Do you remember when the iPhone was

first introduced?

It was an exciting moment. Like I want

to play you a clip here from Steve Jobs

keynote address at the 2007 Mac World

where he first introduced this device. I

want you to listen to the enthusiasm of

the assembled crowd. Three things. A

widescreen iPod with touch controls, a

revolutionary mobile phone, and a

breakthrough internet communications

device.

An iPod,

a phone,

and an internet communicator,

an iPod,

a phone.

Are you getting it?

These are not three separate devices.

This is one DEVICE

and we are calling it

iPhone.

Wow. Those were the days. And then when

we finally got our hands on those

devices for the first time, they were

everything we had hoped they would be.

They were slick and easy to use and they

were super useful and they were fun. But

then of course over the years that

followed

our relationship with the phones began

to sour. Now a big part of this is the

attention economy platforms that realize

there is money to be made in making us

look at these screens longer and longer.

So they built their contrived addictive

apps and soon we felt obsessed with our

phones. But also it's just clutter. Over

the years we've added more and more

different types of apps and services.

some useful, some that we've forgotten,

some that become habits, and some we

wish we could get rid of. And now this

the whole screen when we turn on that

device

is a multicolored, garish, distracting

pile of exhaustion. Wouldn't it be nice

if we could go back to the way we looked

at our phones in 2007? Well, here's the

thing. I think we can. In recent years,

there's been a lot of interest in both

the app space and the sort of strategy

space in figuring out how to transform

the the the actual setup of your phone

so that it is much simpler and more fun

like the phones used to be when we first

got them. And to do this without having

to give up major functionality that

still makes smartphones useful. I call

this effort putting your phone into 2007

mode and it's what I want to talk about

today. So, I have five big ideas I want

to share. Five practical ideas for

transforming your existing phone into

2007 mode. The first four come from very

popular videos online. And the fifth

idea will be my own. Collectively, these

present a possibility for a much

healthier and more enjoyable

relationship with your device. And let's

be honest, we could all use that in our

current moment. All right, so let's get

into it. As always, I'm Cal Newport and

this is Deep Questions, the show for

people seeking depth in a distracted

world. And we'll get started right after

the music.

All right, so let's get into it with my

first piece of advice for putting your

phone into 2007 mode. This is probably

the most drastic of the advice I'm going

to suggest. So I want to start with it

so we can really set the tone right. The

idea here is to completely transform the

visual interface you use to interact

with your apps. In particular, I want to

talk about moving away from screens

filled with brightly colored application

icons to instead a monochromatic screen

where your apps are listed in text. So

you'll actually just see for example on

a dark gray background in light gray

text messages the word messages maps the

word maps weather the word weather and

so on. This type of interface was really

first popularized by a feature phone

known as the light phone, which used an

e- in display like you would have on a

Kindle that really could only do

monochromatic displays, but people

really enjoyed that. And so there's been

a uh a sort of renaissance in apps

developed that you can run on a standard

smartphone like an iOS phone or an

Android phone to make your interface

look like that light phone interface.

Two of the more popular ones are blank

spaces and dumb phone, but there are

others. All right. So, how do you

technically like what are the technical

steps to doing something like this?

Going from all of these icons to just a

black and white screen with text on it.

What I want to do here is play a little

bit of a clip from a longer video about

how to do this. This is from a channel

called Nicknology.

It's a very popular video that I'm going

to play this clip from is viewed

something like half a million times. Um,

my my goal here in playing a clip from

this is just to give you a sense of the

type of steps involved in these

transformations. Obviously, watch the

video for the the full set of

instructions. All right, let's hear

this, Jesse. Head to the App Store and

download the Dumb Phone app. It looks

like this. First thing you're going to

want to do when you open the app is set

up which apps you want on your home

screen. I chose phone, messages, notes,

Spotify, Google Maps, and Settings.

These are the most basic things I use on

a very regular basis, and none of them

lead to distraction. As you can see, I

already have mine set up, but if you hit

this little button in the bottom right,

you'll be able to select which apps you

feel are best for you. You can also

reorder them to your liking. Once you've

completed that, you're now ready to add

the dumb phone widget to your home

screen. You're going to want to start

with a completely blank canvas. Long

press to activate wiggle mode, then

remove all four apps from your doc.

Next, swipe over to an empty page, then

select edit at the top left, then add

widget. Navigate down until you see dumb

phone. You can also search for it by

typing DP. Add the first widget to your

home screen labeled dumb phone page one.

Then go back to the widget menu. Find

dumb phone again. Then this time, scroll

over to find the spacer widget. What

this does is allow the main labels

widget to sit perfectly center on your

home screen. Just make sure the spacer

widget is on top of the main widget,

just like this, and you'll be good to

go. Once you're done adding your

widgets, hit the three little dots right

above your dock. This will open your

pages menu. We're doing this so that you

can temporarily deactivate your old home

screen without deleting it entirely. So

that if you ever want to go back to your

old setup, you just go back to the pages

menu, recheck your old home screen, and

you'll be good to go. So, just uncheck

your original home screen and then hit

done. I know it may look funny with your

current wallpaper, but here's how to fix

that. Within the Dumb Phone app, hit the

gear icon at the top left, then

wallpapers. Here, you'll find the

wallpaper that will match the exact

color of the widgets, making for a

seamless look that makes it look like

the labels aren't part of a widget at

all. All right, so I'll I'll cut it off

there, but that should give you an idea

of what's going on. just like quickly

summarize and I'll say if you're

listening this might be a case where you

want to jump over to the video so you

can see that on the screen but just to

quickly summarize when you go to that

wiggle mode where you can take

individual apps off and on different

screens you can take the apps off of the

dock on the bottom and now on every

screen there'll be no apps on the bottom

and then what they did is they navigated

to a blank screen you know how you can

scroll through different screens and

they added a widget from the dumb phone

app and then that widget is what you can

configure in the dumb phone app to say

what apps do I want and what do I want

to call them? The final thing, this is

the thing that threw me, which I didn't

understand when I was watching this

video, but now I do when I watched it a

little bit more closely. Um, how do you

make that your new home screen? Just

this blank screen with this one widget

on it that's displaying the the dumb

phone app. There's a mode I didn't

recognize, a settings screen where it

shows all of the different screens you

can sides scroll through on your phone,

and you can uncheck ones you don't want

to see. They don't disappear. you can

recheck them again and get them back.

