Ep. 270: Depth vs. Distraction

The white whale of modern productivity discourse is achieving an empty email inbox; a goal state that’s often referred to simply as “inbox zero.” In this episode, Cal looks at why the original advice ...

28 Apr 20251h 9min

Cal talks a lot about his ideas for producing meaningful work in a distracted world. But how do other people tackle this goal? To help better under this question, Cal reacts to a 2018 article from Ope...

21 Apr 20251h 12min

In this episode of IN-DEPTH, Cal is joined by David Dewane, the architect responsible for the “eudaimonia machine” featured in DEEP WORK. In this wide-ranging conversation, Cal and David talk about th...

17 Apr 20251h 35min

Cal has been writing about time management for a *long* time. In this episode, he returns to a chapter from a book he wrote twenty years ago that is titled “manage your time in 5 minutes a day.” He re...

14 Apr 20251h 22min

Phones have been receiving a lot of criticism recently, but what if these concerns are missing the mark? In this episode, Cal introduces the difference between primary and secondary phone harms, and a...

7 Apr 20251h 9min

In last week’s episode, Cal discussed data that indicate that the rise of the smartphones is making humans measurably dumber. Here he discusses aggressive strategies for resisting this reality. He the...

31 Mars 20251h 10min

Multiple listeners recently sent in a Financial Times article that asks whether humans have passed “peak intelligence.” In this episode, Cal looks closer at the data in this article to try to understa...

24 Mars 20251h 8min

Modern knowledge work jobs should be cushy gigs. Fixed hours, air conditioning, no hard manual labor, flexibility. So why are we so often burnt out and what can we do about this reality? In this episo...

17 Mars 20251h 25min