How Do I Reverse Brain Rot?  🔗 **Source:** [How Do I Reverse Brain Rot?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9a2_KqzF7Y) Not long ago, I published a splashyop-ed for the New York Times. It wastitled, "There's a good reason why youcan't concentrate." Now, it argues thattechnology is rapidly diminishing ourability to think, and that this is amajor problem for both the individual aswell as the success of our society morebroadly. In it, I propose that thesolution is a revolution in cognitivefitness, not unlike the physical fitnessrevolution that emerged in the secondhalf of the 20th century. Here's how Iconclude the piece. I write, "Myintention is to spur a shift inunderstanding that can build into alarger revolution. I'm done seeding mybrain, the core of all that makes me whoI am, to the financial interest of asmall number of technology billionairesor the short-sighted conveniences ofhyperactive communication styles. It'stime to move past fretting about ourslide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something aboutIt. Now, this essay's made the rounds,and I'm proud of it. But there's onequestion that I've been asked more thanany other by people who read it. How doI become more cognitively fit? I gave afew ideas in the essay, but people wanta more systematic brain fitness routine,a sustainable way to push back againstthe digital forces trying to make usdumber. Well, it's Monday, which meansit's time for a Monday advised episodeof this show, which seems like theperfect opportunity to dive deeper intothis question. All right, so here's theplan. Uh, in the weeks since this piecehas come out, I've refined my cognitivefitness program into five differentcomponents, and I'm going to go througheach of these. I’ll justify why eachmake sense, and then give some practicaladvice for making that component work. Now, these five components add up to abasic cognitive fitness plan that Ithink basically everybodyshould consider adopting. So, if you'veBeen feeling like you've literally beenlosing your mind to technology, andyou're ready to start taking backcontrol, then this episode is for you. As always,I'm Cal Newport, and this is DeepQuestions, the show for people seekingdepth in a distracted world. And we'llget started right after the music. All right. So, let's get started withour first component here. We'll do areveal. Uh, and it is read every day. Ithink this is a very effective tool. Uh,In physical fitness rather, there's a uha very effective idea that you needto lay a base of regular activity. Thisis my inspiration here. So in physicalactivity, uh, physical fitness, we mightsay, for example, you need to walk atleast 7 to 10,000 steps a day. This isassociated with all sorts of positivehealth benefits. Well, I think we need asimilar base layer of fitness when it comes to cognitive training. And I thinkthat should be reading. Reading rewiresYour brain in a way that literally makesyou smarter. I want to actually read aquote from my New York Times piece aboutexactly this effect. Making sense ofwritten text exercises our minds inimportant ways. We develop what thecognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolfcalls deep reading processes that rewireand retrain neuronal region regions inways that increase the complexity andnuance of what we're able to understand. Deep reading is our species bridge toinsight and novel thought, she writes.All right. So, what's being said here isthat the more time you spend reading,the more you're rewiring your brain tobasically harness together differentregions that were originally evolved fordifferent purposes, but when combinedgives you this intellectual superpower,complicated thought, nuanced thoughtsthat brings more of your brain matter tobear at trying to understand and produceoriginal ideas and originalunderstanding. But there's another justification fordaily reading as well. It gives youpractice with the fundamental skill ofaiming your mind's eye at a desiredinternal target. Now, we're alreadynaturally born to be very good at aimingour attention at a salient externaltarget. So, if I say, I want you toreally pay attention in this basketballgame to player number 23, we're verygood at that. Oh, I can fix my attentionand just watch that player. But when itcomes to putting our mind's eye on aninternal topic like a thought or anidea, that requires practice. Thatdoesn't come naturally. Reading isgiving you that practice. So if we readmore, we're going to rewire our brain tobe capable of smarter thought. And weare getting practice directing ourmind's eye in a way that will help usactually take advantage of that wiring.All right. So if that's the big idea forthe first component, let me give yousome practical tips for actuallySucceeding. If you're not a big reader, I think thekey is to start with reading things thatyou are excited to read. Do not besnobby early on. Do not think I need tobe reading a good book that’s going toimpress my book club friends or I needto be reading a big profound book orotherwise it’s a waste of my time. No,this—the act of decoding the symbolsthemselves at first is what we want toget used to. The act of putting yourmind's eye on one target for a sustainedamount of time is something we want toget used to. So, pick something you’reexcited to read. It doesn’t matter ifit's simple or fun or trashy. If it’s aromance novel or like a highly uhemotional Colleen Hoover novel or ifyou’re reading uh really trashy genre,you know, adventure fiction, doesn’tmatter. Whatever you’re excited aboutcoming back to. Now, I would start with15 to 20 pages a day. Let me tell youhow you hit that target consistently. Read with your lunch. Read in bed beforeyou go to sleep. That'll get you to 1520 pages, no problem. So, it's a goodautomatic way to get to that base layer.Over time, you want to increase thosepages. Maybe get closer to 30 to 50pages. This might require that you develop a little bit more of a readinghabit. Oh, like I have some time beforedinner. I'm going to actually sit andread. I'm on the subway going to work. I'm going to sit to read. So, as you getmore used to reading, it'll be easier todevelop a reading habit where you readmore times during your day. The finalplace I want you to get is once you'veused to reading, you can aim your mind'seye. You're starting to build thoseconnections to integrate more what Iam going to call hard books. So, youstart with books you're just excited toread. So, you do it. Once you're up tothis 30 to 50 