But if you uncheck them, they're no

longer displayed. So you can just

uncheck everything except for the screen

that has the dumb phone widget. And so

now when you turn on your phone, you

just see this blank screen with the

widget on. There's a lot of other tips

in that video. You want to set your

background the match it. There's a

spacer widget you can add to keep it

centered, but that's basically what goes

into it. You download an app. You set up

what apps you want on your simple

screen. You say what names you want. And

then you do some settings on your phone

to make that the only screen you see is

one that has that widget centered. All

right. So, if you do that, you already

are, I would say, 70% of the way or 60%

maybe towards 2007 mode. But now we got

to start refining this setup even more.

Which brings us to our second tip. The

next tip comes from a name that's

familiar to my listeners. writer Carol,

inventor of the bullet journal method of

analog life organization.

Uh he has a what I thought in a video

that he posted on his site a clever idea

for how to go take the next step once

you've moved to textbased descriptions

of apps. He had an idea for moving to

the next step uh to get even closer to

2007 mode. Uh let's let's hear it in his

own words and then we'll we'll talk

about a little bit more. Jesse, let's

hear what Ryder had to say. So, here's

what I did. I changed all app names to

verbs, actions that support who I want

to be, like write, connect, move, learn,

plan. The shift is subtle but powerful.

I'm not reacting to brands or my life.

I'm exercising my agency, one

intentional action at a time. So, this

is a powerful idea. He's saying as long

as you're going to have textbased

descriptions of your app, be careful

about what textbased descriptions you

use,

describe the aspirational outcome you

want from using that app. Use that to

describe the app instead of its name.

So, I want to walk through uh he

mentioned them briefly, but let me walk

through specifically the examples he

gave in this clip right there. So, he

began with the following five apps

listed text in his sort of minimalist

phone setup. He had a writing app called

IIA writer, the messages app, Apple

notes, Instagram, and calendar. Those

were apps he uses a lot. And he he had

those descriptions. Here's what he

changed each of those descriptions to to

make it more value outcome oriented. He

changed uh I a writer to write. So it's

just described as write the action

write. Um he changed messages to the

word connect. So you know it's not the

messages app. It's I click there if I

want to connect to other people. Um and

so you change Instagram to learn uh

calendar to plan etc. So the the bigger

idea here is the way you see your apps

described will change the way that you

you think of them. And if you really

focus in on the value enhancing action

of the app and its description, you now

see this device as delivering you value

enhancing actions

as opposed to just this sort of

mechanistic consumerristic uh

transactional relationship with other

commercial activities. Um I don't know

what you would rename Tik Tok in this

scheme though, Jesse. What what is the

action you're trying to I think you I

would just put on my phone uh give up

and that's when I click give up that

means I want to just scroll through Tik

Tok. All right, so let's check in what

we have so far. We're two tips into

going into 2007 mode. One and most

importantly, we've now changed our phone

to a monochromatics display that just

lists apps as text. Two, we've carefully

named those app descriptions to focus on

the value that we hope to enhance when

we use it. All right, let's take a quick

break to hear from some of our sponsors.

If 2026 is your year to feel stronger

and eat smarter or perhaps just simplify

your dinner routine, you need to

consider ButcherBox.

ButcherBox is a uh ButcherBox delivers

over 100 premium protein options

straight to your door, including 100%

grass-fed beef, freerange organic

chicken, crate-free pork, and wild

caught seafood. And here's something I

particularly love about Butcher Box as a

father. They now offer family faves that

your kids will actually eat. Trust me,

this is critical to be able to get food

that's good for you and your kids will

eat. That's kind of like the holy grail.

the family dinner time. For over a

decade, ButcherBox has led the industry

with meat and seafood that's antibiotic

free, hormone free, and independently

verified. It's the clean, trustworthy

protein you want to be eating,

especially at the start of a new year.

Now, here's the good news. As an

exclusive offer, new listeners can get

their choice between organic ground

beef, chicken breast, or shrimp in every

box for a year. Plus, get $20 off when

you go to butcherbox.com/deep.

That's right, your choice of organic

ground beef, chicken breast, or shrimp

in every box for an entire year, plus

$20 off your first box and free shipping

always. That's butcherbox.com/de.

Don't forget to use our link so they

know we sent you. I also want to talk

about our friends at Vanta. If you've

run a company, especially one that

offers things like software services,

you've probably noticed that risk and

regulations have been ramping up

recently, customers expect proof of

security, and this can be very

timeconuming unless you have Vanta.

Vanta automates your compliance process

and brings compliance, risk, and

customer trust together on one AI

powered platform. So whether you're

prepping for a uh for a sock 2 or

running an enterprise GRC program, Vanta

keeps you secure and keeps your deals

moving. This is why companies like Ramp

and Writer now spend 82% less time on

audits with Vanta. That's not just

faster compliance, that's time for more

growth. In my opinion, the best uses of

technology and businesses are those that

can save you time. And this is what

Vanta will do for your company. It will

save you time so that you can put your

attention on the deeper uh pursuits that

actually move the needle. So get started

today at vanta.com/deepquests.

That's vanta.com/deepquests.

All right, let's get back to the

episode. All right, now let's keep going

with our third piece of advice. Uh and

this has to do with the app experience

themselves. So everything so far is

about the interface through which you

access apps. But once I click on that

app now I'm back into whatever world

that app developer wants me to be in. So

I can label Instagram for example with

whatever aspirational name I want. But

when I click on it I'm in Mark

Zuckerberg's world and all of the things

they've optimized to get me mindlessly

scrolling through algorithmically

curated content or whatever they're

doing is still waiting for me in the

app. So, my third piece of advice is

identify the most addictive apps, the

apps that tend to uh keep you on phone

longer than you want to be and make you

unhappy. Identify what those are and

let's re-engineer the apps themselves so

that the experience is more useful,

functional, and minimalist. So, how do

we do this? Well, there's some

interesting tools out there um that can

make a big difference. in particular.

