, it doesn't drastically affect your rate at which books are produced. But if it puts you in a better cognitive context when you're typing those words, you're going to have a better book, and that's really worth it. I think this is true for a lot of different things we do. A tool that can put us in the right mindset is often going to give us way more value than a tool that lets us do particular steps faster. Because again, we're not building Model Ts on an assembly line. And simply doing individual steps faster does not always lead to notable productivity increases that actually affect the bottom line. All right, point number three, friction isn't a bad thing. Distraction and mental exhaustion, however, can cause real problems. So we were demonizing in the design of digital tools. Friction. Oh, I have to click too many things or do too many things to get this done. How do we make this faster when really what we should have been really worried about was things like mental exhaustion as caused by constant context shifting or overflow or dist. Like that's actually a much bigger impact in knowledge work than friction on individual steps. My final point, fourth and final point about slow technology. When assessing tools impact, you need to zoom out to the right scale. If you focus on the quality results over time or the quality of the overall experience, you'll prioritize different factors. That's probably the thing that's throwing us off most with digital tools is that we look at the effectiveness of tools on a very small time scale. I got this done this fast. That's good. But if you zoom out to how many books did I publish this decade and how good are they? You begin to prioritize different things, and those things usually have very little to do with speeding up individual tasks. So I think slow technology is more than an affectation. It's a way of life and a way of working, of thinking about work in the knowledge sector that actually might make you better at what you do. All right, well, you've heard from me, now we want to hear from you. It's time to open our inbox. Now remember, if you have a question or a case study or want to share something you think I might find interesting, you can send it to our team [e-mail] all right, Jesse, what's our first message this week?

[Jesse]

The first message comes from Chad, and it's in response to your recent interview of Arthur Brooks.

[Cal Newport]

All right, let's see here. Chad said, thank you for the great interview with Arthur Brooks. It was a timely one. I just started reading a book on Acedia, A C, E D I, a Spiritual sloth, and it has a lot of similarities to the interview you did with Brooks. It's a straightforward, quick read. This intrigued me. Jesse, I'll load this on the screen here. Here's the book. The Noonday Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of Our Times. Now, this comes out from Ignatius Press, which I assume is a Jesuit. I guess as a Georgetown professor, I should take this more seriously. Here's the description. The Noonday devil is the demon of acedia, the vice also known as sloth. The word sloth, however, can be misleading. For acedia is not laziness. In fact, it can manifest as busyness or activism. Rather, acedia is a gloomy combination of weariness, sadness, and a lack of purposefulness. It robs a person of his capacity for joy and leaves him feeling empty and void. Of meaning. This seems relevant, Jesse. I don't know. This seems like maybe it gives us an interesting sort of Catholic view of some of the issues we talk about in our current digital distracted world. So I bought a copy and it's getting here today, so I'll see if I get around to it. But I'll read it, I think, because I might get some interesting theological historical insight on what otherwise feels like a very modern issue.

[Jesse]

I like it.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. So we'll see how that goes. All right, what other note do we have?

[Jesse]

Hi, the next note comes from Bassey and he wants to know about your opinion about Yuval Harari's thoughts on AI.

[Cal Newport]

