10 years ago, I published a book titled

Deep Work. It argued that the ability to

focus without distraction, the activity

that I call deep work, was becoming

increasingly valuable at exactly the

same time that it was becoming

increasingly rare due to distracting

digital technologies like email and

social media. Now the conclusion of my

book is that this presents a huge

opportunity. If you are one of the few

individuals or organizations to

prioritize depth, you will enjoy a big

competitive advantage. Now, here's the

thing. This book hit a nerve, became a

bit of a a word of mouth sensation. It

sold now more than 2 million copies in

over 45 languages, and that number is

still going up. Uh Jesse, earlier this

month, we sold the new language rights

for the Sinhala translation.

Nice.

>> That's of course the language spoken by

the Sinhalles people of Sri Lanka.

There's more language out there than you

might guess. Anyways, this is all great,

but this book is now a decade old, which

motivates a natural follow-up question.

Do its ideas still hold in 2026.

This is what we're going to explore

today. So, I brought my first edition

copy of the book with me. I'm going to

crack it open. We're going to reread its

core ideas. I'm going to point out what

remains true and what requires

updates. Spoiler alert, I have a lot of

new ideas to add. So, if you felt like

you've been drowning in distractions and

are unsure if there's any hope for

escaping, then this episode is for you.

As always, I'm Cal Newport and this is

Deep Questions, the show for people

seeking depth in a distracted world. and

we'll get started right after the music.

All right, so here's the game plan. Uh

the book Deep Work is divided into two

parts. The first part makes my case for

why depth is valuable and the second

part offers four rules for getting

better at depth in your professional

life. So it's the second part that we

are going to revisit. Uh I want to go

through each of those four rules from

the original book one by one. I'll

summarize the 2016 advice and then

answer the question, what would I change

if I was rewriting that chapter today in

2026? All right, so let's get started

with the first of the four rules from

deep work, which is work deeply. Now I

open that chapter by discussing my

friend David Dwayne's concept for the

udeimmonium machine which was a

theoretical plan for an office that was

centered on deep work as a primary

activity. Now he described it as a a

one-story rectangular building where

each of the rooms is connected to the

other. There's no exterior hallway. You

have to go from one room to the next.

And he said the first room when you

enter the building is the gallery where

you're exposed to interesting examples

of work that other people have done. You

get your creative juices flowing. You

feel a little bit competitive. The next

room you would proceed into would be the

salon. He said there'd be couches and

coffees and Wi-Fi. It was a place to

like talk with people and brood and

think and brainstorm. Uh if you

continued into the unimon machine plan,

you get to the office space. Now we have

cubicles and conference rooms and white

spa whiteboards. You're sort of just

like doing the shallow work of work. And

then finally, if you kept moving into

the building, you would get to what he

called the deep work chambers, which he

described as being 6x10 rooms protected

by soundproof walls, and that's where

the real uninterrupted focus would

happen. So, I I tell the story of this

sort of theoretical plan for this

building to open the chapter.

Interesting point, Jesse. I noticed on

this reread a mistake that no one has

flagged before.

>> What do we got? At the beginning of

explaining the udeimmonia machine, I say

Dwayne's plan calls for five rooms in

sequence. And then I go on to to

describe four rooms. I cut one of the

rooms out. And I don't remember which

one it was, but I I I think there was

David's going to correct me. He listens

to the show. Um, I think there was like

an antichamber

to the deep work chambers where like you

took a shower like you a faced yourself

like prepare your mind for deep work

andor there might have been a room

outside of the deep work chambers where

you would like reintegrate out of like

deep work mode. I think there was an

extra room like that that I cut out. No

one's no one's noticed that. Uh, there

you go. I noticed it. Anyways, um,

here's what I then wrote. Let me quote

from the book. In an ideal world, one in

which the true value of deep work is

accepted and celebrated, we'd all have

access to something like the udemonia

machine. Perhaps not David Dwayne's

exact design, but more generally

speaking, a work environment and culture

designed to help us extract as much

value as possible from our brains.

Unfortunately, this vision is far from

our current reality. We instead find

ourselves in a distracting open offices

where inboxes cannot be neglected and

meetings are incessant. a settings where

colleagues would rather you respond

quickly to their latest email than

produce the best possible results. All

right. And then I I said this is the

goal for this chapter is to simulate the

effects of David Dwayne's theoretical

udeimot machine in your actual concrete

real life. And I go on to give a bunch

of advice for how to put in place

rituals and routines to make deep work a

protected regular part of your

professional life. All right. So that is

what I did in the work deeply chapter of

deep work. What would I change or add in

2026?

Well, there's two major ideas that uh

are relevant to exactly this question

that have emerged in recent years of my

work. And I if I was rewriting this

chapter today, I would add both of these

two ideas. The first of these ideas is

the notion of hybrid attention, a hybrid

attention model of working. Uh I first

introduced this in an article I wrote

for the Atlantic two years ago. And here

was the idea.

You have a hybrid schedule at your

office, meaning some days are in the

office and some days are remote. Okay?

You synchronize it so that the remote

days, most people are doing the remote

days on the same day. So that way um we

have synchronization of when that's

happening. And then, and this is the key

part of the hybrid attention model, and

I'm going to read this from my Atlantic

article verbatim here, declare that the

day spent working remotely will be

dedicated completely to actual

uninterrupted work. No meetings, no

email, and no chat. Each team should

follow the same schedule, saving

conversations about work for when

everyone is in the office together.

Right? So the idea is deep work days at

home, shallow work days, meetings,

conversations, office collaboration at

the office. All right, let me go on and

give my rationale. Again, I'm reading

here from my Atlantic article. Given

multiple days each week to do nothing

but make progress on tasks, you'll more

easily contain your backlog of

commitments. This model should also

reduce the total number of incoming

tasks you're asked to handle, as the

days without email or meetings are days

in which your colleagues can't ask you

to do more things. With less new work

coming in and completed work going out

faster, you'll be more efficient and

less overwhelmed. The ability to take

breaks from the digital whirlwind will

also make life more bearable regardless

of its effect on your productivity. So,

I think this is a fantastic idea that

can now be implemented at the team or

office level that really would help you

take advantage of the advantages of deep

work in a simple to describe, implement,

and maintain plan. It's just when you're

at home, I don't want to hear from you.

when you're in the office, you can tell

me all that stuff you got done when

you're at home. And that's when we could

have meetings and emails. People would

adjust quickly. You're never more than

one day away from being able to talk to

someone. I think the rate at which high

quality work would be completed in this

model would be significantly uh larger.

