In-DEPTH: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner  ## Metadata - Author: [[Deep Questions with Cal Newport]] - Full Title: In-DEPTH: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/8196071c-a746-4bfa-be89-47e849609620 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Late Realization Sparked A Career** - Brian Keating discovered his passion late and didn't realize you could get paid to be an astronomer until his mid-to-late twenties. - He pursued postdocs, built his own experiment, and that led to professor job offers. Transcript: Brian Keating It was very late. It was probably mid twenties, late twenties after getting my PhD. I always thought, you know, being, so I'm an astronomer, I'm a cosmologist. And that means I, you know, study the early universe, where it came from, what's happening to it, is it going to end, should we keep paying our taxes, et cetera, et cetera. But I never thought you could get paid to do this, Cal. I never thought you could get paid – and really 90 percent of the professionally employed astronomers are professors effectively or aspire to be professors someday. So I never thought you could get paid to be an astronomer, which is what I love to do, which is what would get me into that coveted flow state as a kid, you know, just using a telescope on a Dark night, you know, before iPhones and stuff and just sketching into a logbook or whatever. But I thought like, yeah, someone's going to pay me to do that. Like they're going to pay me to be an ice cream taster or, you know, ride the roller coaster at Six Flags. I never thought it was possible. I never entered my realm, which is really weird because my father was a very famous math professor. I didn't grow up with him. My parents were divorced when I was young. He split, moved to the West Coast. I stayed with my mom and was adopted by my stepfather. And he was not a professor, smart, smart man. But he and ([Time 0:04:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cff481fb-bbda-4b0e-ac10-22f75bd5d54b)) - **Getting Fired Led To A Better Opportunity** - Keating was fired from his first postdoc for pursuing his own idea instead of his advisor's project. - His advisor connected him to a new mentor at Caltech, which restarted his career path. Transcript: Brian Keating Postdoctoral advisor at Caltech. His name is Andrew Lang. And I went to, he offered me a job and I accepted that. So I did two postdocs and it was only during that second postdoc when I could implement the experiment that I had invented as a wayward postdoc, as a, as a fruit, you know, frivolous postdoc That we implemented it and built this instrument. And then that led to me getting an offer of institutions to be a professor. Cal Newport Yeah, I think people don't always recognize in the experimental sciences, often what you're, part of what you're hiring is an instrument, an experiment. It's I am a mass, I built this thing, or I worked under an advisor who built this thing, and now I know how to do it. She's not available, but I am. That it's not, I think people often think about all of academia in the model they had for going to college, which was, hey, are you smart? Do you have promise? Like, are you, let's put you in a competition with everyone else. And are you the smartest, most interesting person who's, great, we want to hire you as a professor. Brian Keating That's what I call it. I call it the academic hunger games. It starts in high school, right? And it never stops. I mean, it doesn't stop with Nobel laureates, Cal. It's insane. The hunger games, the zero sum game. And the reason that's so pernicious is that it's antithetical to science, right? You don't win science. There's not like a ([Time 0:10:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/82b4d4ef-f5b7-4338-882e-35ba61263ab3)) - **The Academic Hunger Games** - Academia operates like a zero-sum "hunger games" that rewards exceptional, narrow contributions. - That system conflicts with science's collaborative nature and breeds imposter syndrome. Transcript: Brian Keating You as a professor. That's what I call it. I call it the academic hunger games. It starts in high school, right? And it never stops. I mean, it doesn't stop with Nobel laureates, Cal. It's insane. The hunger games, the zero sum game. And the reason that's so pernicious is that it's antithetical to science, right? You don't win science. There's not like a zero, oh, like, yeah I won science. No, even when he won a Nobel Prize, these Nobel Prize winners that I know, they all have things like the imposter syndrome. They're not good enough. They don't deserve it. And so exactly like you say, it's just like throw them in a room and see who comes out. ([Time 0:11:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2e7d6f79-9f33-4c19-8beb-afb610878ea6)) - **Cultivate A Narrow, Rare Skillset** - Focus intensely on cultivating rare, valuable skills that make you unique rather than being a generalist. - Become outstanding at one domain area and ignore trying to master everything. Transcript: Brian