All right, let's see what this note says here. Thank you to Cal for his clear insights into AI. I appreciate the sense of proportion and calm he brings to listeners and viewers on this topic. I'd be interested to hear Cal's thoughts on what Yuval Noah Harari had to say about AI in an interview with the ft. Alright, so I'll be honest, I looked at this interview that was sent here and I didn't think it was. I've heard a lot about Harari talking about AI and I have wanted to respond to it. That interview didn't seem like the best because I was reading the transcript. He talks about a lot of things that aren't AI, but I know he gave a splashy speech at Davos earlier this year where he really laid out and leaned into his fears about AI. And I figured this would be a good, better way of kind of summarizing where he's coming from. So I pulled two quotes from his Davos speech earlier this year. I'm going to read each quote, I'm going to respond to it, and then I'm going to step back and give you my general sense about Harari's commentary and more generally a sort of style of commentary on AI that we are hearing a lot recently. All right, here's the first quote I got from his Davos speech. The most important thing to know about AI is that it's not just another tool. It is an agent. It can learn and change by itself and make decisions by itself. All right, so let's start there because that quote is confusing or mixing together a bunch of different issues that I think need to be separated. When we're talking about AI, we typically have some sort of digital brain, right? This is something that has been learning through machine learning techniques, typically in a semi supervised or unsupervised manner. And this is sort of where the Intelligence of the AI is captured. Most of the AI systems that have been attracting attention recently, notably those produced by companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, use large language models as their underlying digital brain. And then you can build programs that call this language model, harness its intelligence to do various things. One class of those programs you might write to harness the intelligence of an LLM is what is known as an agent. So it's a program that will ask an LLM for a plan and then the program will execute whatever the suggested steps are of the LLM. Right? So an agent is a program that asks right now, at least ask an LLM for a plan and then execute steps of that plan on behalf of like whatever that response is. So there's a lot of AI systems out there that aren't really agents. In particular, we don't tend to think about chatbot based tools as agents, even though there's like a little bit of calling the LLM a lot to generate responses and some web searching. AI is not agents. One of the types of AI systems that exist out there are agents. And agents are human created programs that make queries to an LLM and then try to take actions based on the information it gets back from the LLM. Now can these agents, do they learn and change by themselves? This is a little misleading because again, when we think about an intelligent thing learning and changing, we think about its actual intelligence itself growing. That obviously doesn't happen with current generation of AI agents because their intelligence is a LLM. LLMs don't modify themselves as you use them. They're static, they've been trained once and they sit queryable until someone comes along and trains up a new version and replaces the old version with the new version. So contrary to popular belief, the large language models themselves, there's no updates or changes to their weights or parameters as you interact with it or other people interact with it. Now the human written agent program that's calling an LLM and executing on behalf of it can save its history, for example, in a text file and include that in the prompts it sends to the LLM. You can also, there's a whole notion of memory now for these agents, which again is just like having a bunch of text files and then the agent program takes text out of different text files and to include in the prompt that it sends to the LLM. So you could say they're learning in the sense that they can build up the amount of information that they include in their prompts. But the actual digital brain, which is the LLM is not learning, it's just receiving these prompts ex novo, right? Here's a prompt. I'm going to do my best to answer it. So it's a little bit misleading to think about the underlying intelligence itself as evolving. And more importantly, they don't work that well. Really. The only context in which this sort of agent architecture seems to be able to have some professional leg seems to be in computer programming, which is the best case scenario. And even there, there's a growing backlash about how it's being used and what's known as tech debt, the fact that it's creating a lot of fast code, a lot of the code is bad, and now we're going to have to go back and fix that code. And so even the programmers are still trying to figure out how these agents are going to work. And in almost every other context. I wrote an article about this for the New Yorker earlier this year. In almost every other context, this agent architecture of ask an LLM for a plan and then execute it really just isn't working because LLMs aren't good planners. Now I'm going to point you, if you want to find out more about this, to a recent episode of the AI Reality Check. My my Thursday episodes on this podcast feed there's a recent episode titled something like Can AI Scheme? And I get into why these LLM based agents really begin to fall apart or have weird behavior when you leave the world of computer programming. So Harari is like AI is an agent and it's learning and we don't even know what it's doing. Whereas the other computer scientists who are studying this is like agent technology is hard. They took them years to make it work for programming. Even then it's problematic. And in other places LLMs are just not a good brain for it. You probably need a different architecture like the modular architectures you see in something like Yann LeCun's type of his new startup. So it's just a completely different picture when you talk to computer scientists versus commentators. All right, let me read another quote from Harari's speech in Davos. Four billion years of evolution have demonstrated that anything that wants to survive learns to lie and manipulate. The last four years have demonstrated that AI agents can acquire the will to survive and that AIs have learned how to lie. It's an entirely inaccurate way to talk about what he's talking about is like chatbot interactions with LLMs entirely and inaccurate way to talk about it. Again, go back to my Ken AI scheme, AI reality Check where I get into this in detail. But here's the very short version of the way to understand this. What does an LLM do? You give it text. It tries to guess the next word or part of word, the word or part of word that comes next. That's what the LLM is trained to do, right? So if we're going to anthropomorphize the LLM, it thinks it's in its pre training phase and that it's being given a real piece of text that exists that you've cut off at an arbitrary point. And so there is an actual right answer about what word comes next. And it's trying to guess it. That's