There's a whole group of apps now which

you might not have heard of that work as

follows. If you access

social media, YouTube, LinkedIn, there's

a bunch of different websites that they

they're compatible with. If you access

them through your browser,

there are now apps that can get in there

and manipulate what the experience looks

like. because we can manipulate. I can't

I can't change what the Instagram app

looks like, but I can have an app that

goes in and changes what the Instagram

web page looks like. It can take things

off or add things back to it. Um, let me

play a clip here that explains this a

little bit better. This is from the uh

Rayu's channel. Very popular video. Had

2.4 million views. I want to play a

little bit of a clip here where he talks

about um using one of these app

experience modification apps. So, let's

hear this and then we'll we'll check in

on it. I recommend the app called Social

Focus, which costs $3.99 on iOS and it's

free on Android. But with this app, it

gives you some basic modifications for

every social media site like YouTube,

Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, even

LinkedIn, I think, where you can remove

the algorithmic feed. You can remove

like recommended content and they make

it more functional and less addicting.

for YouTube specifically. The same

developer has another app called Unttra

for YouTube, which I've also bought, but

it allows you to do stuff like remove

the thumbnail or remove recommend videos

from the sidebar. Like this is what my

YouTube looks like on my phone. It's

just a list where I'm unlikely to fall

into a binging rabbit hole. All right,

so let's summarize what's happening

here. Instead of actually keeping

individual apps for social media or

YouTube or related sort of potentially

addictive apps, instead of keeping those

apps on your phone, you will now access

them through your browser on your phone.

Step two, you will use the type of apps

that were mentioned in that race video,

and there's a hundred of these, and you

can find a lot of videos of these online

as well, that will then modify to your

exact specifications what you want the

experience to be of using those apps.

This is advice that keeps Mark

Zuckerberg up at night. This is the type

of advice that when whatever the head of

I don't know who his name is, but the

head of bike dance when he turns around

his skull of thrones to check in on how

Tik Tok is doing uh and how many uh

young kids they've ins snared into

addictive cycles absolutely fierce

because it strips away the addiction

while keeping whatever like small sliver

of usefulness you still find in those

apps. And their whole point is the small

sliver of usefulness is supposed to be

the lure that gets you to bite the hook,

which allows them to pull you out of the

lake. When you get rid of the hook,

then people are getting value without

having to use it all the time. They have

no reason to use them all the time. They

become useful. The phone becomes like we

used to have in 2007. So, I love this

idea. There's no social apps on your

phone anymore. And if you still I don't

want to have the debate with you now

about using social media or not. We've

talked about this a lot on the show.

I'll put that aside for now. But

whatever you are using through the

browser modified so you take back

control of that experience. I think

that's a very powerful idea. All right,

let's move on to our fourth idea. Our

fourth tip comes from um Mayan Mayik.

So I'm mispronouncing her name Jesse.

But to you and I that is people our age

we obviously know her as Blossom.

Remember Blossom the TV show? Uh,

>> you were like born in a CrossFit gym and

don't know like what's going on in the

world. It was like a very popular show

in like the mid '9s. What you were doing

in the '90s?

>> I remember the Wonder Years from like

the 80s.

>> Okay, we're the same age, man. You

should remember Blossom. Joey, her

brother Joey, you don't remember this?

>> I kind of remember that.

>> Six or seven. She had a friend that had

a number for a name.

>> Yeah,

>> right. I think her name was like six or

something.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. All right. Anyways, I I think uh

slightly younger viewers know her as Amy

from The Big Bang Theory. Uh she's been

around forever. Anyways, she's been

doing a bunch of videos about lots of

stuff, but she did a lot of videos about

technology and her struggle to beat her

phone addiction. And in one of these

videos, she hinted at an idea that I

want I'm going to play this clip and I'm

going to run with her idea and develop

it to be even more severe. So, let's

start with the clip and then we'll run

with what she's suggesting. Number two,

I have an incredibly annoying, damaging

habit that I have adopted of scrolling

through the news anytime there's a lull

in anything, any time of day or night,

no matter where I am. I have no clue why

I started doing this. I'll be just

walking like from my car in a parking

lot to a doctor's office and I'm like

scrolling through news. I end up looking

at all these headlines and they're

terrible. It's almost always like death

and tragedy or forgive me like celebrity

gossip that I do not need to be filling

my head with. This habit is really hard

to break. I'm hoping that just by having

an awareness of it, it will encourage me

to stop doing it, but I might need to

take that news app just off my phone.

>> All right, so she gets to the right

answer only at the very end. At first,

she's like, "Uh, maybe I should like

moderate my online news consumption.

This is kind of a problem. I wonder if I

should really just take the app off my

phone, the apps I'm using to get news.

That is actually the correct answer.

Now, this is an important tip that's

often missed because it hits people like

me. People like me who don't use social

media or maybe if you do, you're using

the advice from my last tip and now it's

moderated, it's in a browser, it's in an

experience where the addictive elements

are stripped off. you don't really have

a problem with it, but you still find

yourself coming back to your phone all

the time because news has borrowed a lot

of ideas that the attention engineers

innovated and it can be just as sticky

and now you're like, I'm still on my

phone. Instead of doom scrolling Tik

Tok, I'm doomcrolling

New York Times headlines. And this can

be just as affecting Jesse. I've had to

put up with this a lot recently because,

you know, I'm doing this new these new

Thursday episodes, the AI reality check

episodes, which requires me to read a

lot of AI news, so that I can sort of

help people feel better about it. And

man, there's so many it goes in waves of

topics, but like some they'll decide

they being like the collective media.