Keating I think the number one thing is to focus, you know, to cultivate the rare and valuable skills that make you unique rather than trying to be the kind of renaissance man, you know, who can Quote Hungarian, you know, literature and can also, you know, build a bellometer system that works at 50 millikelvin. The curse of Oppenheimer, right? Cal Newport Like i need to read i need to be able to read like ancient verdict script and quote the margadita and like be a great violin player or whatever it's like no no no that's don't do that exactly Brian Keating Exactly so it's just like again let's keep using our favorite you know baseball analogy it's like you could be a great shortstop you know but you shouldn't also try to be you know a great You know, a great right fielder. OK, you could do it. You have athletic ability. You have horsepower to do it. So for me, it was cultivating just this relentless curiosity about one subject, which, as you know, like, yes, I'm a cosmologist. So I'm just an expert in cosmology. ([Time 0:25:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/408d76ea-0705-4541-840f-25c6dc3135bb)) - **A Nobel Moment That Fell Apart** - Keating's team claimed detection of the inflation "spark" in 2014 but later retracted after finding an artifact. - Micrometeorite contamination mimicked the gravitational-wave signal they sought. Transcript: Brian Keating So the most dangerous phrase is, in science, is eureka. I have found it, you know, like, because that means you were looking for something and you found, okay, you might have found it, but you might be subject to confirmation. Cal Newport A signal that if you confirmed would have been a huge deal. Brian Keating Yes, exactly. Right. So the signal the spark that ignited the Big Bang. So we know the Big Bang occurred. We know that the universe is expanding, getting bigger every day, and it's getting bigger at a faster rate every day. So if you wind the movie back in reverse, you come to a time when all the matter in the universe, all the galaxies, all the particles, all the everything in the universe was all in one place Effectively. That's essentially what Lemaitre and others and and gamov and and others coined as the big bang so the big bang the instant but we don't know what caused that massive explosion if you Like to take place so the theory behind that is called inflation postulated by mit professor alan guth uh 45 years ago now and it has yet to be confirmed really proven beyond a reasonable Doubt and we claimed in 2014 that we did discover the spark that ignited this inflation by way of detection of what's called gravitational radiation or gravity waves and uh spoiler Alert we had to retract it after being you know on the front page of the new york times and everybody whispering that we'd win nobel prizes and so we had retract that. But the reason we thought we saw it is that gravitational waves and these micrometeorites, they both make this pattern in the cosmos that we could be misinterpreted without additional Cal Newport Data as the spark that ignited the Big Bang. And you got the additional data, and it was not what you hoped. But now you have meteorite pieces to give away. ([Time 0:26:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/75b15173-bcd2-4495-ac9e-a5fd2e01cccc)) - **Focus Is About Choosing Not To Do** - Nobel laureates emphasize focus as selective activity choice, not just concentration technique. - Choosing what not to do is as critical as choosing what to do. Transcript: Cal Newport Okay. Because like, as you said, focus matter for what you did. It mattered for the Nobel prize winners you interviewed. One of the things I took out of the book is you might think when you see that title that you're going to hear a lot of stories that's about these Nobel Prize winners talking about how they Can, you know, summon an intensity like a laser beam that they can bore right through. It's not what a lot of these stories are about. Focus, they're talking about as much what they choose not to do as they are about, oh, how do I actually like concentrate, you know, in the moment. Talk to me about that. Like, am I picking that up right? Do you pick up like that somewhere? Like what's going on here with focus as activity selection as much as it is cognitive activity? ([Time 0:33:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e14fdf27-151b-47cb-811b-ead2bb21b17c)) - **Time-Box Your High-Value Activities** - Use time-boxing and calendar-as-to-do-list to juggle high commitments like research and hobbies. - Schedule firm blocks for priorities to maintain productivity across roles. Transcript: Brian Keating And that's, he's just obsessed with it. But what does he do? I asked him, like, how do you find the time? Because he's the provost of this Australian university. He's still a research scientist. Nobel laureates get asked to do, you know, speaking gigs, you know, even worse than you do. And he's growing one. He's like, I basically have a calendar that's my to-do list. So what do you call that? Time boxing. So