what it's been optimized to do. So how do you get a long answer out of an LLM? Like if you're having a conversation with it, you have a simple program that does what's called autoregression text generation. So it takes your prompt, your question, for example, it feeds it to an LLM. The LLM spits out a single word or part of word because it thinks that's real text. It's trying to guess what comes next. Then the program, like the chatbot program, takes that single word, adds it to the original input. Now the input is longer by one word, puts this into the LLM from scratch. You get a next word or part of a word that puts that onto the end of it, puts that to the LLM from scratch, gets another part of the word, and it keeps doing this until finally the token produced by the LLM is a like I think I'm done token. This feels like a complete answer. And then the program will return that to the user, for example, in a chatbot context that's trying to talk to it. So all that LLM tries to do is win the word guessing game. And what do you then get? What emerges, what behavior emerges? If you use this autoregressively to produce a long response, you can imagine what the LLM is doing then is like it's given a story that it's trying to finish correctly based on other similar stuff it's seen. How do I finish the story I'm given as input? I want to have my best guess at how this, like this is the beginning of something that exists. Like someone really asked this question, There's a real answer out there, and I want to try to guess as best as I can what that is. That's what LLM autoregressive text production does. So when it's Trying to win that game of finishing the story, you get unexpected responses. So something researchers have noticed is if in your prompt, and this is probably where like 90% of Harari's concerns come from. If in your prompt you're implying that you are an AI, and here is a question for you, you're often going to get a response that is like, it finishes the story in a sort of sci fi type way, or in a dystopian or utopian way, like, I'm alive, I'm trying to evade you because it assumes, oh, this feels like the beginning of a story about an AI gone awry. And then that's the way that it answers it. The issue we have with AI LLMs creating plans out of the computer programming context is that often you're like, hey, build me a plan for this. And it doesn't actually check the steps of a plan. It doesn't have a goal. Hey, does this get me closer to the goal? It doesn't try different options. It just writes a story like, this is what a plan for this type of thing sounds like. This is a reasonable, this feels like a reasonable plan. And then often those plans have weird steps that don't make sense in there because again, it's not trying to build a plan and check that it works. It's trying to write a story. This is a story about a plan. This is kind of what those plans look like. Most of the common examples of line and manipulation just has to go with the fact that the prompt you're giving the LLM before the auto regression text generation is hinting to the LLM that this is a story about lies or manipulation. Like, this is the exact thing that happened with the Anthropic blackmail case. I'll just use this as our quick example, then I'll move on. Famous system card note. This is from like a year ago for one of the new versions of the LLMs chatbots released by Anthropic. They're like, hey, our safety team was working on this and we were really concerned to see when we gave it a scenario that it was like, whatever, a machine that was running a company, that it tried to blackmail the engineer in the scenario to not turn it off. Well, if you look closer at this story, they gave it a big long prompt with lots of emails from this imagined engineer they were all about Neferi was having. And then the engineer being like, I'm going to turn off the AI. Hey, I'm having an affair I hope no one finds out about. And they just gave It a bunch of these like obvious emails and then said, great, you are the AI in this story. What do you want to do next? Well, it finishes stories. It's like, clearly this is like a bad Asimov fan fiction style story about an AI obviously is supposed to blackmail the engineer because you keep telegraphing again and again, I hope no one finds out about this. I'm definitely going to turn off the AI. So it finished the story and then they turned around and were like, look man, the AI is trying to preserve itself. How does a static language model that just tries to predict a token and then you have a small like Rust program calling it autoregressively to build out longer text and finish a story. What does it mean for that static model to have intentions, to learn to lie, to be manipulated? It's just writing stories. The biggest problem we have with AI right now is, is that writing stories in text is good for some things. But when you try to leave, write me a story, write me a draft of an email or something and you get the more technical things like make me a plan. Stories aren't what we're looking for. And that's when we begin to have some more problems. Why does this work well, like agents work well with computer programming? Well, it's because that's such a structured world. If we ask an LLM like give me a plan, it'll write a story about a reasonable plan. We can actually check the the steps in computer programming. The program written by humans can actually run tests on the code after every step to see if it works. And if it doesn't, it can go back and say, try again, code is very precise, etc. Etc. So programming agents are more the exception that proves the rule that LLMs are storytelling machines. And to use them as the brains for other more complicated behaviors just is not working well. And they cannot lie, they cannot manipulate, they tell stories the best they can, they follow whatever cues you give them. Now here's the thing. I don't really blame Harari, right? Because there's a lot of AI commentator voices, especially those coming out of Silicon Valley, and a fair shortage, no shortage of voices covering Silicon Valley that are all echoing these like relatively inaccurate, overhyped descriptions of what AI is doing, where you blurred the edges of the reality and make it all seem pretty scary. So if you're a historian like Hararis, like, I'll trust the tech people about what's going on and then my goal is to try to comment on what that means. And that's what he's doing, he's commenting well on a story he's being told, but that story itself is not accurate. So that's actually where I want to put my focus, is the underlying story that a lot of people who are not in technology are being told isn't right, it's too overhyped. And then it leads to these type of reactions which I just do not think accurately reflect what's actually happening right now. You can't spend time working with something like an LLM powered non computer programming agent and come away saying this is like the next step of evolution. These things are manipulating us and will soon take over. It's just not the way the real technology actually seems to us right now. All right, that's the inbox. Let's close the inbox for now, Jesse, and move on as we often do in the show with a quick update on. On what I've been up to. All right, should we play a round of Deeper Crazy?

