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Cost of Lifestyle
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When evaluating different potential lifestyles, don’t just ask how much it would cost.
Consider what’s involved in acquiring the necessary funds.
Cal Newport
Now, when evaluating potential instantiations of your ideal lifestyle, a common metric that people think about is how much would this instantiation, this particular concrete life, How much would it cost?-
Evaluate Lifestyle Instantiations with Hour Cost
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Evaluate lifestyle instantiations by considering their “hour cost.”
Hour cost represents the number of work hours per week required to maintain that lifestyle.
Cal Newport
So what’s the better metric to use? I’m going to argue it’s what I call hour cost, H-O cost. What this stands for is how many hours of work per week does a particular lifestyle instantiation require? That’s actually the financial metric you care about when evaluating these different scenarios. When you use the hour cost in our prior examples, that’s where you see, wait a second, moving to the farm in rural Pennsylvania has a really high hour cost. So maybe I’m going to keep looking at other instantiations to get that hour cost down because the whole point of me moving to the farm is to spend more time outside and doing farm things, Being with my kids. So I need a lower hour cost. You would have the same insight if you evaluate the hour cost of our Michigan example. You would say, man, the hour cost of my living, if we move up there, it’s going to like double. I’m going to be on the road all the time.-
Focus on Hour Cost
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Focus on the “hour cost” of your lifestyle (how many hours of work per week a particular lifestyle requires).
As your skills improve, consider working less to make the same amount, thus reducing your hour cost, instead of simply maximizing income.
Cal Newport
It has a more advanced application, which is what was demonstrated in the story of Paul Jarvis. So what Paul Jarvis discovered is that once you started thinking about our cost, instead of just using this to help evaluate different scenarios for your life, it gives you a different Way of thinking about your current work. And the insight that Paul Jarvis had is that as his skills got better, he had two choices. The common choice was, I will make more money. I’m in more demand. I can have a bigger list of clients. I can be a more prestigious firm. I can make more money. But that didn’t necessarily by itself reduce the hour cost of living in Vancouver Island. And if anything, it could actually increase the hour cost because maybe he would have to travel more. So he said, my other option is I could just charge more money for what I’m already doing. I can get to the amount of money required to support this particular instantiation, my ideal lifestyle that I have in mind in Tofino and Vancouver Island. I can bring the hour cost of that lifestyle down. So instead of making more money, I’m going to work less to make the same money. I’m going to drive the hour cost down. And you don’t think about this dynamic when all you think about is-
Lowering Hour Cost
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To lower the hour cost of your lifestyle, consider living somewhere cheaper.
Also, use your skills to work less for the same amount of money, rather than simply trying to increase your income.
Cal Newport
That also drives down our cost. So that’s why I think it’s a cool metric is because it opens up approaches to thinking about money in the deep life that you might not have otherwise thought about. You avoid traps, but you also find new opportunities to build a life that’s even cooler than you might have imagined as possible. And it doesn’t require, you know, it doesn’t require some grand windfall. It doesn’t require like what I really need is this book I write to become the next atomic habits. And then with the riches I have from that, now I can finally like live on an island and like work on my gardens and surf and only work a couple hours a day. It turns out if you care about hour cost, you find ways of getting those goals that don’t require the windfall. It’s wait, I’m really good now at web development. So I’m going to triple my hourly rate, cut my number of clients by a factor of four, just have a few clients, but I have a really high hourly rate. Boom, I’m good. The hour cost metric really gets you to some interesting places. A key point about this, it requires hard work to do any interesting things here. This is not a bypass around my maxim for my 2012 book, become so good they can’t ignore you. Bringing down your hour cost is something you can do if you keep getting better. It has to do with how you apply your career capital as you get better. It’s when you make the choice as you get more talented to say, I don’t want more work. I want to do less work for the same amount of money. I want to go to three-
Intentional Living in a Digital World
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Modern work is increasingly digital and abstract, involving manipulating information on screens, often disconnected from tangible outcomes.
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Our time outside of work is often colonized by algorithmically optimized distractions delivered through screens.
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This combination creates a dull slurry of digital manipulation, making it difficult to build an intentional life.
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Therefore, systematic lifestyle crafting is crucial in the digital age.
We need to be more deliberate about how we spend our time and energy to pursue what’s important to us.