And it's much easier than having to

negotiate each individual norm or habit

or system or rule that's distracting

people throughout the day. It's one rule

that would immediately give you some

pretty big deep work related benefits.

The second big idea, and this is

something I've been talking about really

just in the last year, that I would add

to a 2026 version of this chapter, is

the idea of having clear rules for how

you use and don't use AI to help make

sure that these tools are not

accidentally completely destabilizing

your your ability to go deep. Here is

one example of an AI rule that I've been

promoting uh really two different things

I did in March. So, a a New York Times

article I had last week, which we'll

talk about in the final segment and in a

Chronicle of Higher Education interview

I did, I propose a rule in the work

environment. Don't let AI write for you.

Write your own emails, write your own

memos, write your own reports, create

your own slides, make them concise and

informative.

Grappling with the blank screen to

produce something that's clear

uh and informative

taxes your brain in a way that gives you

a better grasp over the material that

you're dealing with and produces much

better results.

Yes, you can take a lot of strain off

your brain by letting Chat GPT create

drafts and kind of edit the drafts or go

back and forth with it or have it write

it all together, but now you're missing

out on that key cognitive strain that

keeps your brain really locked in on

what your business is doing, which

allows you to actually be better at your

job. Um, it also avoids what's known in

the literature now as work slop, which

is that written products produced with

heavy use of AI might feel more

efficient for the writer, but are often

way less useful for the recipients. And

the total amount of work required to

actually get to an actual highv value

outcome is reduced. Now, that's just one

rule among many that probably has many

exceptions that you could add on to it.

But the bigger point here is AI is

emerging as the biggest threat to deep

work

that we've seen probably since Slack.

And that is a big deal because unless AI

can take over your job entirely, in

which case we're all screwed. To have it

kind of come in here and make deep work

harder and take lop off more of the peak

strain of the deep work stuff you do, is

just going to make you dumber and make

the total output coming out of your

team, company, or individual much worse.

So you need some sort of AI rules that

push these tools, at least right now,

much more towards automating the shallow

than trying to make the deep easier. Be

very worried about any use of AI that's

primarily just trying to make deep work

feel like it's less of a cognitive

strain. There be dragons in the

knowledge sector. Uh it's like using

polies to help you do pull-ups in

military boot camp. You're missing the

the forest to try to save a few trees.

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

Rule number two from the book Deep Work

was titled Embrace Boredom.

This chapter was about the need to train

your brain to get better at focusing.

Don't just assume you're very good at

concentrating without distraction. And

it's actually a skill you have to

practice. Now, I open this chapter on

the story of Adam Marlin, who's an

Orthodox Jew with three Ivy League

degrees, who in his 20s started

practicing uh shara, sorry, I said the

Hebrew wrong, which is where you you

study either Torah or Talamid with a

partner. So, you you sit like at the

same desk and you're going back and

forth trying to uh do interpretations,

debate, and argue. It's intellectually

very intense. There's actually right

about that later in deep work. I call it

the whiteboard effect. It's true for

like many intellectual fields. When

you're doing something synchronously

with someone else, you get a lot more

depth of focus out of it because you

have to maintain your conver your focus

in order to keep up with the other

person and they push you on the edges.

So, actually working with a partner can

be really mentally straining in a good

way. Now, Marlin reports how he had

thought of himself, he had all these Ivy

League degrees when he began the

practice of Heruta. He thought of

himself as a smart person. But when he

began working with these people who had

been doing this uh other you know

members of the shul who had been doing

this since uh you know for years he said

and I quote they could run intellectual

circles around him and that's when he

realized they're smart in the sense of

like I know a lot of stuff and then

they're smart in the sense of I can

apply my mental horsepower with

incredible focus and that he was missing

on that part. So he got really into the

study. He would do it every day 6:30 in

the morning because you would do it

before work. And he re recognized that

over time he started to see a difference

in his ability to do cognitive efforts

in his job beyond this particular

practice. Let me uh read you a passage

from this chapter here. After a while,

Marlin began to notice positive changes

in his own ability to think deeply. I've

recently been making more highly

creative insights in my business life,

he told me. I'm convinced it's related

to that daily mental practice. This

consistent strain has built my mental

muscles over years and years. This was

not the goal when I started, but it is

the effect. And then I go on in that

chapter to give a lot of other advice

for how you might train your brain, such

as the idea of you should think of

yourself as taking breaks from focus to

schedule some brief moments of

distraction as opposed to the opposite

way around. And you should do things

like memorize a deck of cards, which is

a shorthand for focus requiring

activities to get you used to focusing.

All right. What would I change if I was

rewriting rule two from deep work in

2026?

So over, you know, years of talking

about focus training and training your

brain, um, I have a whole extended

toolkit of suggestions that, you know,

were not in that original chapter, but I

would add today. I've picked out four.

These are four brain training things

I've talked about pretty regularly in

the last half decade that I would almost

certainly add in an updated version of

this chapter. All right. Number one,

you've heard me say this a lot in the

last year or so. When at home, you keep

your phone plugged in in the kitchen. If

you need to use it, you go there to use

it. If you have to check it on text

conversation, you go there to use it. If

you want to listen to a podcast while

you do the dishes, you use wireless

earphones.

This is really important because two

things happen.

one, there's a lot of circumstances

where you would be fighting the urge to

pick up your phone and it would make it

hard for you to lock in on something,

but those circumstances are in uh

significantly made easier if the phone

is not nearby, right? Because if the

phone is nearby, there's pattern

recognizing neuronal bundles in your

short-term motivational systems like,

"Oh, there's the phone." And then they

fire and then they vote for let's pick

up the phone. If the phone is in the

other room,

then they're not firing as loud. So you

don't have as much of a clawing sort of

distracting pull at your attention. So

you'll focus uh you're going to focus

better. This over time is then going to

give you like experience with like what

it's like to be without your phone. You

sort of normalize and habituate to that.

And now think about all the things you

do at home that if your phone was in the

kitchen, you would now do with full

focus.

Simple things like I'm having dinner

with my family. You're just going to be

there having dinner talking to them. Or

I'm watching a movie with my kids. like

you'll just be full out watching that

movie. It's completely different

experience. Um over time, the positive

long-term returns will help reprogram

your long-term motivation system to be

like, "Oh, I really like what it's like

to watch a movie without distraction. I

don't even want the phone." Right? So,

there's all sorts of positive benefits.