pages a day and aren'thaving much trouble hitting it, make onebook in three quote unquote hard. And byHard, I think of that as if it'snon-fiction, it's presentingsophisticated original ideas oranalysis. Said if it's fiction, it'sgoing to be a more challenging literarygenre that is ultimately going to bemore rewarding, but takes moreconcentration to understand what's goingon, who's who, uh, slower consumption tomake better sense of what's actuallyunfolding. So, you can think of the difficulty ofthe book you intake like your mile time.If you're an amateur jogger,if you're new to running, you're notgonna be like, "Okay, I'm just going towhip off a 5:30 mile because I reallywant to do it." You’re not going to beable to do it. But on the other hand, ifyou’re continuing to train and you’rerunning more and you’re building up yourendurance, then you can see that miletime coming down. That’s the way tothink about hard books. The more youread and the more sophistication you Begin to interleave, the more easeyou'll have with tackling more and moredifficult books. And so, where you wantto end up here is this: a solid amountof reading every day. One out of threebooks is hard. One little addendum I'll addto that is, uh, you should feel free toreduce the daily page count if you'rereading a very hard book. So, that whatmatters there is the slow contemplation,not the raw pages at that point. Let'stake a quick break to hear from some ofour sponsors. If you're growing a business that sellsthings to people, your ability tosuccessfully and efficiently fulfillorders is critical to your success. Thisis why you need ShipStation. WithShipStation, everything you need tomanage getting orders to customers is inone place. We're talking about a singletool that can pick the best carrier,find you the best rate, print labels inbulk, send and track, give you trackingupdates, right? And that's not all. Station's ability to share trackingdetails cuts customer service inquiriesby 12%. It, it's returns managementinformation also gives you the data onwhat's coming back and why, and it hasanalytics to show you where you're shasaving and where you need to optimize. There's a reason why over 1 millionbusinesses have trusted Shipstation. Nowyou can try ShipStation free for 60 dayswith full access to all features. Nocredit card needed. Just go toshipstation.comand use code deep to get 60 days forfree. 60 days gives you plenty of timeto see exactly how much time and moneyyou're saving on every shipment. That'sshipstation.comcode deep. shipstation.comcode deep. I also want to talk about ourfriends at Vanta. If you run a company,you've probably noticed recently thatrisk and regulation are both ramping up.Customers now increasingly expect proofof your security before they'll evenConsider doing business with you. Now,this can take up a lot of your timeunless you use Vanta. Vanta automatesyour compliance process and bringscompliance, risk, and customer trusttogether on one AI powered platform. Now, here's a stat that caught myattention. Vanta customers report a 526%return on investment over 3 years.Here's another. Vanta boosts complianceteam productivity by 129%. These are bigtime results. So whether you're preppingfor a sock 2 or running an enterpriseGRC program, Vanta keeps you secure andkeeps your deals moving. Get started atvanta.com/deepquests. That's vanta.com/deepquests.All right, let's get back to the show.All right. So, that is component numberone of five of our plan for cognitivefitness. Let's go to component numbertwo.Don't avoid writing. Now, here'ssomething I've learned. Most peopledon't like writing. They avoid it ifThey can. And now that we've introducedgenerative AI tools that are capable ofdoing more and more of, especially likethe low stakes, everyday writing for you,many people are writing less than everbefore. What I'm suggesting here is thatyou consider rejecting this trend inyour own life and seeking out as manyopportunities to write as possible. Now, to be clear, I understand whypeople don’t like writing. This is not amoral failure. It’s actually aphysiological reality, a rationalresponse to a physiological reality. Uh,I want to read a quote I wrote in a NewYorker piece I published a couple of yearsago about what happens in the brain whenyou write. All right, so here's what Iwrote. Writing is hard. It requires usto use multiple parts of the brain in animprobable symphony of high straineffort. Our hippocampussummons relevant facts. The prefrontalcortex tries to organize them. Abrain region known as Broca's area helpsUs narrate in a familiar inner voice. Our verbal memory stores and manipulatesthe narration as we transfer it to thepage. Meanwhile, our brain recruits ourspatial working memory, which evolves totrack our location in physical space toorient our words within a hole. Right? So, this is why we feel resistance towriting. We basically have toorchestrate many, many regions of ourbrain to work together in a way thatthey weren't evolved to do. It's hardand we feel strain. But here's thething. That sense of strain ordifficulty that you experience when youface the blank page serves a usefulpurpose from a perspective of cognitivefitness. If we think of reading ashelping to rewire your brain in a waythat makes it capable of smarterthoughts, then writing, we can think about is, uh, an activity that actuallythen makes use of those capabilities. Itmakes your brain more capable. It takesthose yolked-together regions of yourBrain reverses the flow and says,"Let's use this to produce originalthoughts. We wired these to understandcomplicated thoughts. Now we can usethem to produce original thoughts." So,if we want to follow the fitness analogywe've been using here, reading is sortof like building a cardiovascular baseand getting your body used to activity. You know, I jog, I walk every day, Istretch, I’m no longer inactive. Writingis like the intense gym workout. Youneed that base to be able to go to thegym and do a hard workout without justripping every muscle. But it's that hardworkout that's actually going to thengrow demonstrable strength. So, writingcreates more strain and resistance thanreading. It’s harder,but it gives us a lot of cognitivestrength. And if you think about thatway, I think it makes more sense. Likeyou can walk and do steps and maybe evenget in light runs every day. So youshould be reading every day. Writing isLike your gym workout, you want to, youwant to seek out writing, but alsorecognize it's going to require