they're using these tools. The funny thing is that they didn't know they were using these tools that you've been talking about. ([Time 0:38:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c58c47ea-ec0e-4798-8d24-7b3fc3e755f9)) - **Imposter Syndrome Survives Nobel Prizes** - Imposter syndrome persists even after top recognition because laureates compare themselves to historical giants. - High achievement coexists with humility and persistent self-doubt. Transcript: Brian Keating I mean, Barry Barish told me that he felt the imposter syndrome after winning the Nobel Prize worse than before he won the Nobel Prize. I said, Barry, how can that possibly be? And he said, well, when you win a Nobel Prize, you go to Stockholm, you have to dress in this white tie, white tails, you eat this reindeer dinner, you meet the king and queen of Sweden, And you get this giant, you know know flavor flave like medallion and you get a million dollars plus you know potentially and um so they want to make sure you're not going to come back and Say hey uh you know where's my money you know where's my metal where's my reindeer and so they make you sign this ledger and in the ledger are all the names of everyone who's ever won the Nobel prize in your field so barry's a super curious guy so he turns it back. He sees Feynman. He goes back. Marie Curie, he turns it back. He sees Fermi, all these just like titans. And then he sees Albert Einstein. And he's like, I don't belong in the same breath as Albert Einstein, let alone the same book. Finger puppet here. And so I'm not worthy. And I said, Barry, I got to tell you some good news. Like Einstein had the imposter syndrome. He's like, what are you talking about? I said, he felt that Isaac Newton was the greatest contributor, not only the science, but to Western civilization. And he's like, ah, it's amazing. And I said, but that's not all because Isaac Newton had the imposter syndrome too. ([Time 0:41:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01e165e0-fef2-4b35-9565-04c6d9f603d2)) - **Skipping Graduation Ceremonies** - Both Keating and Cal Newport skipped their hooding and graduation ceremonies, seeing them as distractions from the next goal. - They treated those milestones as insignificant relative to ongoing academic work. Transcript: Cal Newport Also humility. I like the swagger point and balance it with humility. But I mean, it just reminds me, there's something that really confused my wife, but I think would not confuse you, which was, I didn't go to any of my graduation ceremonies as, you know, I didn't go to my master's degree. I didn't go to my doctoral degree. I didn't do the hooding or whatever. And my mindset was very much like, if I feel like that's something that's an accomplishment to celebrate, then I'm not going to make it as an academic, right? Brian Keating Like this had to have been easy, tell me sorry to interrupt but in high school we say like this is the best time of your life and i said this is the best time of my life like i hope i hope it's You know not true i will but you're 100 i never went to my hooding ceremonies i never did that i was like like no i'm'm onto the next thing, not a shiny object, but just like, I'm, I'm done. Like, I got to keep going. Yeah. Cal Newport The monster minds would not have, it was the monster minds of the, you know, World War II era of physics. I mean, yeah, sure. They got their doctorate at some point, like on route to like, they had things to do. And so that was very much, yeah, my, my mindset, my college graduation, I completely didn't care about, even though I was graduating. I think I was like top five in my class, right? Like I didn't find college that hard. I was like, I can't celebrate this because this is the easiest thing I've done that I'm going to do on the route to like what I want to do. Like everyone graduates college that you go to college, that's not competitive. Or yeah, you go to a doctoral program. Yeah, I didn't get kicked out of the doctoral program. Fine. But, like, what matters is, like, can you get the tenure track job? Like, so you can't, you know, you can't celebrate those. Like, now with my own students, like, oh, this is so great. And I love the pomp and the circumstance. And I wear the wizard robes. But ([Time 0:44:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b907135f-5fb5-4d0b-803a-1d1553dc8fa0)) - **Create A No-Meeting Studio Day** - Carve studio days where you avoid meetings and campus to produce public-facing work. - Protect focused blocks for podcasting, writing, or other creative output. Transcript: Cal Newport So anyways, like that's what I'm doing. It's been scary, Brian. Here's the scary part about it is to do that, you kind of have to say, so for now, I'm not doing the math papers. The thing that I had been doing and was trained to do since I was, you know, whatever it was, 21 years old. So that's the interesting part is, you know, I'm a full professor. There's no more promotion to get. There's no letters to be written about me from faculty in the computer