Cal Newport
So how does this fit into that general theme? Well, we talked about this a little bit in the Tao of Cal episode. One of the big disorders that comes from these mismatches is that as work gets more digital and abstract, so it’s just moving information around on a computer screen. It’s not tangible. It’s not connected to a location. It’s often what you’re doing is like disconnected even from like a particular outcome. It’s emails and Zoom and PowerPoint slides, like this abstract thing we all do. And as our time outside of work increasingly gets colonized by algorithmically optimized distraction and diversion delivered through screens, life can turn into this like relatively Dull slurry of just, I don’t know, I’m manipulating the digital and being manipulated by the digital until it’s time to go to sleep. In that circumstance, which is unique or at least superpowered by our current digital conditions, in that circumstance, we’ve lost track of how to build an intentional life, how to Figure out what’s important to you and to pursue those. We’re too distracted, we’re too numb, our lives are too abstracted and screen mediated for us to be good at intentional living. So that’s why we talk about the deep life here, not just because it’s a good thing to do. You only get one run, right? You only get one run here on this planet. Might as well make it interesting. But because it is a direct response, we have to get much more systematic about lifestyle crafting because we’ve lost all the cues and wisdom that we used to have about how to do that.-
Improving Reading Focus
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Rewire your phone at home by plugging it into an adapter in one place.
This makes it less accessible as a distraction when you experience boredom.
Cal Newport
And in doing so, every time you overcome that urge and keep doing what you’re doing, that’s like doing another pushup in the physical space. That’s like walking another quarter mile. It adds up. You’re going to get into better shape. All right. So rewire your phone. That’s a big one. Two, keep pushing yourself to read books. Start with books that you absolutely are fascinated by, right? So whatever that is for you, it could be sports non-fiction like i just read the uh agassi memoir open yep that was fun so if you’re in like sports non-fiction or like techno thrillers Uh i’ve read three so far for thriller december just dumb fun techno thrillers just don’t read eruption by michael crichton and patterson Don’t read that one. But whatever it is, or maybe it’s like romance fiction or business advice books or self-help books like David Goggin stuff, whatever it is, start with books that you love and you’re Most likely to keep reading because all you’re practicing here is just the literal act of keeping your eyes on the page and going. So whatever makes that easier is going to be better. You can read Ulysses later. Let’s just get used to books. So read more, but start with stuff that you really like, and then spend more time doing thinking walks on a regular basis. Go for a walk without a phone. You have no choice, but to get used to your own head. What’s in the world around me? What am I thinking about? Having thoughts, exploring thoughts. You just get more comfortable in your own interior cognitive space is going to make it much easier to tackle hard thoughts later in books all right so-
Setting Expectations
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Set clear expectations about response times to reduce the pressure of immediate accessibility.
This helps others manage their own time and reduces your distractions.
Cal Newport
People only want you to reply immediately if they have no other structure expectations for when they’re going to hear back. With no other structure expectation, it’s up to them to keep track of this in their head until they hear from you, so they’d rather you be as quick as possible. If they have other expectations, I’ll hear back at noon. This is when they don’t do email in the morning. They have an office hours that afternoon. I can just call them, and I know they be there and I’ll get the answer. You’re solving their problem of I know what to do with this and I don’t have to keep track of it. So expectations often trump accessibility or clarity that is often trumps accessibility. That would be – actually, that would be a bad shirt I think if we put that on a shirt. You could make it an acronym.
Jesse
It could be like one of your Russian spy acronyms.
Cal Newport
An acronym would be better. I think if I put it on a shirt, the problem is accessibility also means, you know, like from disability studies, like making more services accessible to a wider range of people. So saying like Clarity trumps accessibility, it kind of seems like an anti-disability statement or something like that but yeah acronym see clarity trumps c cta and that means a lot
Jesse
Of other things the call to action yeah yeah i don’t know about that cta all day cta all day all right what do we got next next question is from vishal i’m a knowledge worker and a young father. I started my journey with David Allen’s Getting Things Done framework and successfully emptied my mind into a digital tool. It’s working. However, I’m having a hard time coming up with quarterly goals as I’m so focused on getting things done week over week. How do I think in terms of a quarter as it relates to my personal and professional life? Well, this can be the danger of getting things done is it feels like it’s a totalizing system, like it’s an approach to productivity.
Cal Newport
But I often argue that it’s just one piece of mini that you need to actually fully take control of your time and your obligations in time. So what getting things done gives you is this notion of full capture. This is its biggest idea. It was an idea that David adapted from Dean Atchison, who was a business consultant who Alan knew and had pioneered this idea.-
Full Capture
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Don’t keep track of obligations only in your head.
Use a trusted system that your mind knows you check regularly so you don’t generate stress.