All right. Number two, read real books

either in paper or on Kindle, but not on

a phone or tablet. So, not in a digital

environment that you also associate with

other types of distractions. If you're

reading non-fiction books, take notes in

a notebook after every chapter to try to

consolidate the big ideas so the

information comes in in the reading. The

writing of the notes helps cement it in

your brain. Reading real books triggers

all sorts of complicated processes in

your brain. It helps you build up what

the researcher Maryann Wolf calls deep

reading processes where you build

connections between parts of your brain

that aren't normally connected. They

wouldn't have been in a preiterate age.

When these different parts of your

brains are all connected together, it

unlocks more sophisticated understanding

and thoughts. It literally makes you

smarter. So reading, I mean this is like

basic cardiovascular exercise to your

physical health. Reading is to your

mental health. Reading pages of books

gives you a smarter brain than if you're

not reading pages of books. And that

smarter brain is going to understand

your world better, understand yourself

better, understand complicated ideas

better, produce more complicated ideas.

So that's absolutely important. Three, I

would say find a hobby that rewards

focus and punishes distraction. So, you

just get used to being able to lock on

something and get a reward feedback from

it. There's a lot of sports to do this.

Tennis does this. My wife is taking

tennis lessons and was saying if her

focus flags a little bit in tennis,

you're done because you have to

constantly be tracking what's going on

and predicting what you're going to do

uh next. Basketball is this field. Golf,

I assume, Jesse, right? Like if you're

not locked in, you know, like before

your swing, it's

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah,

>> for sure. If Jesse doesn't lock in, his

typical like 69 might flare up to like a

72, 73. Is that Is that what happens?

>> I wish.

>> Am I using the right golf lingo?

>> Yeah, that was perfect.

>> Your birdies are going to become

bogeies.

>> Double bogeies.

>> Double bogeies. There we go. Um, so,

okay, that makes them mad. You you will

get used to locking in on focus. Final

thing I would say is self-reflection

walks. I talk a lot about this. Walking

without distraction, thinking about

yourself,

your life, what's going on. Just get

used to the life of the mind. Get used

to the inner dialogue voices in your

mind. Get used to having noisy,

clamoring, competing thoughts, picking

out the important ones, sticking with

it, making progress on it, finding

insight on the other end. I call that

type of mental activity contemplation.

It's critical to a life well-lived. Best

way to practice it is to do it. And the

way you do it is you go for walks, be

moving without a phone. Or if you have

to have a phone for emergencies, put it

on ring and in the back of a backpack so

you can't grab it without digging

through some things so that you can

think about what's going on.

All right, that was chapter two. Chapter

three, the third rule in deep work was

titled quit social media. Now, back in

2016, that was a really sort of

provocative way to name a chapter. Now,

a lot of people thought when they just

skimmed through the book that what I was

arguing back then is that people should

stop using social media. It's kind of my

stance now. Actually, what wasn't what I

was arguing in that chapter, the quit

social media title for that rule refers

to one of the specific strategies that I

discuss, which is this idea of quit

social media dot dot dot for 30 days to

get a better sense of what value it is

or is not creating. So I had this

suggestion of temporary breaks from

multiple different social media

platforms so that you better understood

what value they were bringing. Um and if

you found it had no value then maybe you

would quit permanently. Or if you found

it did you might adjust your usage

patterns to maintain that value but

maybe avoid some of the value that would

be worse. That's an idea that I then

developed in my next book digital

minimalism. But the general point of

that of the chapter was this idea of you

need to adapt a more rational tool

mindset for digital tools. I was I was

arguing for other types of tools we

encounter in our life. We're not going

to spend money to buy it or use it

unless we have a clear use case. I talk

about a a farmer named Forest Pritchard

who I I met here in the farmers market

in Tacoma Park. He he wrote a book, cool

memoir called Gaining Ground. And he

talked about he told me and I to I quote

this in deep work about the complicated

mental calculations farmers go through

when deciding do I need to buy this

piece of equipment like well here's how

much it costs here's the benefit they

all have some benefit right here's the

benefit it brings here's how much it

cost is that benefit worth the cost

they're always thinking that through and

how to make that ratio more to their

advantage you would never just like buy

an expensive piece of farm equipment

like I'm sure we'll figure it out it's

got some uses I don't want to miss out

on so we're used to in other parts of

our lives being really careful, critical

about if and when we're going to spend

money on a tool. And I said, when it

comes to the world of the digital,

especially what I call network tools,

things connected to the internet, we

throw that out the window. We say it's

it's not the the creator of the tools

job to convince me that this is useful.

In fact, if there's any possible

benefit, I'll invest huge amounts of my

time and energy into using this tool.

And that was definitely still the

mindset around that time. This was like

the sort of uh Apple Watch period where

you could launch a product like the

Apple Watch and Apple literally was

like, "We don't know what this is for.

That's not our job. That's your job. All

right, Apple monkeys, go buy this." And

people were just like, "I guess we got

to buy Apple watches." And literally

people were trying to figure out the

idea that people now use them for like

fitness and stuff like that. That came

later. Like Apple was just like, "We

built the watch and people are like,

"Give it to me and then we'll figure out

later what to do with it." So we were in

this mindset where it came to digital

tools. We were being like the suckers at

the county fair. Like I will use any

tool if there's any benefit. So the main

thing I was arguing in that chapter is

no no

make a tool earn your attention.

Make it uh make the case that this is

generating way more benefits than cost.

All right. Here's what I specifically

wrote. The use of network tools can be

harmful if you don't attempt to weigh

pros against cons, but instead use any

glimpse of some potential benefit as

justification for use of a tool. then

you're unwittingly crippling your

ability to succeed in the world of

knowledge work. I then su uh propose an

alternative

approach which I call the craftsman

approach to tool selection which I

define as follows. Identify the core

factors that determine success and

happiness in your professional and

personal life. Adopt a tool only if its

positive impacts on these factors

substantially outweighs

its negative impact. So, I was saying be

a much more wary consumer of tools.

All right. So, what would I change if I

rewrote this in 2026?

Well, when it comes to social media in

particular, which was like a a big

example through that chapter of a tool

that you should really weigh its value

versus cost. Our relationship with

social media back when I was writing

this book, which was really like 2014,

2015. Our relationship with social media

back then is very different than it is

today. and it would change the way that

I talked about it. If you go back to

that 2014 2015 period, which is when, by

the way, I first began writing about

skepticism around social media. My first

post about this came out in 2014.