science. So there's no one I have to worry about. And so I made that switch about a year or two ago, and I'm kind of in the middle of it. And one of the things I did in the switch, this might be interesting to you, is I've started saying, I have a quote-unquote studio day. And this is the day where I'm definitely not on campus. I don't do meetings that day. I'm in my studio. I'm podcasting, and I'm working on my newsletter because that reaches, you know, it's going to be read or downloaded eight plus million times a year. And it's about technology and it matters. And that's part of my job now. And so far I've gotten away with saying that, you know, um, but it's different. It's different. ([Time 0:48:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/78738554-6c0c-4407-b7c6-90ed2d8f675a)) - **Wisdom Gains Value In An AI Era** - Crystallized intelligence and wisdom gain premium value as AI commodifies raw fluid processing. - Experienced judgment and ethics will outcompete sheer computational horsepower. Transcript: Brian Keating I'm sure you can still do it and you still have wisdom and stuff, but I'm coming to be a little bit more optimistic, not to get all David Brooks, you know, Second Mountain or Arthur C. Brooks, his, his namesake as well, you know, kind of the kind of challenges of grappling with your youth being over in that chapter, that season of your life of fluid intelligence. But actually with these little, you know, digital devices and I just don't feel like there's going to be as much of an emphasis on the fluid intelligence. I mean when I have a digital assistant always on, I have this thing with a pendant. I have my phone. I have my – whatever. Those are incredible force multipliers but they don't have any wisdom whatsoever. If I ask ChatGP – I asked it, what books has Brian Keating written? It's like new Googling yourself and it's like he wrote Losing the Nobel Prize, Into the Impossible, and A Brief History of Time. And I'm like, well, I wish I had the book sales numbers of that. It's like almost the Bible book sale numbers. But no, so I think like we – and you're a lot younger than me. But still, the fact is that I think there's going to be a commodification of the fluid intelligence and a real kind of premium put on crystallized intelligence. ([Time 0:50:37](https://share.snipd.com/snip/48e3e5e5-d7c8-4015-b1a3-4f5d9cde59e3)) - **A Book About Time's Arrow** - Keating plans another popular book explaining competing theories like string theory and Simons Observatory science. - He wants to explain how experiments might reveal why time has an arrow. Transcript: Brian Keating And this one's going to be about, you've heard about string theory, obviously, as a sort of a potential theory of everything. But what a lot of people don't know is that string theory is not only unproven, there's literally no evidence in support of it as we speak, but it may be permanently shrouded in the mystery Of being what's called unfalsifiable. So Karl Popper had this notion that science should be not provable because you can't prove that there's not a purple unicorn on Jupiter's North Pole in every case, but you can falsify Different claims. So string theory might not be falsifiable, but there's an equal and kind of almost opposite candidate theory of everything, which just so happens to possibly imprint the signal that Some people have claimed might have tentative hints for already. And I want to explain that signal, and I want to explain the science of what's called the Simons Observatory, which is the project that I'm the PI of right now in Chile. It's a $200 million project, 400 people on it, and it's a massive telescope at 18,000 feet above sea level in the volcanic out-of desert of Chile. And I want to explain how it could possibly be discovered because one of the consequences of this is that we may be able to discover why time has an arrow. ([Time 0:54:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a6fde209-88e6-40d1-93f0-ac15e9d7edac)) - **Schedule Weekly Sabbaticals** - Build regular sabbaticals into your schedule by enforcing weekly rest like a day off from work. - Use weekly resets to preserve creativity and avoid burnout. Transcript: Brian Keating So Judaism is a big part of my life. And one of the attributes of Judaism is the seven dayday cycle of which you have to – I tell my students, you cannot work seven days a week. You probably have to work six days a week. You probably do while you're young and you've got that fluid intelligence pumping away through you and all those great traits. But you don't – you are forbidden to work seven days a week if you're in my lab. And they all know it. They know I don't work on holidays and Saturdays. I don't work on Sundays either, by the way. But that's the thing. If I didn't have that rejuvenation each week, you're probably right. I probably couldn't do most of what I do. But I get a reset. It's like a sabbatical literally every week. ([Time 0:57:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cbbe7335-5b51-41e9-8b9a-e7c46d2774db))