Oh, here's some like really negative

topic about AI we all need to cover, and

then every article is just like pounding

this, trying to one up each other in

like the worst way. And so like what

might start with AI might affect your

job. It kind of like builds up until you

get to articles that are, you know,

talking about um how to use your

dystopian trash can fire to properly

cook your dog so you don't starve. Like

it's just dark. It it puts me in a bad

mood and I know a lot of it's BS. I'm an

expert in the topic. So don't let news

become the hidden addictor. And the

right way to do it is don't read news uh

using apps on your phone.

have an alternative way of consuming

news. It can involve your phone, but not

an app that can constantly refresh. Not

something that if you check it when you

get out of the car is going to be

different when you get back to the car.

You want more static, highquality, and

self-contained

descriptions of the news. So, this could

be like daily news podcast. This could

be emailed daily news roundups. Um,

that's what I would do. Do not use the

news apps because they are just

following. I mean, we see this, by the

way, like the the New York Times figured

this out is that they worried about

losing readers to X. So now what they'll

do if there's any breaking news event is

they'll put article after article after

article. They'll put live updates. They

found a way to make sure that there's an

abundance of information piling up for

you to keep reading through so that you

can have that same uh scroll experience

you have where it used to be 5 years ago

or 10 years ago. If something happened,

here is an article that explains it and

that's it, right? For that day, that's

your news about it. Now, it's they pile

pile pile. Here's it from six different

angles and live updates so that you can

keep coming back to it. You have a sense

of urgency. So, I think news apps is

something that is a hidden addiction

trap on phones. So, uh follow Blossom

suggestion here and take those apps off

of your phone. All right, we're going to

get to our uh fifth tip. I wanted to

offer one myself and I wanted to offer

one that I hadn't actually explained

before instead of like one of my

standard pieces of advice. All right.

So, what is my addition to this

collection of advice for putting your

phone back into um 200 and seven mode?

All right. I have this idea of seeking

functional substitutes

for in particular the social platforms

that are engaging you overly engaging

you on your phone. So we talked about

before

changing the icons of the social

platforms. We talked about before uh

using a browserbased technology in which

you can control the experience of what

you're seeing on um your social apps.

Here is my addition to this. Find

functional substitutes for those

platforms. Meaning you ask the following

question about the platforms you use.

What psychological,

emotional, or practical role

do these platforms currently play in my

life? Like, why is it that I'm going to

Tik Tok? Why is it that I'm going to X?

Is it to save off boredom? Do I go here

to try to get hits of inspiration? Is

this a numbing thing? When I'm stressed

out or anxious, I go here because it's

just going to like numb me and I don't

have to use my mind. Figure out the

specific problems these are solving in

your life. And then say, what is a

positive functional substitute for each

of those uh roles they play? If I use

this app to save off boredom, what's

another way to save off boredom that I

think is going to be more positive? If

this is something I'm using to numb

myself when I'm anxious, what's a more

positive activity that I can do uh to

save off anxiety? And what I would do is

find, you know, add to your interface on

the phone like descriptions of those

goals. Save off boredom, you know,

reduce anxiety or what have you, but now

have these links go to these more

positive substitutes. So when you pick

up that phone, you see the thing you

really want to do listed right there,

you know, calm anxiety. And now instead

of like going to Tik Tok, it's going to

go to something that you find to be more

productive. It's going to bring you to

a, you know, a podcast page of a sort of

soothing podcast or it's going to take

you to a meditation app or it's going to

take you to your workout app to remind

you of like, oh, I should go do some

exercise. So I think having functional

substitutes for social media

really helps you decouple from these

things that are pulling back to your

phone again and again even when you

don't want to be. All right. So there we

go. We had five ways to transform your

smartphone into something that's much

less distracting um and much more

useful. So let me go through what we had

here. Number one was going to this sort

of extreme minimalist interface which I

think is the crux to all of this. Number

two was giving better names for the apps

on your phone. once you're in that

interface. Number three was

re-engineering the most addictive apps

by running them through your browser and

using browser modification tools. Number

four was don't use phone apps. Use

self-contained static forms of news that

are updated say like once a day or so.

So you get rid of that hidden addictive

trigger. And number five, find

functional substitutes for social media

and then put pointers on your phone that

take you to those functional

substitutes. So your phone is helping

you in healthy ways and not in unhealthy

ways. Um, so look, there's a lot of

other good ideas out there. This is a

big discussion online. So if you go look

at any of those videos that we we pulled

clips from today and you watch them in

your entirety, you'll see a lot of other

suggestions. You'll see a lot of people

are talking about this out here. Um, you

can customize this as you see fit. But

the key thing here is you can take back

control of your phone. You can transform

it back to something that supports your

life. You can regain a little bit of

that excitement that we felt back in

2007. And I think now is the time to do

it.

>> Is your phone set up like that?

>> I'm going to do the minimalist

interface.

>> You are?

>> Yeah. I mean, I I I don't, you know, I

don't use social media. I don't uh I

don't have as much of a problem, but I

like the idea of the minimalist

interface. And I and I think I'm going

to use the writer Carol descriptions as

well. Um I don't need to re-engineer the

addictive apps because I really don't

use that many of those, but I think

that's, you know, a good one. Um

I guess I don't use news apps. I do use

the New York Times app, so I'll have to

think about that. And for the last one,

I I might do that, right? So, I don't

use social media necessarily, but I

think it'd be nice to have things I, you

know, relieve boredom, anxiety, like

have some links on my phone that take me

to a healthy way to do that. So then my

phone, like it'll just change my

relationship to the phone to be a source

of solutions, you know, for problems. If

you were going to a ball game and you

needed like the ticket submaster app,

how would you do that? Go to the other

page.