If you went back then, people were

thinking about tools like Facebook or

Twitter through a lens of uh personal

positive benefits. So, if you said, I

don't know, I don't think you should use

faceback Facebook, they would come back

and say, here are like the benefits I'm

getting, right? like I I'm keeping up

with my friends. It's how I find

business contacts and um there's new

sources I can't get elsewhere, right? Uh

Twitter, they would be like, "This is

important for my professional brand. If

I don't have a voice online, I don't

exist and it's going to be hard to get

jobs." So, we really were still at the

tail end of seeing social media tools as

being utilitarianly useful.

I don't want to give up on benefits. If

you go back and watch my uh TEDex talk,

quit social media that went viral and

it's at like 11 million views now. I

recorded that the summer after Deep Work

came out, I believe. Go back even then,

right? Watch that talk. I'm mainly

responding to people's uh objections to

quitting social media based on the value

they think they're getting. Right? So,

it's all responses to the types of

things where people say, "I don't want

to give up this value." And I would have

to argue like that's not as valuable as

you think and the the cost there is

bigger than you think. Right? So, it was

definitely like a utilitarian calculus

people were applying to social media

back then, which is why I approached it

with this like let's weigh pros and

cons. It's kind of like a quiet push,

quiet touch to get people to use less

social media. Today, in 2026, that is

not a relationship with social media. It

has completely morphed away from value

propositions and has leaned into sort of

pure addiction. Like, think about a tool

like Tik Tok and how different this is

than like 2014 Facebook. Tik Tok no

longer is like, "Hey, this is about

people you know. You're not following

friends. You're not getting updates from

people. You know, Tic Tac, unlike early

Instagram, is not about, okay, I have I

have selected maybe like more well-known

people who I'm very interested in and I

want to hear their takes on things. So,

I'm following an artist I like and I'm

following a writer who has like

inspiring quotes. Tik Tok's like, "No,

no, you don't follow anybody. We're just

going to show you stuff, right? We're

just going to show you stuff that's

engaging." So, you cannot tell yourself

you're keeping up with people or you're

trying to follow people that you think

is interesting. The huge change here,

and this is so big compared, we forget

this, but such a big change. None of

these platforms are about posting

anymore.

They were entirely about posting back

then. It was about your stuff, you

posted, you wanting to put stuff out

into the world, right? One of the the

original addiction hooks that uh

Facebook introduced in their product was

the like button. And I I write about

this in digital minimalism, which came

out a few years later. This idea that I

have an unpredictable indicator what

people think about me. So, I put a post

out there and there's going to be this

number and if the number is low, that's

like people be mad at me. If that number

is high, then people are loying me. And

that was like the most addictive piece

of information you could imagine. Of

course, I have to go back to this device

a lot. I have to see that number. The

like button made mobile enabled social

media incredibly addicting. Right? This

is what it was about. When I said in

Deep War, quit social media for 30 days.

One of the big things I wrote about was

you think people really care what you

have to say, but you'll notice when you

quit for 30 days that no one even

noticed that you were gone, right? So

posting was a big part of social media.

Not today. You're on plat Tik Tok like

most you're not there to to post your

own videos. You're just there to

consume. You're on X, like you're just

there to consume. You want to see the

the circus. You want to see the people,

you know, the gladiators fight. You're

on Instagram. You just want to consume.

You're no longer like posting photos of

your vacations as much anymore. It's

just pure consumption that has been made

to be as compelling as possible to keep

you on the vice as much as possible. So,

no one argues anymore, oh, I I have so

much value from this that I'm going to

miss out on all these opportunities and

keeping up with friends. No, they're

just like, I can't help myself. It numbs

me. It makes chemicals flow. life is

hard. This is my booze, basically. So,

it's a completely different

relationship. So, if you're writing a

chapter now about trying to get rid of

consistent sort of optional digital

distractions, you would write it more

like a how to get sober guide. Like,

that's where we are right now. We see it

as something that is a little bit

unsavory and we can't help ourselves.

It's like smokers in the early '9s.

You're like, "This is not good. We know

this is kind of on the way out. I'm

trying to stop and I can't and I could

use some help." So, I would completely

change the way I thought um I would

think about it. And this is where I'd

give my advice like you got to re

retrain your brain. You have to have the

phone away from you more so that you're

not firing those short-term circuits.

You got to retrain long-term motivation

circuits to learn the deep reward of

sticking with something without

distraction is better than the

short-term reward of looking at the

phone. You got to take all the stuff off

of your phone that's going to give you

high reward signals. Anything where

people make money the more you look at

it. Like, you really got to make that

phone dumber. Look at my video from our

episode from what was like a month ago,

Jesse. Uh where we talked about how to

simplify your phone and make it seem

like a incredibly simple dumb phone

while still having useful apps on it.

Like that's all the type of stuff I

would talk about. This is no longer a

argument about tool selection and pros

versus cons. It's an argument about

sobriety. So that chapter is one that I

think would change drastically. All

right. The final rule in part two of

deep work was called drain the shallows.

This is the chapter where I tackled

trying to contain the administrative and

logistic tasks that if left unchecked

make it really hard to find time for

deep work or to remain focused during

deep work sessions. Here's what I

specifically wrote. I'm uh reading here

verbatim. The shallow work that

increasingly dominates the time and

attention of knowledge workers is less

vital than it often seems in the moment.

For most businesses, if you eliminated

significant amounts of the shallowess,

their bottom line would likely remain

unaffected. As Jason Freed discovered,

if you not only eliminate shallow work,

but also replace this recovered time

with more of the deep alternative, not

only will the business continue to

function, it becomes more successful.

All right, so I was uh mentioning Jason

Freed there. That's because the opening

story of that chapter was about how

Jason Freed with his company 37 Signals,

now it's called Base Camp, uh,

experimented with a 4-day work week for

certain times of the year. And they

found that productivity went up. And

then I talked about this controversy

that happened where a reporter wrote an

article and was like, "Oh yeah, Jason

Freed and his company are just making

people jam five days of work into four

days." Like great productivity, you

know, tip. And Jason Freed fired back.

He's like, "No, they're not working more

hours. they're just doing less of the

nonsense. We just there's like less

meetings. There's less back and forth.

People are just a little bit more on

task. They're not working more hours,

but more stuff is getting done. And the

point there was like we have a lot more

shallow work in our schedules than we

think. And it's a lot more removable or

optional than we think. So that was the

motivation. All right. So I had a bunch

of strategies. I actually am going to go

through quickly the five particular

strategies that I mention in this

chapter. For each one, I'll give a

thumbs up if like, yeah, that held up

and a thumbs down if like, nah, that

didn't really work out or we don't

really do that anymore. And I'll do this

real quick. All right, the first idea in

there was time blocking. That definitely

held up. I think time blocking is a

continues to be really the only way to

manage your time and attention if you

have a busy knowledge workshop. The

second strategy, quantify the depth of

every activity. He actually gave away if

you a heruristic for how to actually

numerically score activities so you

could sort of see how much deep work

each requires and prioritize the deep

did not hold up. No one did it. Uh that

that's something that no one ever did.