moreconcentration. It's harder. It's aharder thing, but we get the biggergains from it. So, I want you to change your mindsetabout writing. Instead of thinking ofthat strain of facing the blank page towrite that group email and as anintolerablefeeling, like I would do anything to getaway from this. Instead, think of thatstrain you feel when facing the blankpage like the burn of a muscle in thegym. And if you're working out, you learn toretrain your brain to say, "Oo, I likethat feeling. That means I'm about toget stronger. Yeah, it's hard in themoment, but I'm going to feel goodafterwards, and I'm going to getstronger." That's how I want you tothink about the strain of writing. Donot flee it. Do not say, "I will doThis, and somehow this will make me moreproductive. As if that's really thebottleneck to your value production ishow quickly you write the occasionalemail. It's just you fleeing the string.Don't you want to get that musclestronger?All right, so here's some practicaltips. Your self-perception matters. So just say, "Hey, I'm someone who likesto write." Just keep telling yourselfthat. Make that part of your identity.When our group at work is like, "Hey,who wants to send this message to theclient?" You be the one who says, "I cando it. I can write it. I like writing.I'm good at writing. I don't mind doingit."Two, study technique. When youread, hey, why was this article good? What's the art? What's the? What's theauthor doing here? Why is this flowingso well? Oh, look at this rhythm. Lookat the switching back and forth betweenA and B. Look at this integration ofquotes. It's like quote sentence, quote,Explanation, call back. Begin looking for analyzing, understanding, andappreciate the art of writing in yourreading. What you're doing there isyou're pulling out techniques that youcan then utilize in your own writing. It's going to make your own writing feelbetter. Use journaling or if you have anewsletter or whatever it is, but havesome way that you are writing regularly,but also doing it in a way that forcesyou to structure your thoughts. That'swhy I like journaling or maybe if you'reyou're publishing a small newsletter.These activities force you to not justwrite words, but to use the writing toorganize your thoughts, to takesomething that seems kind of clear inyour head and have that feedback loop oflike, how do I express this clearly onwords? Oh, it wasn't as clear as Ithought in my head. And that feedback makes me clarify it and thenthe writing helps me again, and you getMuch more complicated thoughts out ofit. You have to practice structuringyour thoughts with text. So you needsomething that you're doingsemi-regularly that does force you to do that. It really could even be if you'rereading interesting books, just takingnotes in a word file somewhere about thecore ideas from each chapter as you readit. Even that internal exercise alonecan help you make sense of thoughts at amuch more, uh, add much more structure tothe thoughts that are in your head. Ialso want you psychologically toacclimatize to the 10-minute rule. Sothe hardest part about writing is thefirst 10 minutes. That's the part whereyou feel the peak intolerable seemingresistance because, again, remember thatsymphony of brain regions I talked aboutearlier. You have to coordinate a lot ofyour brain together before you caneffectively start producing words. Thattakes time. That could take 10 minutes. So until allOf those areas are successfullyconnected together and firing together,the writing is going to feel really bad. But then once they are, it gets easier.So if you're used to that, oh, the first10 minutes are going to stink and thenit's going to feel better. It feels muchmore tolerable. Like I know how thismovie plays out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thisis really hard. I'm writing nonsense,but it's going to get better once I getto the other side of that 10 minutes. Soreally acclimatize yourself to that. AndI think you're going to find writing tobe less demanding. All right, so we gottwo components of my cognitive fitnessroutine. Let's bring up the big boardagain. It's time for component numberthree. Here comes the big reveal.Go on, thinking blocks.All right, here's what I mean by that.Go on. Jesse's amused by my tape. Ithink it's dramatic. Jesse, what do youthink?>> I kind of like it. >> Oh, there we go. All right. Those whoare listening don't know, you're missinga, you're missing a real, I would say, andJesse, tell me if I'm correct. Wrong here. Avatar caliber effectswe are deploying in this episode rightnow. Just that's what I want you toimagine is actually happening on thescreen. All right, let's keep going. What do I mean by a thinking walk? Iwant you to go for a walk several timesa week. Do not bring your phone. If youhave to have your phone, have it buriedin a bag. Put on the ringer and put aheadphone in your ear so if it ringsyou'll hear it. You don't. So you're notchecking it. It's actually going to be apain to get it out. On the walk, I wantyou to think about something importantto you. It could be professional. Itcould be personal. It could be a problemyou need to solve. It could be somethingyou're working through, or maybe yourbrain brainstorming or daydreaming aboutsomething you're excited about, but aSolitary target that you're turning yourmind towards. The key is to get practice on this walkof turning your intention inwards andmaking sense of some sort of informationor yourself that there's exteriordistractions around, and you're able toturn your intention internally andactually operate in an internal world ofabstract thoughts. Now, in an age ofconstant algorithmically optimizeddiversion, we're sort of losing ourcomfort with this type ofself-reflection. And I really think thisis a problem from a cognitive fitnessstandpoint. Self-reflection is where youmake sense of your life. It's where youdevelop your sense of self. It's whereyour best ideas come from. And it's very cognitively demandingbecause again, we love to look at thetiger. We have a hard time turninginward. So, it requires practice. Andthinking walks are a great way to do it.I really think we underestimate now whatWe're losing when we don't spend timewith our own thoughts. There's a famousbook, for example. It was published backin 1948. It was called The SevenstoryMountain. It's the autobiography ofThomas Merton, who goes from being a sortof a drift academic in New York to aTrappist monk down in Kentucky. If youread this book, and I reread