>> Yeah, you go to the other page

>> and it shows up while you're

>> Yeah. Yeah. So, you can have I was

watching these videos. So, like what

people There's a couple things you can

do. There's two options. Some people

just have their their home screen now is

minimalist. It's black and white with

just the things listed and it's like the

main things they use and then if you go

to some other pages, they'll have

folders of other apps that like they

don't really have as much of a problem

with. Other people build up page after

page of minimalist descriptions. So they

have like their main things on the first

page listed in text and then the second

page might be like sports stuff like the

ballpark app and like the MLB app listed

just in text. And then another page

might be entertainment stuff, you know,

listed in text. So some people make

everything text. Others like just make

their main page and like the just the

first thing they see when they turn it

on just text. But you can in the app you

can set up lots of different widgets

with different apps and descriptions.

And then you're just adding the widget

to pages on your phone and that page is

just showing that widget and the widget

just shows the text. And so after a

while you can so you can kind of do

either way.

>> How long do you think it takes to set up

realistically?

>> I watched that video um like six minutes

>> for non- tech people too.

>> Well, it depends how many pages but like

to set up one page. Yeah.

>> You download this app

>> and then you go in and configure the

widget and then you go to wiggle mode.

clear out your doc. Then you navigate

over to an empty page. You add the

widget. You change the background. You

add a spacer widget if you want to like

keep the text centered, which people

care about. And then you uncheck the

other pages you don't want to see

anymore from the pages selection page.

And then you're good. So, I don't know.

I think 10 minutes or less you can have

at least like some of these pages up and

running. And then you can just like

customize it as as like you see fit.

Cool. But I think that's a cool way to

do it. Um, a lot of people are like,

"Look, I like the idea of the light

phone, but I need the ballpark app. I

need the bus tracking app that I use to

see where my kids buses. Also, I don't

want to pay 600. I I get this phone

already pretty cheap. I don't want to

pay $600 for a light phone, but I love

that interface." So, it's like kind of

cool that you can get that interface now

on your existing light. Some of these

also come with like

uh social media control. I don't quite

understand how this works, but they were

they were saying in these videos that

some of these minimalist interface apps

will uh come with, you know, built-in

features. If you want to look at social

media or something, it'll say, "Hey, you

have to take 5 seconds first and take a

breath and all that type of stuff." And

I don't know as much about that, but

anyways, I think it's a cool space. All

right, you've heard from me. Now, we

want to hear from you. So, let's open up

our inbox.

All right. Right. And a quick reminder,

uh, if you have a question for me or

want to share a case study or perhaps

just want to try to get me going on a

rant, you can send that over to podcast

atcalport.com. All right, let's get into

it. Um, Jesse, what message are we going

to look at first here?

>> We have a note here from Alexander about

a new study on brain fry.

>> All right, let's see here. Alexander

said, "Hi, Cal. Big fan of your work.

Have you seen this article on AI usage

leading to brain fry? By this they mean

some kind of decision fatigue stemming

from the increased workload workers can

accomplish using AI. I have seen this

study uh it came out in the the Harvard

Business Review. I think it has some

interesting points in there. Actually,

I'm going to talk about a little bit

here. Now, look, I know I have this sort

of separate Thursday episode where I

talk about the AI reality check, but I'm

going to talk about this here because I

think the results of this study are not

just about AI, but they're pointing to a

phenomenon

that is relevant for knowledge work in

general. All right, so the study is

titled when using AI leads to brain fry.

Uh, it's a collection of authors led by

Julie Baddard. It's a uh some are from

Boston Consulting Group and some are

from University of California,

Riverside. I'm just going to read a few

quotes from this and then I'm going to

help you interpret how this is relevant

even beyond AI. All right. So, early in

the article, the authors say, "In recent

weeks, online AI users have described

increased cognitive load, saturated

attention, and mental fatigue and social

media post. Engineer Francesco Bonacci,

founder of QAI, wrote a popular expost

titled vibe coding paralysis, when

infinite productivity breaks your brain.

In which he lamented, "I end each day

exhausted, not from the work itself, but

from the managing of the work. Six work

trees open, four half-written features,

two quick fixes that spawned rabbit

holes, and a growing sense that I'm

losing the plot entirely."

as a then the article goes on to say as

a research group that studies emergent

workforce and AI trends these signals

caught our attention to understand

what's going on again I'm reading from

the article here we conducted a a study

of 1488 full-time US-based workers at

large companies across industries roles

and levels we asked them about patterns

and quantity of AI use work experiences

and cognition and emotions we found that

the phenomenon described in these posts

cognitive exhaustion from intense ensive

oversight of AI agents is both real and

significant. We call it AI brain fry.

Oh, that rhymes. That's nice. Which we

define as mental fatigue from excessive

use or oversight of AI tools beyond

one's cognitive capacity. I, as an

aside, Jesse, this is my number one

research rule. If you're coining a term

in a research paper, you better make

that thing rhyme. That's the key.

Rhyming. Um they went on to say we found

that the most mentally taxing form of AI

engagement was oversight or the extent

to which AI tools required workers

direct monitoring. There's some nuance

here. However, we found when AI is used

to replace routine or repetitive task,

burnout scores but not mental fatigue

scores are lower. All right. So how do

we make sense of these observations and

what does it tell us not just about AI

but knowledge work in general? Well,

based on my sort of extensive writing

about attention and distraction and

knowledge work in the digital age, it

seems clear to me that almost certainly

a big factor of these observed results

is the cognitive cost of context

switching.

Switching your attention from one target

of attention to another is an expensive

operation. And when you do it really

quickly, you're now forcing your mind in

the complex cognitive scenarios

before

you have been able to uh fully load up

the relevant context. And that creates a

sense of mental fatigue and confusion um

and difficulty actually doing the work.

So if we're looking at AI, what would be

the type of AI efforts that would make

this the worst? And that would be

reviewing or doing oversight of efforts

by multiple different AI agents. Right?

So the the way that we see AI agents

being used most often right now, which

tends to be in computer programming

circles, they're doing complicated work,

the production of code that you then or

uh you know, spec writing or specifying

architecture documents that have to be

reviewed by you, the the the engineer in

charge.