All right. The third idea,

work with your supervisor or boss to

establish an ideal deep to shallow work

ratio in a typical work week. What ratio

my hours should be deep worth for

shallow work? And then measure. And if

you're falling short, talk to your boss

about, hey, we had this target we

thought would produce the most value for

the company. We're falling short. How

can we make changes? That really held

up. I threw that in as an after effect.

And then I heard from a ton of people

after the book came out that this was

really successful. So, I really like

that uh idea. I talked about shutdown

routine routines 100% that really works

out. Have a clear end of day, close the

open loops, check a box, say a phrase,

be done with your work when you're done.

Don't let it sort of bleed amorphously

into the rest of your day.

The final uh strategy was becoming

better at email. And I gave a bunch of

different strategies in there. Um some

of those things work, some of them

don't. I'm going to get into that in a

second. One of the subsuggestions there

was the just don't reply more often.

That triggered Adam Grant to write an

op-ed in the New York Times say like

that's actually a bad idea. That's rude.

And we had a kind of we we ended up

working this out Jesse on an episode of

his podcast. Mhm.

>> So, look at one of my appearances on

work life podcast with Adam and we sort

of in a good naturatured way um got into

that. All right. So, what would I add if

I was rewriting this chapter in 2026?

There was two big ideas that showed up

in subsequent books after Deep Work that

should fit absolutely here. The first

idea is replacing the hyperactive hive

mind. This showed up in my 2021 book, A

World Without Email, which was meant to

be the immediate companion to deep work.

But then I I inserted digital minimalism

between the two just because that book

was more timely. But in a world without

email, I said, "Okay, here's what I got

wrong in deep work. Here's what I got

wrong in that strategy about becoming

better at email." I was falling into the

trap of imagining the key to improving

the role of email in your life is that

yourself to have more discipline and

better habits. and perhaps to to shift

some norms in your organization like

norms around response time and in the

world without email I spent a couple

years I looked deeply at the rise of

email and its impact I was like oh that

won't solve it

the problem with constant inbox checking

in the professional setting has to do

with collaboration strategies a lot of

our projects we we coordinate with ad

hoc back and forth messaging through

tools like email and then later Slack if

that's how you're collaborating a

strategy I call the hyperactive hive

mind collaboration style. You have to

check those inboxes and chat channels

all the time because ongoing back and

forth conversations have to be serviced

otherwise things ground to a halt. So

the real solution is not better habits

yourself like I'm going to batch my

email checks but replacing ad hoc back

and forth messaging with other ways of

collaborating that requires many fewer

inbox checks or many fewer chat checks.

even if those new modes of collaboration

are more annoying and in the moment

require more work, you want to minimize

the need to have to keep checking

channels. So that's an idea I did not

have in 2016 and by 2021 was a big part

of my life. The second idea I would add

here, and this is one I really laid out

in my last book, Slow Productivity,

which came out 2024,

workload matters. We need rules and

systems for explicitly managing

workloads. If it's just informally

bouncing stuff back and forth and

messages, hey, can you do this? Can you

do that? Will take on too much stuff.

And when we have too many things to work

on at the same time, they each imminate

their own overhead, their own sort of

shallow work task to sort of keep the

project going. That aggregates. It's

uncompressible. It's like water. So if

you you do 10 things and opposed to five

things, you have twice as much of this

administrative overhead that you have to

service. And there's a there's a tipping

point at uh you go past where the amount

of administrative overhead you require

to service all the things you're working

on basically fully takes over your

schedule and then like you only can

really do work early in the morning on

the weekends and you're in a state of

extreme unproductivity

and you're also miserable and burnt out.

It's just a terrible way to work. If you

instead have explicit rules for managing

work workloads in a team or a company so

that I'm only actively working on a

small number of things at any one time,

what happens?

The amount of concurrent administrative

overhead drastically reduces. I have

more time for deep work. Those things

get done fast. They get done well. And

the overall rate at which I complete

things goes up and the number of things

I finish per quarter also goes up. Doing

fewer things now means I get more things

done in the long term. And I'm less

miserable. It's the the the the role of

overload

in attacks on deep work and burnout and

workplace misery is critical. So again,

my book Slow Productivity gets into

that. I did not really have that

connection yet when I wrote deep work.

All right, so there we go. I think

Jesse, it holds up pretty well. I mean,

it's it's continuing to sell, but

there's like a lot of updates that I

think would make it better. Now, a lot

of these updates are in my future books

that follow deep work. A lot of these

updates are here on this podcast. A lot

of these updates are in my writing I've

done for the New Yorker on these type of

issues. So, you can sort of think of a

lot of my work going forward as like

revised and updated editions of deep

work. So that stuff is this stuff is

largely out there. I eventually write it

down anyways, but this was sort of the

seed that started a lot of the thinking

that I've since been

trying to elaborate and expand ever

since.

>> If you had to redesign the book cover,

what would you do for a second edition?

>> Um uh pretty canonical, right? This is I

remember so if you want the quick

backstory

um the this design philosophy actually

came from the book that preceded this

which was So Good They Can't Ignore You.

>> Mhm. uh which is about don't follow your

passions and career advice book. Um so

here we go. So we're working on we're

working on so good they can't ignore you

and we're getting back these like bad

covers. There's one with like pencils on

it. Pencils like I I don't know what's

going on, right? Um and then the

designer at some point gave us this like

super big font textheavy and this was

back in the day when like Barnes & Noble

was a big deal and I was like yeah that

that stands out like be so good they

can't ignore you and good and you um and

that's where the design philosophy came

from. same imprint. So, we did deep

work. We're like, "Yeah, we're going all

in on big just boom, big lettering." It

kind of started a cover trend. Then a

bunch of books did this and now like the

trend has kind of moved on. But there's

a period where like just being big and

declarative uh was a cool way to do

titles. So, I would either do this

>> and then slow productivity was more

inspirational with like the picture.

>> I want Yes, this is me going a

completely different way. So, with slow

productivity, I was like, I want to do

full bleed imagery. This is more of a

thing from the fiction world. And I was

like, let's bring this to non-fiction. I

want to induce a psychological state in

the reader just seeing the cover that is

congruent with what the book is going to

be about. So you see the cabin up on a

hill with a path leading to it and your

mind already goes to a narrative place

of a life that's slower and focused on

producing important things and is

meaningful. It puts you in that

emotional state and then you're like

what's this book about? And it's like

hey how to do that? Put those two things

together you're like boom I want to go.