itrecently, I have a first edition of it. His transformationfrom this unhappy academic to a monkis all about self-reflection.He dramatizes throughout this memoir histhoughts, his engagement with histhoughts, his dialogue with himself.It's all discernment. It's allexploration of what is going on insidehis own head. Like, let me lead you readyou a quote from the book. This is a keyscene when Merton, uh, gets this bigfeeling of inspiration from reading aGerard Manley Hopkins poem. Hopkins is asort of Jesuit poet and thinker.And he turns inward to try to makeSense of this feeling and has a bigrevelation. All right, so let me readfrom the book here. Suddenly, I couldn'tbear it no longer and got into myraincoat and started down the stairs to walk to the local Catholic parish. Andthen everything inside me began to sing,to sing with peace. Later, while walkingthe late night streets after aparticularly debaucherous night, acrystal clear thought emerges. I’m goingto be a priest. Now I’m adding therethere’s a little bit of the quotes fromthe book and some of that is my ownsummary of it, but basically what I’mcapturing here is there’s these keyscenes in the book where he’s reactingto the strong feeling from a poem, goeswalking, thinking about it, thinks aboutit the next night after a hard night ofpartying, introspecting,turning his attention inwards andrealizing, I think I need to be a priest. That’s self-reflection, that’sdiscernment. But it's not just about understandingyourself; it's also about cognitivefitness. If you can turn your mind inwardand keep it on a target, not only doesit make your own life better, it makesyour brain stronger for almost any typeof purpose. All right, so here's somepractical tips. These walks can be shortat first. Maybe do like one long oneeach week, like on the weekend, butotherwise, these can be like relativelyshort walks of just going around theblock. Just get used to that rhythm. As I mentioned before, if you absolutelyhave to bring your phone, put it in aplace where you can't do a quick check,right? Because your short-termmotivation system is always measuringthe cost of various activities towardsthe benefit. So if the phone is in yourpocket, it's saying we could pick thatup and look at it. That's very lowfriction to do. But we're almostcertainly going to get a reward fordoing that. Cost. Let's do it. But if the phone isin the bottom of your bag, it's likeactually the cost of having to stop andopen the bag and go in and get it. Thatmight outweigh the reward of what we seeon like TikTok. So actually, I'm notgoing to generate a sense of motivationto do it. So, it's easier to avoiddistraction if you make the distractionless available. I think the goldstandard is just don't have your phone.But if you do make it less accessible,it could also help if at the end ofthese walks you journal your insights.So, it forces you through this exerciseof like, let me try tostructure and make clear in a physicalartifactwhat it was that I was wrestling withinside my mind. That's a feedbackfunction that over time clarifies yourinternal thinking. So, you need to think about, um, what didI figure out on this walk? And when youwrite it down, you're like, "Oh, maybeThat's not as clear as I thought. And that's going to actually help you get more cognitive fitness out of this actual exercise.All right, we're making good progress here.Let's go back up to the big board.It's time for our fourth item, thefourth component of my cognitive fitness routine. Plug in your phone. You may have heardme talk about this before, but I think it's absolutely vital.So, I actually want to emphasize it.When you're at home, do not have your phone with you.Keep it plugged in. I suggest keeping it plugged in in the kitchen.You can put it on the ringer so if someone calls, you can go look for it.You can go in there to check in on messages or to look things up. If you're waiting for someone to text you about something important and you worry about missing it,tell them, "Hey, my phone's in the other room, so call when you're ready and I’ll hear the ring and then I’ll know to come."See what's going on." The key is tospend hours each day in your housewithout your phone there as a constantcompanion. Now, this might seem weird atfirst, like why am I artificially notholding on to my phone? But actually,the weird thing is always having yourphone with you. I call this the constant companion modelof phone usage, and it's not intrinsic tothe device. This is actually an ideaI've been writing about for a while nowthat the original idea for a smartphonewas not to be something you have on youat all times. That actually evolvedlater after the advent of the Apple AppStore and the discovery by the socialmedia companies that if people keeptheir phone with them at all times, theycan exponentially increase the amount ofengagement they get. So, the constantcompanion model of using your phone isnot some deterministic inevitability ofhaving a smartphone. It's a businessmodel based on fracking your attention. So the weird thing is actually havingthe phone with you at all times, notkeeping it plugged in while you're inyour house. So this is one of the bestways to fight back against this. Now,why does this matter? because it givesyou lots of practice doing thingswithout that constant short-termmotivation ping of pick up the phone,pick up the phone, pick up the phone.You don't realize the extent to whichyou're battling against your short-termmotivation system with every singlething you do when the phone is with you. People report when they run thistechnique that it feels like a weighthas been lifted off of their brain orthey've been given some sort of likehighly potent synthetic Adderall becausewithout that constant battle againstyour short-term motivation, you focus effortlessly.You get clarity you didn't have before.So think every show you watch,conversations at the table, reading aBook, doing chores, like doing all thesethings without that temptation to pickup the phone completely changes yourexperience of what it can be like in theworld, and that makes your mind muchstronger. This is a great way to buildup cognitive fitness. So here's somepractical tips about it. Uh, if you wantto listen to a podcast like mine duringchores, use AirPods. If your house is large enough thatyou're going to another floor, and theAirPods can't reach to where your phoneis, then you can bring the phone towhatever floor you're on and plug it insomewhere there, but don't put