And that's really hard. and it's in a

very specific cognitive context. So when

you have to switch between agents

quickly, you're switching between, oh, I

have to review the work that this agent

just did, which is a very hard, mentally

demanding task, that review, and then I

jump over to this agent and try to

review its work. But that's a completely

different cognitive context.

This is really difficult for the brain

to do. It takes context switching. It

pushes it to an extreme. And no wonder

it's calling brain fry. But the bigger

message here is that we all have to

worry about this. I mean I wrote about

the negative cost of context switching

back in my uh 2021 book a world without

email. That this is a one of the key

issues that we face in knowledge work is

that we have many different ways that we

force people to have to switch their

context rapidly

and it really exhausts us. So AI this

sort of agent overview approach to AI

which I have a lot of thoughts about

because I think it's overblown now.

We're going to rein it back in, but I'll

talk about that more in the Thursday

episodes.

Is really pushing this context switching

issue to the extreme because overseeing

a bunch of employees that are working

very fast all on separate projects and

you're trying to switch back and forth 3

minutes here, 1 minute here, four

minutes there is almost an impossible

task to ask. And of course, people are

burning out. And so there's something we

need to do about it there. But more

generally, just remember context

switching is productivity poison and

something we worry about. All right, I

want to take another quick break to hear

from some of our sponsors. Now, here's a

mistake that a lot of small business

owners like myself

often make. We think because we're not

big, we will be ignored by bad actors.

Unfortunately, when it comes to digital

attacks, this is not true. Cyber

criminals know that lean teams often

lack the resources to prevent or respond

to a breach. The solution, you need one

password. One Password provides simple

security to help small teams manage the

number one risk that bad actors exploit,

weak passwords. It's a simple turnkey

solution that can be rolled out in hours

whether you have a dedicated IT staff or

not. And here's the thing, One Password

is designed to meet small teams where

they are, but it's also built to grow

along with your company. One particular

uh one feature I particularly like is

their enterprise password manager that

will proactively examine your employees

existing passwords to discover which

ones are most vulnerable.

So take the first step to better

security by securing your team's

credentials. Find out more at

onepass.com/deep.

That's the number one

thewordpass.com/deep

and start securing every login. I just

want to talk about our friends at

Shopify. Starting a new business is

hard. I remember what it was like

starting up the media company that

produces this podcast. But here's what I

learned. Don't reinvent the wheel. Trust

industry leaders where you can. And this

is where Shopify enters the scene. If

you need to sell something, you need

Shopify. Shopify is the commerce

platform behind millions of businesses

around the world and 10% of all

e-commerce in the US. from big names

like Allirds and Mattel to new brands

just getting started. Now, if you want

to sell online, they can help you get

started with your own design studio that

has hundreds of ready to use templates

uh so that you can have a beautiful

online store that matches your brand

style. Do you need help spreading the

word? Shopify can help you here as well

by uh their tools which let you easily

create email and social media campaigns

to get to your customers wherever they

happen to be scrolling or scrolling. If

we ever start selling products related

to this show, I know exactly what

platform we'll use. Shopify. So, it's

time to turn those whatifs into with

Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per

month trial at shopify.com/deep.

Go to shopify.com/deep.

That'sify.com/deep.

All right, let's get back to the show.

All right, Jesse, what other messages do

we have?

We have a message from Karen about the

use of phones on the set of The Pit.

>> Oh, I like this one. Right. Because we

we talked about The Pit, the HBO show,

The Pit, starring Na Wy a couple weeks

ago and we had Sarah Hartunger on the

show because she's a doctor and I was

like, "You have to explain to me all of

these different ranks of doctors from

intern to resident, whatever." Uh, so

we're thinking about the pit. So, I

guess that's why Karen sent this in. And

so here's what she said in more detail.

My first time writing in. Came across

the below Instagram reel with Noah Wy on

the al uh on this

alternative the cast and crew developed

for themselves during long hours on set

where they don't have access to their

phones. All right, let's let's hear a

little bit of this clip here, Jesse.

>> Hey everybody, Noah Wy here. Play Dr.

Michael Robbie Rubinovich on the pit.

One of the cool things that we have

here, because nobody's allowed to have

their cell phone on set, is we have a

lending library where everybody can

come, background, foreground, crew, and

check out a book. It's been growing over

the last two seasons. And I'm willing to

wager that we've got one of the better

red casts and crew in Hollywood today.

This was all broken down by uh a woman

who works background with us. She broke

it down by genre. So, we've got

biography and acting books, classics,

fantasy. A lot of people like fantasy. A

lot of people like genre books. I don't

know that I have a preference. I seated

it with some books that I bought early

on. The only rule is don't bring crap.

Bring something that you've read that

you liked or you think that somebody

else would like.

>> What was the last book you read?

>> Uh Zen and the Art of Motorcycle. Maybe

sort of reading it all year long and

sort of touched book.

>> All right, that's cool. So, they're not

allowed to have phones on the set of The

Pit. Now, I don't know if that is a a

rule they put in place because they

thought it would be like good for

people's mental health or if it's a rule

they put in place because of security.

They don't want people like recording

what's going on. But that's pretty cool.

They have a lending library for the cast

members to go and get books. Something I

found out about The Pit when I was

reading about them a couple weeks ago,

Jesse, which makes this lending library

even more relevant, is the fact that uh

the episode takes place, I mean, the

seasons each take place I don't know if

you've seen the show. They take place

over one day, right? So each episode is

another hour.

