Ep. 133: How Do I Defeat Distraction?

Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). For instructions on submitting your own questions, go to calnewport.com/podcast.


DEEP DIVE: Is the Desire to Produce Negative? [5:14]


DEEP WORK QUESTIONS

 - What are the most popular workflows used to escape excessive email? [17:07]
 - How do I read academic papers effectively? [27:40]
 - How much studying is enough for a college student? [31:38]
 - How do I defeat the allure of distraction? (Plus: Why Soto should get more MVP votes than Harper) [35:17]
 - Is it too inefficient to copy a time block schedule into Outlook? [36:51]
 - Are the processes from A World Without Email productivity pr0n? [38:59]


DEEP LIFE QUESTIONS

 - Why do you (Cal) not pursue FIRE? [42:52]
 - How do you avoid confirmation bias? [49:50]
 - Should I use TikTok because that's where people are? [54:07]
 - Is deep work a philosophy? [55:26]


Thanks to Jay Kerstens for the intro music and Mark Miles for mastering.