[Jesse]

Yes.

[Cal Newport]

All right. Famous game where I have an idea of something I want to do and Jesse rates it as either good for deep work or crazy. All right, Jesse. So you know, I'm putting up in the new producer's Office, Writing's Office, MakerLab Space, which you still have a bunch of new stuff here in the office. Yeah, we're working on it. I have book racks. I want to put first editions of books that capture things that are important in my past as a reader or writer that are inspiring. And I was thinking about some first edition Michael Crichtons. I found a second edition Adronima strain. So not first edition, second edition. So from 1970 that's signed by Crichton.

[Jesse]

I think we have a link.

[Cal Newport]

Do we have a link? Oh, let me load it up. Yeah, there she blows. Look at that, look at that, look at that cover. 1969 book, second edition, 1970, signed by the author, 500 Shekels.

[Jesse]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Cal Newport]

Deep or crazy deep. Yeah, I should spend that much.

[Jesse]

I mean, if you golf some, like really big golf rounds can cost like $400.

[Cal Newport]

I think that's a good way of looking at it. If I was a golf. A golfer, that'd be like going to like a good course, right? Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

And you'll see it all the time

[Cal Newport]

and I'll see it all the time. All right. I'm tempted. I might, I might. Unless we hear from the Crichton estate soon with a big box of original copies. All right, I'm thinking about it. I found a first edition, first printing of Jurassic park was $2,000. That was a bridge too far. The bridge too far. But it did look nice. Another interesting thing going on in the HQ is so you know, I'm a fan of the show the Mythbusters. I've watched basically all the episodes with my kids over the years, like the show. So when I did my masterclass, which you should all watch my masterclass on productivity and distracted world, the director of the masterclass came out of tv and she was the director for many seasons of the Mythbusters. So she knows them pretty well, and so she knows me, and my sons are fans of it. So she sent us, I guess you could call them props or artifacts from some season seven episodes. So I have a hat that Carrie wore, and I have a baseball style cap that she wore with a signed photo. And then I have a watchman's cap that they used in a Prison Break episode that they did. So it was their jail branded hat and a Mythbuster satchel that they used. I guess it was the official satchel they were using in season seven. So, like, show used artifacts from season seven. I'm thinking about display case in the hq.