>> Uh it takes them about seven months to

film a season. So for seven months, uh

you're you're filming one day in the

life of this hospital. Well, what that

means is the people in the waiting room

because they keep going out to the

waiting room, those extras have to be

sitting there in the waiting room for 7

months, right? Because the same people

need to be there every time you come

out. And what I heard, this was, I

believe this was an interview. I was

listening to an interview with uh

uh Wells,

is it David Wells? The showrunner who

also was the showrunner for the West

Wing. Anyways, I was listening, his last

name is Wells. I was listening to him

being interviewed on the the Ringer

podcast, The Town, with Matt Bell. And

he was talking about this that they have

these really structured days for the

extras to make this sort of palatable,

right? because you'd have to just sit

there all day, day after day, and they

have like very specific breaks. But he

said they're always reading. So they all

get these books and they sit there and

they read waiting for like, "Oh, we need

to do some filming now." Uh, so they put

down the books and like film their scene

of one of the doctors walking through

the waiting room and then they sort of

read again. So it's kind of cool. It's

like an environment there um where

everyone is just everyone's just

reading. So the pit There we go. All

right. Let's see what else do we have

here. A listener named Adam sent a note

in response to your email newsletter

from last week about the 17th century

scholar dealing with information

overload. He said, "So essentially this

is just the experience of being human.

Any amount of data can overload if we

let it."

>> Yeah. I mean,

yes. I guess that's pretty much true,

right? Is that our experience of being

human is there's specific types of

information we're used to taking in.

usually information through all of our

senses, hearing, sight, smell, touch, so

that we can understand what's happening

in the physical world around us. The

modern turn, sort of like the turn that

changed the entire human experience on

what like the whole human experience is

now built on in the post-polithic age

was also now using those brains to

process information in a way we never

would have done on the savas, you know,

250,000 years ago.

This is I mean this is like a theme of a

lot of my thinking and writing about

thinking. This is like a perilous

balancing act. It is difficult to use

the human brain to do abstract reasoning

about abstract or symbolic information.

And so yeah, we get overloaded really

easily. So we have to think about it. We

have to practice thinking. We have to

contain thinking. We have to have plans

for how we're going to think, what

information we're going to encounter,

how we're going to encounter it, how

we're going to make sense of it, what

we're going to keep away. We really have

to care about that. And when we don't,

just like when we don't care about our

body and we throw all this modern food

into the world and we get really

unhealthy, if we don't care about our

mind, we easily get into trouble. So I,

this is the way I think about the the

modern human experience is it's a

intricate balancing act to get a brain

that's really not meant for abstract

processing of symbolic information to do

that all the time in a very productive

way and sustainable way. So I think that

is uh I think that's a good point. All

right, before we wrap up this episode,

let's quickly check in what I've been up

to.

All right, so there's a couple things

here. Uh, I'm trying something new from

a tools perspective. So, sort of

inspired by Sarah Hartunger coming on

the show to talk about planners. A

couple weeks ago, I bought a Hobonacci

notebook. Not a Hobonacci cousin, which

is the planner she used because

obviously I'm a big fan of my time block

planner, which does I mean I designed

it, so it does exactly what I need, but

for the purposes of a single purpose

notebook, which I've talked about on the

show before, where I have a small

portable notebook that I'll use for like

one problem I'm working on as a place to

keep coming back to working through

thoughts, adding thoughts. I can capture

inspiration from a wider net of my daily

schedule and I can do more sort of

analog hard thinking away from a

computer screen. I find single purpose

notebooks to be really useful. So I'm

testing out using a small size Hobonaci

I think it's called the techno um grid

papercachi notebook of sort of this size

the I don't know what you call that 5 in

by four or three and a half or whatever.

Uh, and I'm working on a sort of

academic paper about um, well, it's

complicated, but a complicated paper.

And I'm seeing if this this notebook

format. It's a really nice notebook that

has nice pages, very thin, lays flat in

interesting ways with this binding.

Trying it out. Maybe this will be the

the new notebook I use for my single

purpose notebooks. Right now, I use

Field Notes primarily, but I'm giving

this

>> How much was it?

It's like 15 bucks, which I think is

like a good sweet spot for like, oh, I

got to take seriously whatever project

I'm working on, but also not like

irresponsible.

Um, on the nonsense meter, and by

nonsense, I mean brutally important. I

have an important update to what I'm

doing now. Uh, some new things I bought

for my Halloween display technology. I

am moving on. The last two years I

worked on building my own custom light

and sound controllers basically from

scratch. I would start with a

microcontroller that I would custom

program and solder the circuits myself

for it to interact with programmable

lights and sound systems because I

thought that was like a fun challenge.

Now I'm ready to move on to using um

higherend uh hardware and more advanced

open- source software for doing things

like show control and prop control. So,

uh I think this will be the new fun

challenge for what to do and it's going

to be more reliable and it's going to

open up many more opportunities and

reduce the chances that I shock myself

by building my own relay board. So, I am

now moving over to running the the open-

source FPP Falcon controller software on

a Raspberry Pi as my mainuler.

Um, so I bought a Raspberry Pi. This

then hooks into a Ethernet network

switch and then you can network into it

other device circuit boards that the

controller can talk to. So I bought a

custom circuit board for uh doing my

programmable LED controls. So I'm

getting rid of my customuilt circuit and

that can actually network onto the same

network. I'm going to get a relay

controller and a uh motor actuator motor

controller board. And in theory now I I

can now have much finer control, much

more powerful and reliable control of

much more elaborate types of situations.

So I am this is like kind of my spring

project is to learn all that technology

so I can start thinking about the the

Halloween ahead. This is like the stuff

that's important. Let's be honest.

>> That's great.

>> So I'm working on that. Um, recent

interviews I did, there's a couple

things, a couple, if you want some more

Cal, uh, I did an interview with Chris

Williamson on his Modern Wisdom podcast

came out last week. I think it was

really good, so it's worth listening. We

get into weeds and a lot of like work

and distraction type of stuff.

>> I listen to most of it so far.

>> Pretty good, right?

>> Yeah. You've been on a show a bunch.

>> Yeah, I know. Chris, we go back. Yeah.