it onyour person. Train people who are uh used to textingyou and getting rapid responses that youdon't have the phone on your person whenyou're in your house. So, you know, ifit's in the evening or the morning, theymight have to call if they want to getyour attention. And of course, the other advanced tip. Here is make the phone itself lessdesirable by taking off any app thatmakes money from your engagement. Anysocial app, for example, take that offyour phone. And this will give you asort of diluted simulation of the phoneplugged-in effect when you're away fromthe house, and the phone might be withyou. The less interesting the phone is,the less strongly your short-termmotivation system fights to try to getyou to pick it up. And you get moretraining and practice. Just keeping yourfocus on whatever you happen to bedoing. So, it's a great way to pick upcognitive fitness. I sort of think ofthis as the like stop smokinganalogy. That's like the right analogyhere. Spend a lot of time each daywithout your phone. It's like if you'retrying to get stronger, yeah, I thinkyou should stop smoking.That sort of background activity thatover time is making everything elseharder. That's how I think about this. All right, we're down to our fifth andfinal piece of my cognitive fitnesscomponents. Let's give the big reveal.Learn a hard skill.This is the final component of my plan.Master a skill that requires you tofocusto get better, but that also gives youclear rewards. You get a clear signalthat, oh, I am getting better. So, I haveto focus to get better, but then I get aclear reward when I do. I think athleticpursuits fall into this. Golf or tennisor pickleball or whatever it is. As youwork harder on this skill, you get aclear reward of, oh, I'm getting bettershots or I'm scoring more points. Ithink musical pursuits are obvious aswell. Oh, I can play this song that'shard and it's cool, and I couldn't playit before. I'm clearly getting better.Um, artistic crafts or pursuits, you cansee the same thing. Oh, I'm better atknitting, and you can see it because thesweater is more impressive. So, I think this is a — it's a, a great wayuh to build up skills. Now, actuallylast week I had the author Brad Stolbergon the show to talk about how building adisciplined practice can make you lessdistractable,right? So, for example, he usesweightlifting, powerlifting as acentering force for his own cognitivelife. And so, that's part of it, right?If you're learning a hard skill, itbuilds up a sense of discipline so youcan resist distractions easier. Butthere's other cognitive fitnessadvantages here as well. One of the bigones I think is it helps train yourlong-term motivation system that when wefocus on something hard over time we getreally uh meaningful rewards. The more your long-term motivation system can getinvolved in the game, the more of thesesort of hard one meaningful rewards thatyou introduce into your life, the moreprimacy your long-term motivation systemgets over the short-term system. TheLong-term system can swap it, right? So,if the short-term system is pick up yourphone, pick up your phone, you know whatcan squash that? The long-term systemcan come in and say, "No, we're going tokeep practicing the guitar because Ihave learned the rewards of masteringthese songs are great." And it's muchbigger than the reward of seeingsomething interesting on TikTok. So, Ican just turn down the volume on thatshort-term motivation system. And you'll much easier be able to keep your attentionfocused. So, the more experiences yougive your long-term motivation system ofsuccessfully reaping long-term rewards,the more you have the ability tomodulate the influence of the short-termsystem. And in other scenarios as well,that short-term system no longer willhave as much of a bite. Theother cognitive fitness advantage oflearning a hard scale is just practicefocusing. You know, it's hard to say,let me just sit down and focus just toPractice it. But if I have a reason todo it, I'm trying to learn this chordand then I learn it and then it soundsbetter, it's easier to sustain yourconcentration. But that is just practice again with aim in your mind's eye, whicha lot of cognitive fitness comes back tothis facility with blocking out noise,modulating your short-term motivationsystem, sustaining focus on a target ofyour choice. This is an excellent way topractice that on a regular basis. So, weget the three benefits of this one. whatwe talked about with Brad in general,you're just more disciplined, makes youuh easier able to resist distractions ordiversions. Two, it specificallyrequires your long-term motivation systemto help you with that. And three, it's agreat way to practice sustaining focuson a complicated target for a longerpiece of time. Some practical tips here. This needs to be something that you doon a regular schedule, not just when youfeel like it. It should be a moreDisciplined pursuit. Um, it needs somesort of skilled component that improveswith deliberate practice, but then givesyou clear indications that you'regetting better. That's what's going tohelp your long-term motivation systemlearn. There’s some sort of coaching youcan do here. It helps any sort offeedback or coaching from another personcan really help you stick with it. Allright, so there you have it. I gave youuh five components for improving yourcognitive fitness. This is like astandard exercise routine before yourbrain. Read every day. Don't avoidwriting. Go on thinking walks. Plug inyour phone and learn a hard skill. Thisis like the cognitive equivalent ofhaving a reasonablehealth and fitness routine just to stayin reasonable shape. You don't have todo these five, but you really should bethinking about your cognitive fitnesslike your physical fitness and health. And say, "Well, here is what I do. Hereare my rules. Here are my regularactivities."And maybe you customizethis to yourself, but what I would likeyou to avoid is having none, to not bethinking about that at all. Because welive in an environment now with so manyso much digital junk food, so muchincentives, digital incentives formental inactivity that if you're notthinking about it, you're going to endup the cognitive equivalent of beingreally out of shape and unhealthy. Allright, so if you want to go deeper intothese ideas, definitely read that NewYork Times piece. It'll kind of lay outthe whole philosophy there. Um, my bookDeep Work, which came out 10 years ago,lays a foundation for a lot of thoseideas as well. So, check that out. Butthere you go. Get your brain smarter. >> So, when you incorporate the reading 30to 50 pages, that can all be books, NewYorker articles, magazines as well.