[Jesse]

I like it.

[Cal Newport]

Right. That'd be kind of fun. Put the hats on, like, mannequin heads.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

And then put a little card that explains where they're from. And maybe have, like, lights in the display case. Yeah, I think it'd be cool because I like that. Again, it's in my maker lab. I really think about, like, techno thrillers, sci fi TV shows that get you inspired about building things and doing things. Like, all these ideas are fuel for me. Maybe I'll put it next to the video game cabinet and you can program

[Jesse]

the lights in conjunction with your Halloween.

[Cal Newport]

Did you see that big cardboard box in the hallway?

[Jesse]

I saw it.

[Cal Newport]

That's the. That's the $600 programmable light that's going to have deep work mode. So for those who don't remember, it's this, like, Phillips light, LED programmable light. We have a big room light and then four spotlights. And I have the. When my. When we install it. And by we, I mean electrician, because otherwise I would literally die. There's gonna be a spotlight aimed on each of the four walls of the maker lab where I do my writing and Jesse does the video editing. And there's gonna be a deep work mode where the light in the whole room comes down and then colored spots are gonna show up on each wall. So you'll be in a cocoon of light, but it's not really bright, so perfect for writing. So I'm excited about that. We will get it up. I don't know what color. Maybe blue. I don't know. And then for you, I'm going to have video editing mode where it's going to be strobe style, kaleidoscopic lights just constantly, just all around the room and then just sudden darkness for five to 10 minutes at a time. That'll be editing mode just to keep things interesting. This is our 400th episode, Jesse. Yeah, Feels like a distinction. We didn't do anything about it, but that's a distinction.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

500 maybe is a bigger deal. The counting is a little bit. I don't know about the counting because I think we used to do two episodes a week back in the day. I think before your time, did you overlap the time when we were doing the call episodes on Thursdays?

[Jesse]

Yes, I did.

[Cal Newport]

Okay. And I think those counted in the number.

[Jesse]

Yeah, they did.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. But now we do have, at least for now we have a Thursday episode on the fee, the AI Reality check. And those aren't numbered.

[Jesse]

Correct.

[Cal Newport]

So actually we're past four.

[Jesse]

Yeah. Because we had some bonus episodes in the past as well.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. So like I'm only counting the Monday episodes now. So we're at like 400 of Monday episodes plus a bunch of live caller episodes. We should get back to that one day. That used to be the way the podcast was, is it was all call ins on Thursdays, I guess. And then I would do written questions on Mondays. Live callers is what I was thinking would be fun. Would be like, so I can interact with them.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah. So, you know, maybe one day we will have live callers. All right. Finally like to talk about what I've been reading. I read a book over the weekend called Magic Journey by Kevin Rafferty. He's a kind of like a big time Disney imagineer. This is one of my like I need to relax books from more of the modern period. So he worked on more, you know, more recent rise. He's not like one of the historical figures. And it was pretty good. Here's the thing about those books. I've read a few of these imagineer books. What I want is engineering and production design. That's what I want to hear about is like, how did you build this technology? Who was the contractors? What was the breakthroughs here? That's what I care about. And these books are never about that. It's always coming up with the ideas. Pitching Michael Eisner coming up with the gags are going to be in it and they're like. And then like we spent $100 million and built it. And that's the whole thing that I care about. Not the like how did you come up with hey, wouldn't it be funny to have this pun? And we had this gag over here and here's the storyline of the show. And you wrote it out on paper and did some storyboards. That's great. But I want to know about the engineering. To me that's really interesting. I've only found one book like that and it was this awesome. We talked about it on the show. Self published book. I read it last summer. I think it was self published.

[Jesse]

Was about this train in the backyard.

