Slow Productivity Blueprint: Cal Newport's Rituals for Peak Productivity

Today at a glance:

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🧪 Cal Newport’s Rituals for Peak Productivity

• Notes + takeaways from Cal Newport x Huberman’s recent pod

• Filled with nuggets on living a meaningful, distraction-free life

🌐 This & That: How to Use Twitter, Marc Andreessen’s Guide to Startups +

5 MINUTE READ

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🧪 Cal Newport’s Rituals for Peak Creativity

Cal Newport’s got a new book out, and he hopped on with Huberman to break down a ton of resources, tools, and philosophies on living a distraction-free life for more meaning and peak creative productivity.

Cal’s Personal Practice

• He uses text messaging but often goes hours without looking at his phone, making him less immediately responsive to texts.

• When working, his phone is not near him, reducing potential distractions.

• He has two different offices in his home, one with technology for tasks like paying taxes, and another, a library with no permanent technology, where he goes to write. His phone does not enter the library. 

• Visual scenes with predictability can lead to linear thinking

  • Looking at ocean waves or city streets can lead to nonlinear thinking — this is due to the pseudo-randomness of the visuals

  • Staring at a fire can spark creativity

• Reading by the fire can help spark ideas and make connections

• Walking can help work through ideas for articles or math proofs

  • This is due to the unpredictable stimuli encountered while walking + the quieting effect of walking can help maintain internal focus on a concept

• Reverse engineering productivity by identifying distractions and eliminating them

  • Consider yourself in competition with a highly distracted version of yourself

• Thinks about productivity on a scale of decades, planning what he wants to achieve in each decade of his life

  • Doesn’t stress about daily productivity as long as he’s making progress towards his long-term goals

• Not a believer in to-do lists, prefers to work with available time

  • Schedules tasks based on the gaps in the day

  • Assigns jobs to specific time slots rather than working from a list

States of Mind for Creativity and Productivity

• Two opposite states of mind can facilitate creativity and productivity:

  • Body in motion, mind not channeled toward one specific target

  • Body still, mind very active

• Both states are used in the process of writing code, doing theorems, and doing math

Working Through Linear and Hard Problems

• Productive meditation can be used to maintain internal focus while walking

  • This involves practicing bringing attention back to the central problem

• Working with a whiteboard can boost concentration levels

  • This is especially effective when working with others

  • The person with the marker on the board is the one talking

  • Everyone else watches and then steps back to look at it once they’re done

• Whiteboards are essential for working on theory

  • They allow for high-level thinking with two or three people staring at the same thing

  • They push each other past their comfort zones

Visual Maps and Productivity

Visual maps can represent internal memory stores and plans.

• Whiteboards are extremely useful for productivity

  • Ideas are easily put up and removed

  • Writing on things that are vertical as opposed to on a flat surface can be more effective

  • In the absence of colleagues, one can work on a whiteboard as if someone is there

• Using good paper notebooks can also be beneficial

• Specialized tools for note-taking can enhance the quality of work

  • For writing, use Scrivener, a specialty software for writers

  • For math or computer science, use LaTeX, a markup language for applied math papers

Active Recall as a Learning Method

• Active recall involves replicating information from scratch without looking at notes

  • This method is mentally taxing but time-efficient

  • It leads to better retention and understanding of information

• Active recall can transform academic performance

  • For humanities, develop a note-taking method centered around active recall

  • For math, practice proofs from scratch on a white piece of paper

Deliberate Practice vs Flow

• Deliberate practice involves pushing past comfort zones and focusing on areas of struggle

  • This is not a state of flow; it is often uncomfortable and difficult

• Flow is a state where one loses track of time and is fully immersed in an activity

  • This state does not typically lead to significant improvement in skills

• Deliberate practice is more effective for learning and improving skills

• Flow does not play a significant role in deep work or learning

• Deep work requires intense concentration and quieting of neural circuitry to isolate the circuit relevant to the task at hand

• This is not a state of flow, but a state of deliberate practice.

• Flow is the feeling of performance, not the practice or improvement state

  • Flow manifests during performance, often leading to virtuosity

  • Flow has little role in cognitive professional work

The Cost of Task Switching

• Cal does not work long hours, but is productive due to limited phone and internet usage

  • Believes that the brain tires after about four and a half hours of intense work

• Argues that constant task switching, such as checking social media or emails, leads to cognitive disorder

  • This disorder reduces cognitive output and efficiency

• He cites data from Rescue Time, a software company, which found that the median interval between checks of email and slack for knowledge workers was five minutes

  • This constant checking and task switching means that the brain is always in a state of confusion, never fully focusing on one task

Neurosemantic Coherence

• Cal compares the brain to a transmission system in a car

  • Constantly switching tasks and checking different things is like constantly changing gears, which is inefficient and burns more fuel

• He suggests that the goal should be to reach a state of “neurosemantic coherence” where all activated neural networks are relevant to the task at hand

• This state is different from “flow” where one loses track of time and is fully immersed in a task

• It requires intense focus and concentration, but allows for more efficient and productive work

Attention Issues and Technology

• Many people believe they have attention issues due to their inability to focus

  • This could be due to the constant task switching enabled by technology

• There is a trend of using pharmacology to match the level of distraction

  • However, the issue might be more related to phone-induced behavioral addictions rather than a neural rewiring

• The malleable parts of the brain involved in feedback reward loops might be more affected by moderate behavioral addictions than a complete neural rewiring

  • Behavioral addictions can be developed quickly due to the brain’s malleability

  • This malleability also allows for the reversal of these addictions

• Addictions to checking emails or phones are moderate behavioral addictions

  • These can be addressed through stimuli removal, boredom exposure, and blocking apps

  • It is unlikely that the entire brain has been rewired due to exposure to social media

  • However, young people growing up in a distracted world may have brains optimized for those conditions

• These issues can be addressed through discipline tools, protocols, pharmacology, nutrition, sleep, and prescription drugs if necessary

Intermittent Fasting and Social Media Use

• The concept of intermittent fasting could potentially be applied to social media use

• This could involve not turning on the phone or wifi for the first few hours of the day, or for a portion of the day

• This would be akin to taking a social media fast

20% More Effort

• Putting in 20% more effort into focus or fitness can lead to surpassing many people

• But it takes socially challenging practices to implement this

this & that

🦾 How to Use Twitter

→ This is a great essay on using Twitter in a useful way — to network, connect, make friends, be part of interesting conversations.

💭 Marc Andreessen’s Guide to Startups via Houck

→ Houck has distilled down a bunch of Marc Andreessen’s old blog posts on startups, loaded with good advice. Houck’s newsletter is probably the most valuable newsletter for founders out there — highly recommend

🤔 Shiftwave

→ I’m keeping an eye on this technology for the nervous system — appears to be quite powerful, but haven’t seen it available for sessions at any wellness centers yet

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