>> Yeah, I think that's fine. Yeah, I thinkI think articles are fine. Make it physical or Kindle, you know, uh, not a 50-page equivalent of tweets like, well,you know, hey, I scrolled Twitter for three hours, and if I really add up all those words, that's like 50 pages,because what you want is that sustained concentration of following the structureof the thoughts and getting lost in aparticular piece without changing yourcognitive context.Um yeah, I think articles are articles are just as good.Books you can read on a Kindle if you want.That's physical. It just uses electricity to change the physical configuration. So there you go. Just this is all an excuse.You just like the fifth one because it's an excuse to play golf. >> You're like, I'm just working on my cognitive fitness. >> That effective feedback. Your handicap goes up. Is that effective feedback? I don't know. >> It's feedback,That's for sure. Okay, before we move onto our second segment, I want to take aquick break to hear from some more ofour sponsors. We talk a fair amount on the show aboutAI, and long-time listeners know that theAI future I’m most excited about is onein which you use this technology tobuild custom tools or workflows aimed atspecific efforts, automating theshallows so that you can focus on thedeep. Well, this is exactly the approachoffered by Zapier. With Zapier's AIorchestration platform, you can bringthe power of AI to any workflow so thatyou can do more of what matters. Whetherwe're talking about an autonomous agentor a customer chatbot or something else,you can orchestrate it with Zapier. 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This is a small habit thatproduces big results. So, go tocalderab.com/deepand use the code deep for 20% off yourfirst order. All right, let's get backinto it. All right, well, you've heard enoughfrom me. Now, it's time to hear fromyou. As is our tradition at the end ofthe Monday advice episodes, I like toopen my inbox and see what you, myaudience, have to say. So, if you have aquestion, a reaction, or somethinginteresting to share, you can send itover to podcast at calalupport.com. Allright, Jesse, what's our first messagewe have today? >> The first message is from a formersocial media influencer.>> Oh, interesting.All right. So, I'll just call thisanonymous because I don't know if theyknow if I was going to read this or not.Um, during my time in school, Iaccidentally became an influencer ofsorts, which sounds weird, I know, onInstagram and Tik Tok in the nutritionspace. I gained followers, had millionsof views, went viral, etc. At first, Iwas over the moon, but I quickly feltthe mental impact of being chronicallyOnline. I walked away from the slotmachine and stopped posting on theplatforms in 2024. My experience with social media and thedecrease in my mental health,productivity, original thought,individuality, happiness, etc. reallyshook me. It's become a topic I'mextremely passionate about. I share myjourney on my blog and plan to start acommunity group here for those lookingto leave these addictive platforms. It'sdefinitely isolating being a 25-year-oldwho's not on social media, but readingyour book was a nice reminder of why Ichose this path and how I know I'll behappier for it. Thank you again forstanding on your beliefs and being aguiding voice in this space. I also findextremely admirable that you're not onthese platforms. You walk the walk. Well, that's great to hear, right? Thatwhen this person left their influencerrole, they're like, "Oh my god,everything is so much clearer. I'mActually, happier. I didn't realize howmuch this is weighing on me. One thing that captured my attention is that shesaid, "It's isolating being 25 and noton these platforms."I'm interested in that. I think that is becomingless true as these platforms over thelast three years have, to their doom,followed the TikTok model of breakingaway fromfollowing people, following friends. Choosing who you're trying to getcontent from and have instead moved to amodel of just we're going toalgorithmically show you random shortform stuff that'll press your internalbuttons. The more these become justabstracted slop entertainment, thesmaller the impact becomes on, oh, Idon't use these anymore because there'sno one to notice it. There's no one thatyou're talking to on there. There's noone who's following you on there. So, noone knows if you're on there or not,with the exception of like some memes. You may or may not know. So, hopefullythat's becoming easier. All right, what else do we got, Jesse? >> Our next message is from a writerreacting to your interview with AmyTimberlake.>> Okay, interesting here. All right. So,this is from Anjali Banerjee who knowsAmy Timberlake. So, we interviewedthe acclaimed children's book author AmyTimberlake, I think two weeks ago, uhbecause we were interested in the ideathat she uses a typewriter,which is a slower piece of technologythan a computer and has fewer features,but makes her a better writer. We usethis as a metaphor about slowing down,can actually produce more, and technologydoesn't always understand that. It'salways about just speeding up. So, um, and Jolly Banner G wrote and said, "Iwrote stories as a child on atypewriter, but switched to the Mac whenit first came out and used computersthereafter, but then about 7 years ago,I decided that screens and notificationswere too distracting. So, I went to mylocal typewriter shop and bought anelectric typewriter, but I had to keepprogramming the margins. So, I took itback and bought my first completelymanual typewriter, a Hermes RocketCircuit 19, circuit 1956. From there, Icaught typewriter fever, and now own over100 manual machines. That would be me,Jesse, if I start getting typewriters. This whole office will be full oftypewriterseverywhere. I'm curating my collection,focusing on keeping typewriters withtypefaces that can be easily scanned inthe word using OCR apps or unusualmodels with unusual typefaces. I wrotemuch of the first draft of my 14th novelon a typewriter, and I posted an imageof the typewritten draft of the firstparagraphs versus the final version onmy blog. Oh, we should look at that. Let’s bring this up here, Jesse. This isthe blog post. So, Angelie Banner GPublishes under the name AG Banner, andI'm putting this on the screen here. Okay, there you