So yeah. So we have to keep evolving.

Like I don't think this cover style

is like the right style anymore.

>> Yeah, that's why I kind of asked.

>> Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of

>> I was just cuz I know that you've been

evolving.

>> If I really was going to redesign it, um

I would either keep it there or

basically just have the dinosaur from

Jurassic Park, the that famous the

skeleton. It's a famous cover. Just play

it back. No other explanation.

>> State has to give you those books for

your new Map Maker Lab.

>> We got to reach out. I want first

editions for the lab. I'm going to reach

out. Maybe I'll have you reach out.

>> I mean, you're a huge fan.

>> Yeah, the Kiteon Foundation. I want

first edition books, Kiteon books for my

for my lab. I'll send them a picture.

It'll be great.

>> Um,

>> then you can write the um

>> biography for Kiteon.

>> I know. I do want to write a Katon

biography. There's I there's fewer words

I could say I guess beyond like the only

thing that would probably make my agent

even more nervous than me saying I want

to write a biography would be like if I

wanted to write uh like a child's

picture book like I don't the I don't

know I don't know what would be worse

from her perspective than be like I want

to write a biography of someone that

unless it was like you know what you

know what worlds have not come together

like enough recently pornography and

cookbooks.

You could probably do a good kids book

on baseball.

>> See, she's in cold sweats now. If she's

hearing this,

>> she's like, "Jesse,

stop it. Do not plant these seeds in his

mind." All right. Well, that's enough

hearing from me. Um, now it's time to

hear from you as where we move on to the

inbox segment to hear your messages. Uh,

before we get there though, let's take a

quick break to hear from some of our

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show.

All right, so now let's get going and

open up our inbox. Remember, if you have

a question for me or a case study you

want to share, maybe just like an

interesting article you want to try to

get me to do a rant, the right way to do

it now is send an email to

podcast@calport.com.

All right, Jesse, what uh what's our

first message today?

The first message comes from Shelly.

>> All right, Shelly, what we got here? All

right, Shelley says, "I'm a product

manager in health tech, and I keep

getting pressure from friends and family

saying I should have AI write my

documentation, market research, business

cases, etc. My position on this is that

it will make me dumber. And if my job is

to persuade people to do something, how

can I do that live if I lose the ability

to articulate it in writing and

understand it deeply?" All right, I've

been hearing this a lot. I gotta say,

Jesse, this this like let's let AI do

our writing. Let's let AI let's

collaborate with AI to help like uh test

our ideas and get our writing out. I

find the whole thing to be very

depressing and like anxiety producing

and depressing. It's it's like you know

you you spend years

uncovering and realizing and clarifying

the importance of cognition in the human

experience and in the knowledge economy

and in science and in everything. And

then it's just like a lot of chirpy

people out in Silicon Valley like yeah

just kind of like let's not do that or

just let computers do a lot of let's

just do that worse. Won't that be fun?

And like of course people are like sure

because this stuff is hard right? Like

look, if you are at Marine boot camp and

someone comes around and is like, "Hey

guys, I I I have this like little uh

like carjack thing you put under you

when you do uh push-ups and it like

gives you uh takes a lot of weight off

of it." The pu you're like, "Yeah,

push-ups stink. I don't like doing all

these push-ups, but yeah, let's use that

thing. This is great. This is I could do

like a thousand push-ups now." In the

time and they would use AI talk in the

time it used to take me to do 10

push-ups, I can now do 30 push-ups. You

know, but like guys, the whole point of

doing the push-ups is it's discipline

and strength because of like you're

soldiers. I feel that way about AI. All

right, so I have two responses to Shel.

I mean, this whole thing is depressing,

anxiety producing to me. Uh, point

number one,

read, think, write is a cycle.

Take an information. You think about

information, you write something based

on that understanding. It is a

fundamental cognition loop

that helps you make your human brain

valuable and capable of producing

valuable things, especially in like the

the knowledge sector economically

speaking. If you take one of those parts

out or diminish it, if you say like I'm

not going to really do much of the

writing or I'm going to do it in a sort

of uh kind of like half a way where I'm

like sort of writing but really just

kind of like editing stuff the chat GPT

road like you're avoiding any type of

strain. that loop breaks and your brain

getting increasingly better at being

able to produce valuable original

thought gets worse. You get dumber,

which is not what you want to do when

half of our economy is based on advanced

knowledge sector types of companies.

Point number two,

no one understands anything about

productivity. I I mean this was what my

last book was about, the first part of

my last book about the num school ways

in which we how we define productivity

and knowledge work. like anything being

easier or faster. We're like, I'm more

productive. Are you though? Like is this

like does this directly actually make

you more productive? Like let's let's be

specific here. I talked about this two

weeks ago uh in my episode about AI

making us worse at work. Let's look at

like Shel's example.

Uh maybe you produce market research

reports as she mentions. Maybe this is

like a key part of your job. Is this the

bottleneck? Is the literal time it takes

you to write the market research report

the main bottleneck on how much value

you're producing for your company?

Almost certainly not. I mean, you're

probably producing one of these reports

like once a month.

So, like let's say in absolute terms,

you're replacing like, hey, if I if I

was prompting AI and not really doing

the thinking myself, I could make this

report in like 45 minutes. It otherwise

takes me five hours. In the course of a

month, does that really matter? like is

that really unlocking a lot more value

for the company? It's the time required

to produce that marketing report was not

the bottleneck. The bottleneck was

actually probably the sophistication,

nuance and value of what you put in that

marketing report. In fact, triple your

time might make you way more productive

from the sense of like this report is

containing more value. We often mistake

ourselves. We think about efficiency

because we have assembly line thinking,

but we're not doing one thing on an

assembly line. And when you're not doing

one thing on an assembly line, raw

efficiency on task execution time

doesn't necessarily lead to more

proverbial proverbial Model T's being

produced. Now, if Shel's job was

literally producing marketing reports

backtoback, 8 hours a day, 5 days a

week, that's all I do, which is like an

absurd thing, but let's just use this

thought experiment. Then maybe and they

got paid by just literally here's a

report got produced. And someone's like,

it looks like a report, here's some

money. Like if that was the situation

then like oh increasing the speed at

which a report is produced would produce

more money but this is not the

situation. I'm not I'm not writing

marketing reports back to back to back

to back. I mean I talked about this uh

one of my newsletters as well recently

whereas like there social science

researchers are using like AI agents to

help um analyze data and produce plots.