>> He was talking about his days of being a

working in nightclub.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Like trying to like having

to add up the money at the end of the

day. Yeah. He's interesting guy. Um,

good interviewer. I always like going on

his show. Uh, also, this is probably

worth watching. It's been viewed a lot,

like well over a million times, just a

couple weeks. You know, Hank Green, the

YouTuber, did a a YouTube video about AI

and what worries him. There's like a

20-minute video on that. And then the

next 30 minutes is he had me on the show

to talk about the video that he had just

aired, and we talk AI. And, uh, he's got

a huge audience. I've got a lot of notes

about that interview. I think it was a

really good discussion. So, um, check

out my appearance on Hank Green's

interview and also check out the AI

reality check that I'm doing on

Thursdays. Maybe not every Thursday, but

that's where I'm moving my sort of

project of just trying to be realistic

about AI, but also lower the anxiety

around it. Uh, the first one came out

last week. Let's see. When this comes

out, two will have been out already. So,

the first two would would be out. In

theory, there'll probably be a new one

coming out on Thursday. So, check that

out. All right. Reading and watching.

Um, not to open up the curtain too much,

but we don't always record on the same

day. And so, we're actually recording

this pretty soon after our last episode.

It's been like four days or whatever.

So, I I've started three new books since

the last episode. I did not finish any

of those three new books in the four

days that passed between the last

episode and today. Um, in the latest uh

New Yorker issue though, I did read Jill

Leapor's article about the

bicesentennial. It was pretty

interesting, you know, uh, about what

happened, the history of of the

celebrations, um, and what happened in

particular in ' 76. And it it's like a

kind of like a straight history piece.

You pulled from a lot of sources and

it's so I enjoyed it. I thought it was

worth reading.

>> Are the three books you started all hard

copy?

>> No. Um,

>> like one is Kindle, two are hard copy.

>> That's what I

>> Yeah, one's Kindle and and and two are

hard copy. But the the two hard copy

ones came later and they're kind of

taking over my attention. and I'll see

if I get back to the Kindle One, which I

sort of impulsively downloaded. Uh, in

terms of things I'm watching, I'm I'm

not quite done with it because it takes

my wife and I multiple nights to watch

movies, just the reality of like kids

and sleep. But, uh, as part of our

efforts to watch the Oscar nominated

movies for 2026, best picture, we're

almost done with uh, The Secret Agent.

It was actually, it's a Brazilian film

that uh, people really love. It's a

fascinating movie so far. I'm not done

yet, but I'll just like drop a couple

ideas here to see if this inspires you

to watch it or not. Uh, it takes place

in the 1970s, like 1977 Brazil, and it's

the the photography cinematography is

very much in that style. So, they film

it and there's a sort of um somewhat

desaturated. The color palettes is like

very 1970s. It's filmed uh on old glass

anthropomorphic lenses like the so that

which is like very much like a thing you

would see with like the new Hollywood

directors in the 1970s. So you get a

more cinematic aspect ratio, but you get

a lot of these horizontal flares which

you would get. That's just an artifact

of these particular types of Panasonic

lenses that when you point them at a

light, you get horizontal flares of

light across. So it's sort of this cool

like physical '7s style. Um, the actors

are all like fantastic naturalistic

character actor style actors. Really

real type uh people. They're all

fantastic. The only thing, here's what

I'm going to say. It's a different style

of movie than we make in America now.

And the way you know it's a different

style of movie is that it's 90 minutes

into the movie. Things are just

happening, but you don't really know

like who is this person? What's their

relationship to this person? Is this

person is on the run? Why? They don't

tell you. you just kind of are seeing

these things and it's really not till 90

minutes through the movie that you even

really begin to sort of realize like,

oh, I think I see what's going on. This

is what this person is doing and how it

relates to these people and now I'm

starting to see what's going on here.

It's in no rush. It's laying out threads

of realities on not too many spoilers,

but multiple timelines and uh starts to

sort of take its time weaving them

together. It's more of an experience

than like a super by the book plot

bullet point unfolding. In America, we

don't do these especially on Netflix now

because we don't trust people's

attention span. So, you know, on

Netflix, we would have, I don't know,

like a title card that would just

explain it or have a narrator come in

and just be like, you know, and the

character realized and then just sort of

explain who everyone is and everything

that's going on. Put titles up on the

screen. I don't know. Have like arrows

follow to like remind you who people

are. or just every once in a while just

cut to like a YouTube style influencers

like, "All right, let's hold here. Let

me explain to you what just happened."

So, it's nice to see a a a much more

intentional sort of slower novelistic

naturalistic um type of screen writing

and movie making, but I haven't seen the

ending yet, so maybe it goes weird. So,

I can't I can't give it my full

endorsement yet, but we're going to

finish it tonight. So, I'm excited about

that. We're almost there, Jesse. We're

almost I got yelled at by the way by a

friend of mine who heard me say that

like when my wife saw Hamnet and I saw

Frankenstein and we're kind of running

out of time so we're going to count that

on both of our list and he wrote and was

like no you have to see Hamnet. It's a

great movie. You can't skip it. So I

>> I started watching Frankenstein. I don't

think I could finish it.

>> I saw in the theater I wanted to see it

at 35mm. So it's cooler in the theater I

think.

>> Yeah. Um, I like Yammer Del Toro, but I

Yeah, I thought the screenplay could be

better in that one. Some crazy visual

stuff in there for sure.

>> Yeah.

>> And and as as he does. Um, but that's

pretty good. It's not going to win best

picture, though. So, we're getting

closer. We still have to see sentimental

values and

god, what else am I missing? Oh, Beonia,

which I I like that director. Um, I like

that director. I like Emma Stone. I'm

looking forward to it. My wife is not

looking forward to it, but we got to see

Beonia. Gonia Lanthium's a good

director. All right, that's all the time

we have for today. Thanks for listening.

We'll be back next week with another

episode. And until then, as always, stay

deep. Hey, if you like today's

discussion about putting your phone in a

2007 mode and you think you want to go

even farther in improving that

experience, check out episode 395

where I talked to the minimalist TK

Coleman about taking a social media

pause. There's some great ideas there in

really improving your relationship with

your technology. Check it out. So right

there in the room, Joshua committed the

minimalist to abstaining from social

media for the rest of the