go. So, look at thatold-fashionedtypewriting. Um, and then this actuallyan interesting article because she talksabout what her final published openingwas versus this. So she cut most of this,but she wrote about how this is how shegot out all the relevant thoughts, andthen she realized what's actually corehere. And then she cut a lot to get tothe final version of it, but the essayhelped her. Uh, the typewriter helped herwork out. Helped her work out thoseviews. So, I think that's, I think that'spretty cool. I mean, again, the idea herethat this comes back to, it's all about bottlenecks. In fact, I think, uh, wemight get into this in more detail in anupcoming episode, but it's this ideathat there's a lot of steps involved indoing creative or cognitive work. And alot of the tools we come up with, thedigital tools are supposed to make usMore productive speed-up parts of thatprocess,but it's like an assembly line. And whatreally matters is the bottleneck pieces,right? So if you do the other stepsfaster, it's just going to pile up workat the bottlenecks. You're still notgoing to get more actual results out. And often the bottlenecks in cognitiveor creative work are not sped up by justhaving better tools. And in fact,sometimes they require that you stepaway from tools to be able to actuallyimprove your output there. And I thinktypewriting is a big piece of this. Likethe bottleneck for book writing isoften producing really good words andand improving that bottleneck isoften not about some tool that makes yougo faster, but actually being able tospend more time in a cognitive statewhere you're more likely to come up with the good things. And so you can have asmany AI sped-up research database toolsas you want, but if that bottleneckStays small, you're still not going tobe producing books much faster. So Ithink that's cool. Also, I didn'trealize this, Jesse. It's a good ideathat what people do who write ontypewriters is they scan it. That wasnew. So she was saying she findstypewriters that have fonts that can beeasily scanned into like Word with aoptical character recognition program. So you do it, you type, and then atsome point you scan those into a computer,and now you're editing on the computer.>> I kind of like that workflow. >> Just some insider baseball for theaudience. It is incredible, like how fastyou type.>> Did I type?>> Yeah. So, I was thinking if therewere typewriters all around here, it'd bekind of loud. >> It would be loud. I do have a loudkeyboard, which I want to say Jesserefuses to use.>> I like the other one. >> Oh, the other one's so much worse.>> You don't like the other one?>> I. That's okay. So, audience, I have abeautiful mechanical typewriter thatlets me type at an incredibly fastspeed. Very good. Springed up. It'sloud, but it's a very good mechanicaltypewriter. And Jesse insists on usingthe Apple magic where it's like the thelittle flat keys on the rubber gaskets.It's like soft. I don't know. I kind oflike it. >> It's hard to go fast. So, the, the, themechanical one, you, the finger springsback up so you can get back into actiona little bit quicker.>> I think that's you type a lot fasterthan I do.>> Well, we are going to start recordingthis podcast on wax cylinders, and thenwe can later like remaster them. See,I'm going to embrace this. Then we canlater remaster them in the digital. Butthat way, we'll focus more.>> The other insider baseball is like youNot only do I type fast, but I keep ontyping. Like, you don't stop typing. I'vebeen writing for a long time. I>> like, go. >> I do go. I write. I write a lot, and Iwrite fast,without AI. All right. Do we have anymore? We have one more message, right?>> Yeah, we do. All right. Our finalmessage is a case study of someoneputting your advice into practice.>> All right. Let's see what we got here.This comes from Solomon. Salman says, "Irun a textile company in Pakistan. Iemploy about 200 people, and it's growingfast. I came across your podcast, andthen I picked up Deep Work a couple of monthsago. I want to share what happenedbecause I think you'd find itinteresting. I deleted Instagram,Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter from myphone. Not my accounts, just the apps.If I need them, I can log in on acomputer. And that's it. That was thewhole intervention. The first few days. Were rough. I didn't realize how deepthe habit was until there was nothing toscroll. I literally asked my wife if Icould use her Instagram. Her feed wasbuilt for her, though, and I quit after2 minutes. A week later, I forgot thoseapps even existed. My phone usagedropped from 6.5 hours a day to 3.5.That's 90 hours a month I was justhanding over to feeds. But the numbersaren't even the main thing. I startedsleeping better, started working outagain, and this is the one that hit mehardest. I'm actually present with mysix-year-old daughter now. More drawing,building, and playing in the last monththan the previous four. I didn't need avacation to be a good dad. I just neededto put down the phone. I wrote about this experience on LinkedIn, and it kindof blew up. People messaging me sayingthey're deleting their apps. Otherssaying they've been struggling with thesame thing for years. I wasn't trying topreach or anything, just shared whatHappened. Honestly, your work was thepush that started all of it. I'm nowdoing deep work sessions from more mostmornings. 60 to 90 minutes, nodistractions. Still figuring out howbest to use them as a CEO. Turns outremoving noise doesn't automaticallygive you clarity. That's a differentproblem. But even the early sessionshave produced some of the best thinkingI've done in years. All right. I lovethat story. I mean, look, if you takethe benefits that you get from stoppingusing social media on your phone and youjust listed them abstractly, peoplewould pay huge money for those benefits.If you said, "I have a productivitytool that is going to like gain you back90 extra hours. It's going tosignificantly increase like the timewith your kids, your ability to workout, you're going to feel better, you'regoing to produce better thoughts."Oympic of intellectual activity. Everyone would be all over it. But it exists. Just stop using social media on your phone.Just these huge benefits are just sitting there. It's like people in physical fitness are like exercise. If you could put the benefits of semi-regular moderate exercise into a pill, it would be a blockbuster. Well, it's the same thing. The benefits of not using social media in your