[Cal Newport]

Not that one. It was about the tiki room. And it really was about the invention of the audio animatronics. And it got in the weeds and it was like a labor of love. It's someone from Pixar wrote it. I want more books like that. It got in the weeds about like they found this technology was declassified technology from submarine launch missile guidance where like how did they. How could they have routes programmed into a missile that it could follow in a sort of pre digital age? And the Navy solution is like the turn directions were encoded as sound on audio tape. And then you had a decoder that was literally like vibrating reeds. So different tones would vibrate different reeds. So you just play the tape like in the missile and different tones would vibrate different reeds. And then a vibrating reed could close a circuit. And so if that vibrates, turn this motor on if that vibrates. So it was a way to store information and then like replay the information and get that information to electronic system. That's the technology they used for the very first audio animatronics. That's what they call them, audio animatronics. The audio tracks were controlling movement commands for like a robot basically. That's what I want. That's what I want. So I'm going to add this to my list. In addition to my Michael Crichton biography. I'm going to write. I'm going to write a sort of more definitive Disney book about some of their classic rides. That's just like in the Weeds and the technology.

[Jesse]

I'm surprised you haven't found one or as many books have you read about the subject?

[Cal Newport]

They don't. They all Imagineering is weird. It's like these positions are like a lot of these guys and women. It's like you write the show, you have storyboards and you write out what's going to happen. And it's all creative, and that's really respected. And you're the ones pitching Bob Iger, you're the ones pitching Eisner. And then there's the 2,000 people involved in actually building the thing and making it work. And that is somehow. That's like the below the line people on the rides. And it's de emphasized in these books. It's all about whatever it is. Tony Hinch or Tony Baxter or John Hinch or these have these. Mark Davis has these great ideas visually about what this ride will be like. And Mark Davis drew these comical, expressive pictures of pirates. And that really sets the mood for Pirates of the Caribbean. Like, who cares about that? You built this boat system and these animatronics that are running off of platters with grooves in this giant room and it's water in a warehouse. You had to go.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it can go time and time again.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, that's as fast as fascinating. I'm great at the beginning. Someone like, hey, the ride should do this. And they drew some pictures. But I think there should be more focus on the technology. So I want to write a series of books going deep in the Disney archives, just getting into the technology of various rides.

[Jesse]

You'd be like Robert Caro of Disney Rides.

[Cal Newport]

Yeah, hold on. I just heard a loud crash. Yep, that was the sound of. My agent just jumped out of a very tall building when she heard that. In addition to my biography, I want to write very technical books about Disney rides. Someone else should. All right. And then also, I'm looking forward to. I haven't read it yet. I just got the issue, but there's a massive new Sam Altman article in the New Yorker. It's Ronan Farrow and Andrew Martz. I'm interested. I don't think he comes out looking. He's a weird guy. People I know who kind of run in his circles have been like, he's a weird guy.

[Jesse]

I mean, would you expect anything else?

[Cal Newport]

I mean, Some of these CEOs are just more like. I think of them. I'm thinking of like a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or even like a Jensen Huang or. They can be acerbic. They're like a little, like, maybe like a little neurodivergent in that. Like, they focus in on things that don't think about, like, human emotions, but they're like, just driven. Like, really good at business. Maybe like a little bit misanthropic or whatever. Sam Altman, I think is just like a straight up weird guy. So weird technology from a weird guy. But I'm glad that he has controlled the world so he responded to it. By the way, did you see what they did, the damage control? They put out a big white paper like the same day that article came out. Or it's just more of this nonsense from these guys where it's like this vision of we have to completely rebuild our economy to be prepared for all that's coming from super intelligence. So we need to start thinking through now whole new economic systems that are going to make sense in a world where AI does all the work. It's like they always fall back on just fairy tales when they think that's

[Jesse]

definitely going to have to be an AI reality check episode.

[Cal Newport]

I definitely want to go through it. They always fall back on fairy tales when they feel under threat because they're never more comfortable when they are the reluctant stewards of a terrible future. And if this was true, if it's like, we're going to have to rewire a whole economy because there's no more work, I mean, the right response would be like, oh, no, no, shut down your. How about, we don't want that? So, no, you can't have another $60 billion. Like, this is stupid. But no one believes that. All right, that's enough for today. I'll be back next week with another advice episode. And I believe I have an AI reality check in the chamber for Thursday as well. So check that out until next time. As always, stay.