It's nice because that can be annoying.

So it can make an annoying day less

annoying. But as I argued, it's not the

bottleneck on producing academic papers.

Academic papers are not produced by I

sit here all day long analyzing data and

produce charts. That's it. I'm an

assembly line worker. That's my model T.

And if I could do that faster, I produce

more papers. Like, well, no, you're

writing one paper every three or four

months. There's one day in there in

which you're analyzing data. It's nice

if you could do that in a half day

instead, but it's not going to produce

more paper. So we we can't we need to

have the real definition of productivity

which is the quality and quantity of the

final thing that goes out in the world

is actually worth money. Making

individual things faster does not

necessarily increase that. So we have to

focus on the things that really matter.

All right. Uh what we got next? We have

a note from Ailio about AI and

education.

>> This is just going to make me more

depressed, isn't it? I I don't even know

what it is yet, but I can assume AI and

education. The note is not going to be

like going great and just with a thumbs

up and then we move on to the next one.

All right. Feel like I should have like

a bottle of bourbon with me.

That would be a fun show. Jesse, we take

every time we read something to Price

AI, take a shot of bourbon.

>> Ferris would do that at times back in

the past

>> with uh Kevin.

>> Yeah,

>> they do wine.

>> Sometimes they do tequila.

>> I can talk to Tim.

>> But then I think they both quit and

maybe they started again. I don't know.

Try to keep track.

>> They're old now. We're all old. All

right. Um, here we go. All right. I'm

sure this is going to be uplifting. The

effects of AI and education, the effects

of AI and education are frankly

depressing. Oh, see, right off the bat,

Jesse, he's he's previewing this is very

depressing what I'm about to tell you.

All right, let's hammer on. Get my

bourbon ready. I remember how much I

struggled to come up with ideas and

convey them in an essay, for example,

and the deep satisfaction that came with

it. Well-written text used to be

admirable. Now I see my siblings and

friends in university delegating almost

all of their writing the chat GPT

limiting themselves to curate text with

prompts and they love it. Of course they

love it. It's easier. People don't like

hard things. One of my peers proudly

said to me something like I never never

ever write anything without AI be it a

large report or an email. Look, I write

terribly even with spelling mistakes and

just let chat GPT fix it for me. We have

to be thankful that we have these tools

and take advantage of them. His senior

project was written in this way and he

has got very good grades. He has

arranged a PhD position after graduation

while most of us are struggling to get

any income at all. I mean you might as

well just

buy an essay online, right? Like yeah

the here's the challenge education is

not okay we've set up this obstacle

course for you and if you do it the the

obvious way it's going to be mentally

hard. If you can minimize what we want

to see is how much can you minimize your

mental strain? Well, in the end, like

why not just like I hired someone else

to write the paper for me, right? Like

that's kind of where we're rapidly

going.

Writing is taking the information that

you ingested through reading and

conversation

and uh taking that ideas and then

outputting original information based on

those ideas. That act cements that

information in your mind. If you go back

and read my second book, How to Become a

Straight A Student, where I studied a

bunch of straight A college students who

didn't seem like they were grinds, what

was the number one thing that unified

how they approached studying?

Active recall. Like, how do I learn

something? I ingest it. I think about

it, and then I write it out. So, from

scratch, it was all about producing

answers from scratch without looking at

your notes. There was no more effective

way to get prepared for a test because

writing is a key key part of the the

information intake loop. You have the

information, it's in there, but it's not

necessarily super accessible. When you

write it, boom, those connections

happen. It's how you get smarter. It's

the entire point of education.

Yes, you can have a machine that has

taken in like all of the writing on the

internet.

So, it knows the structure of languages

and topics. It's seen it all. And yes,

it can use all that information to write

for you. You could also copy things out

of a book and hand it in. That's also

less strain. You can go on the internet

and Google it and copy and paste things

from articles. That would also be less

strain. But it defeats the entire

purpose of writing in an educational

environment. Writing quality should be

something that you uh admire because the

better writer you are, the more writing

you've done, which probably means the

smarter you are because that's more time

that you've actually spent actually

cementing concepts in your head. Like

Jesse, I was surprised We'll talk about

more about this soon, but like I had

this big New York Times piece uh a

couple weekends ago and one of the most

consistent pieces of feedback I got from

all sorts of messages, but one of the

most consistent things I noticed was how

many people in their responses were

surprised about, man, the writing was so

good. And it wasn't even like this was

brilliant writing. It's just I care

about writing quality. It was a

well-crafted essay because I care about

that. And I think 10 years ago

that wouldn't have caught anyone's

attention. It would just have been the

ideas. But today people are like, "Whoa,

what was going on there?" I mean, like

this is just like, you know, it's essay

craft 101. It's got structure, clarity,

callbacks, like you know, it's a it's a

active sentences, rhythm. Like there's

just clear things you do. We're just not

used to writing quality anymore. So I'm

kind of going off in all sorts of

directions here. But I do not like this

idea of using AI to to produce human

text for consumption by humans. I think

this is a fundamentally human endeavor.

Like that's sort of the stance that I'm

coming down on. I know people are going

to be upset about that. I just think

it's a fundamentally human endeavor. Go

back. Let's go back to, you know, uh go

back to the the the Bible. Go let's

let's go to British. Let's go to

Genesis, right? Like right off the bat,

metaphorically, what is the thing that

that like defines uh humans? The thing

that God gives humans right off the bat

is like the ability to have language.

They name all the animals and plants,

right? This is like a

metaphor for like really that

development of the ability of language

that humans developed about 50,000 years

ago, right? Boom. We're capturing that

in this sort of like ancient book. It is

like fundamental to the human condition.

And then the entire Abrahamic faves on

which like all the ideas we have of

everything from like liberal democracy

to human values and modern ethics,

morality all comes out of this based

around came out of writing. Writing

where do you get the where do you get

the the the Hebrew Bible? Where do you

get Torah? Like these protophenicians

in the Eastern Mediterranean were one of

the first alphabetic uh alphabet style

languages emerges for writing that

allows much more widespread literacy.

And in the ability to write all of these

ideas come out of it. It is the human

thing. There's some sort of like tower

of babel type of analogy here to like

well what if we uh instead of making

this a deeply human important thing we

build like machines to try to like take

this you know take this ability away

take it away from God or whatever. So

there's probably a religious argument

here. I I just think there's going to be

a resistance to this. I do not want to

read stuff that a machine produced. If

you want to use a machine to help you

communicate, have it produce charts or

tables or machine language, right? But

English or whatever language like the

written language, this is humans

transmitting a cognitive reality to

another human. I think it's a deeply

human uh endeavor and it has all these

practical benefits. So, I do not like

this like just lett me all the time.