phone, especially as like a grown-up with kids, are immense. Sometimes you just need a push. It's that you just got to stop it. Just like I said in that New York Times piece, stop with the moderation. Stop with the, well, I just use this in this case and I have these apps to control this or that.It's digital ultraprocessed food. It's digital Doritos. It's digital Oreos. You're a grown-up. Don't eat Oreos. Don't eat Doritos. Right? Like, we just need to move on from algorithmicallyCurated short form content. It adds novalue to your life, and you get massivevalue if you stop using it. So, I thinkthat's a great example, um, of what can begained. So, thank you, Solomon, forsending that in. All right. Uh, like welike to do, I want to end our Mondayepisode by quickly bringing you up tospeed with what I'm up to. So, I read the other day, uh, the book Iread last week was The Noonday Devil.This was recommended by one of ourlisteners.It's a, it's written by Charles JeanCharles Nalt in French, and I, I forgiveme, but I don't know the, I didn't writedown the translator's name. Um, so, thisis, he's a Benedictine monasticI believe. Uh, so it's a religious book,as published by the Ignatius, a Jesuitpress, but it's interesting. This is whythe listener suggested it to me becausehe thought there'd be some overlap withwhat we've been talking about here withthe deep life. It's about the Greek termacidia, ac which you can translate as likespiritual sloth. And it was this reallybig issue for the early monks. Right? This is something that the desertfathers, the original monastics in thenear east deserts of the early commonera, they struggled with in their sort ofdesert monastic cells. St. ThomasAquinas wrote a lot about this in themedieval period, and then it sort of felloff the radar, and this book is bringingit back. And say we should bring thisterm back because it's really useful. And I did find some interesting, I mean,anytime we have people writing about oneof these mental states or productivityissues for 2,000 years, I'm interested. I was like, oo, I like these older takes,and there's a couple interesting things I'llmention real quick I learned from thisbook. So, this idea of spiritual sloth oracidia, part of the definition, is acertain lack of activity, right? So, partof it is you could just not do stuff. You just stop doing stuff. Uh, and theythey captured that as a problem. Butwhat was interesting is they said theother way that a CDIA can show up isessentially busyness for the sake ofbusyness. Now the term that the Frenchauthor uses is confusingly translated asactivism because obviously activism hasa clear meaning in English of like youare uh you are advocating for a cause. But they actually, the author meansactivism differently here as like pseudoproductivity, busyness for the sake ofbusyness. Being active for the sake ofbeing active without an actualmeaningful goal to it. So I thought thatwas interesting. They're like spiritualsloth. Um, this sort of sense of despaircould either lead to I just stop doingthings or I'm just doing nonsense allthe time to distract myself. And thereal cure is meaningful activity aimedat meaningful goals. So, it wasinteresting book. I mean, these are likereligious, academic books are notNecessarily like the most fun reads, butI got a lot of good information out of it. Um, and otherwise, the main thingelse that's going on in my life is I’mstill trying to figure out I have summercoming up. I'll keep you posted, but Ialways have my summer schedule. That ishow I run my weeks during the summerwhen I don't have class responsibilitiesat Georgetown. And I am thinking about ashift this year, Jesse. My traditional summer schedule has been uhdeep work every morning till latemorning or lunch, and then I would doTuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in theafternoons is when I would do otherthings like podcast recording ormeetings or calls and keeping Monday andFridays open of calendar things,professional calendar things so I canjust like have long days thinking andreading or even just recharge. I'mthinking about switching it to uhMonday, Tuesday, Wednesday as the dayswith my active afternoons and thenThursday, Friday leading to the weekendbeing the days where I don't schedulethings on the calendar. I think that's going to match better ourpodcasting schedule. >> You're still going to deep work in themorning, right? >> Yeah. Uh, deep work every morning. Yeah,that's the given. So, anyway, Ithink>> if you stop doing deep work, likenobody's going to listen to the showanymore. Well, it all falls apart. >> Which, like, yeah, which by the way, it'slike all the pressure of the internet is>> you better keep on doing deep work. >> What I mean, all the pressure of theinternet is like, hey, just work on thestuff you do afterwards. But if youdon't have anything to talk about,what's the point? Then you just get likeobsessive about, I don't know, yourthumbnails or something. But like, youstill actually have to have something toto talk about. >> You got to do deep work with Humeman. Hesaid he wanted to do it with you.>> Um, yes. Yeah. Yeah, we could do ittogether.>> He said he wanted to do it.>> All right. Me and human do some deepwork. Do some deep work together. Um,as long as you don't go in the gym. It'sa strong individual. Strong individual,man. They're out there. Yeah. He likeset some record on that one on CameronHaye's podcast because like wheneverpeople come on his podcast, he puts themthrough this gauntlet of exercises andhe like carried the boulder up themountain or something. Didn't take anybreaks. >> I'm not going on Cam Hannes's. I'm notgoing on Cam Haynes's podcast. That'slike the worst way to get people on yourshow. Like, "Hey, come on my podcast. Ihave a pretty good audience. Um, you'reg have to carry a boulder up a mountain."Yeah. Then run 10 miles and then lift. Oh,>> my my equivalent is going to be like,"All right, I'm going to make you spendan hour reading in translation a book ona Cydia." That's my equivalent ofpushing the boulder up the mountain orwe'll do a typing speed challenge.Might you might be strong, but what'syour, what's your WPM? What's your wordsper minute? All right, that's all thetime we have for today. Thank you forlistening. Uh, we got an AI reality checkthemed episode coming out on Thursdayand then another advice episode theMonday to follow. So, we will see yousoon, and until then, as always, staydeep., How Do I Reverse Brain Rot?, YouTube, 01kq7dhczt40z3maa52sd994w7.