That's not it's not a small thing to

say. It's not a small thing to say. It's

like you know, I make money by selling

my organs. It's like there's a deeply

humanistic thing here that I don't think

we're recognizing yet, but hopefully we

will.

>> All right. Do we have anything more

cheerful here? Don't What do we have?

>> We do.

>> All right.

>> Here's someone who successfully avoided

social media with no real negative

impacts.

>> All right. So, uh we'll say it's from

anonymous because I don't know if they

know they were sharing this as a case

study. Um all right, here we go. Having

said that, I having said that I

prescribe to what you write and talk

about. I have no social media accounts

nor watch Tik Tok or YouTube and

basically just keep a LinkedIn profile

to keep my business partner content. My

standard excuse is that once I am able

to return all emails, phone calls, and

texts in a timely manner, I will then

consider adding more forms of

communication technology. In reality, I

have no need and see others constantly

distracted by them, I keep an open mind

on most items, and someday may may come

when some form of these technologies

make sense for me. In the meantime, I

will stay out of the matrix for as long

as possible. All right, that's a that's

a nice note to end on. That's like

straight out of deep work.

Make the tool do the job of convincing

yourself you need to use it. It's not

your job. You're not a beta tester.

You're not a quality assurance tester.

You're not a product reviewer. You don't

need to go use all these tools and then

try to back justify why you have them.

If they haven't convinced you they're

useful, you don't need them in your

life. So, all right, that made me feel a

little bit better. All right, let's move

on to our final segment here where we

check in on what I've been up to.

All right. So, I mentioned this New York

Times article a couple times, and let me

just bring it up briefly, Jesse. I

should talk about it briefly. All right.

So, I had a an article

uh not yesterday, but the Sunday before.

Uh it had a bunch of different titles,

including there's a good reason you

can't concentrate. Um and it was an

op-ed that basically made a call for,

and this is a cool graphic. That's

Kristoff Neeman, who does I like that.

Yeah, he does a lot of New Yorker covers

as well. He's a he's a he's a great

graphic designer. Um, so it makes the

argument that we need a revolution in

cognitive fitness like we had in

physical fitness in the 20th century. We

need to be like what we consume digital

information and exercising our brain

should be things we care a lot about

like we learn to care about what we eat

and having to do exercise. So um it's

like a manifesto. It's a long form

piece. It was my seventh oped I've

written for the New York Times but this

one Jesse was my first uh lead opinion

piece. M

>> so this was the the lead Sunday opinion

piece. It was the entire cover of the

Sunday opinion section that Sunday. Um

and got the the the feature in the

opinion newsletter and their sort of

full brunt of marketing. So that's

basically like the biggest audience left

you can get now in American um like

newspaper magazine writing. Like the

lead that's it. This is the last biggest

thing you have is being lead opinion

piece. So I was proud about that. I

might I I I bought the paper because

it's a whole, you know, big broad sheet

of just this graphic of the brain

lifting the whatever just like the the

whole whole cover was that. So maybe

maybe we'll frame it for the HQ.

>> Yeah.

>> Um so it's good. So it's got a lot of

good feedback about it. Really exciting.

Hopefully you read it. Hopefully you

liked it. It it it it's a call to

revolution that I really believe in and

hopefully uh other people believe in it

as well and we get a little bit of

momentum here. Um, on the reading front,

finished the Sanderson book.

>> What' you think?

>> Finished it on March 30th, so I got my

five in. Um, I liked it. It's a genre

book, genre fantasy. And the thing I

hadn't done in a while, it's a long

book, 650 pages, short for Chanderson,

but long for me. Um, I hadn't actually

done that in a while. One of those type

of books where the whole point, they do

a lot of world building, and the whole

point is just to get lost. you just sort

of like want to get into this state

where the you get lost in the world and

you're just in the world and stuff is

happening. The movie is playing in your

head. That's the appeal of uh especially

genre novels in particular like you're

just sort of like you get lost in these

worlds. I read a lot of non-fiction

which is much more you get lost in

intellectual world. You have ideas and

you're playing with it. This is much

more like empathetic, visual,

action-based or whatever. Like oh that's

fun. That's a good experience. So um

I'll probably read another one. Not yet.

They take a long They take me a while

because they're long. And

>> your kid read it too, right?

>> Yeah, he he read the I think the whole

Misborn extended trilogy and now he's on

the second of the the Stormlight, which

>> So he must like it.

>> Those are beast books. Those are like a

thousand plus pages. Yeah. Um he loves

them. Yeah. Yeah. I told him we'll find

a way to go meet Sanderson at some point

and we'll bring a copy of Name of the

Wind to get signed because you know you

want signed copies are worth worth a

lot. Remember, all complaints about

sci-fi references goes to Jesse. He

wants to hear it. Um, so there we go.

So, I got my five in just in time. Um, I

gotta figure out I I have to I finished

last night, so I have to figure out my

uh my March my April books.

>> I was thinking about getting you a book

uh there's a new book about uh George

Steinbrer that just came out by Mike

Ficaro from the New York Post.

>> That could be interesting. I might read

>> Mad Dog read it.

>> I might read that notebook book as well.

>> That came from a listener.

>> Mhm. the history of notebooks. Yeah.

Yeah. I should probably read a baseball

book now that the season's going. Um,

which I should also warn everyone now

that the Nationals are doing some

interesting things. That'll be a we're

going to do a five episode arc.

Analytics

uh lineup construction

and uh hits hit strategy. I don't know.

Five episode arc. Let's go. Actually,

the episodes are going to be I think

people want this is uh basically like

live commentary. So, we just record you

and I talking through the full two to

three hour game and then like you go

back and listen to us and like replay

the replay the games,

>> analyze the new ABS system.

>> Analyze ABS like we could do little fun

aides about the technology and ABS or

this or that. Uh, you know, if reading

between the lines I think is what people

want is more extremely long for super

rapid quantity baseball content. All

right, well that's all the time we have

for this week. We'll have another AI

reality check episode coming out on

Thursday and then another advice episode

next Monday. So, as always, till next

time, stay deep. Hey, if you like

today's discussion of my book, Deep

Work, and want to read some more, check

out episode 384 where I answer the

question, what else should you read to

have a deeper new year? Check it out. I

think you'll like it. So, we're going to

do a deep dive on the question that I

probably am asked the most by you, which

is, "What should I