Cal Newport
And Alan then developed it further into the getting things done methodology. Full capture says, and it’s correct, do not keep track of obligations only in your head. If it’s only in your head, it’s going to generate stress because your mind worries about forgetting it, and it’s going to take up cognitive resources because your mind is so focused On not forgetting it that those are cycles that can’t be spent doing something else. So everything you need to do needs to exist in a system that your mind trusts you’re going to check on a regular basis and it won’t be forgotten. This gives you peace. This reduces stress.-
Full Capture and Multi-Scale Planning
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Use a system like Getting Things Done for “full capture” of all obligations to reduce stress and free cognitive resources.
Couple this with multi-scale planning (quarterly, weekly, daily) to connect daily actions to larger goals.
Cal Newport
If it’s only in your head, it’s going to generate stress because your mind worries about forgetting it, and it’s going to take up cognitive resources because your mind is so focused On not forgetting it that those are cycles that can’t be spent doing something else. So everything you need to do needs to exist in a system that your mind trusts you’re going to check on a regular basis and it won’t be forgotten. This gives you peace. This reduces stress. And that, I think, is the brilliance of Alan’s system. But then Alan goes on and says, let me tell you now how to control your attention, which is what you need to do in your day is basically have this list of things you need to do organized by Context, like places you might be. And then whatever context you’re currently in, just pull up the list and start executing things. And there’s this real sort of like, he calls it mind like water. This almost like factor factorization of knowledge work of like, you’re just cranking widgets, executing next task. And you don’t have to think about anything. Just execute, execute, execute. It was a way to reduce the stress generated by overload that Alan was correctly pointing out in the early 2000s was becoming a real issue as we had the email revolution and they got much Worse with the mobile and then smartphone computing revolution that followed. That’s not, however, a sufficiently advanced system for controlling your attention. So what I argue is you need full capture for all the reasons that David Allen says, but you need to couple this with multi-scale planning.-
Multi-Scale Planning
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Use David Allen’s full capture system to track obligations and reduce stress.
Couple this with multi-scale planning: quarterly, weekly, and daily plans linked to bigger picture goals.
Cal Newport
That’s not, however, a sufficiently advanced system for controlling your attention. So what I argue is you need full capture for all the reasons that David Allen says, but you need to couple this with multi-scale planning. So you got to make decisions about what to do with your time at multiple scales. What’s my goal for the quarter? How does this influence my plan for the week? How does that influence my plan for the day? How does that influence what I’m doing right now? So you have this link of connections that expands in scope so that your actions right now has at least some sort of tangential connection to your bigger picture goals. So you need something like time block planning in the day, but time block planning has to be supported by a weekly plan that you do every week. And that weekly plan has to be informed by your quarterly plan. That combined with the full capture of David Allen’s system is what I think is table stakes for sort of non-trivial complexity knowledge work today. I wish it wasn’t the case, by the way. I had this conversation with Oliver Berkman. I wish it was the case you didn’t have to do that in most knowledge work jobs. I’m jealous of the fact that, you know, him, for example, just doing writing full time doesn’t have to plan like that. That’s probably more natural. But in a standard job where you have a desk and an email inbox and more than a few Zoom invites coming at you every day, this is sort of table stakes for not losing your sanity and for building Career capital. So if you’re struggling with your quarterly planning, that’s just practice. What I would argue is what’s more important is that you’re actually following the framework of multi-scale planning is more important than the content of those plans at first.-
Multi-Scale Planning with GTD
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Use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) for full capture of obligations to reduce stress.
Couple GTD with multi-scale planning (quarterly, weekly, daily) to effectively control your attention and make better decisions about your time.
Cal Newport
That’s not, however, a sufficiently advanced system for controlling your attention.-
Lifestyle-Centric Planning vs. Grand Goal Strategy
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The ‘grand goal’ strategy for a good life involves focusing all energy on one important goal, assuming its success will bring overall life satisfaction.
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This can lead to constant preoccupation and inability to enjoy other aspects of life because the goal becomes the sole key to meaningfulness.
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The alternative is ‘lifestyle-centric planning,’ where you envision your ideal lifestyle in all its elements (not just professional) and work backward to achieve it.
This involves creating concrete scenarios that bring you closer to that vision, assessing their feasibility, and systematically pursuing the chosen path.
Cal Newport
I feel like it’s never enough. Well, Sirtak is a common, it’s a common issue. And it’s an issue that comes out of using as your philosophy or strategy for constructing a good life the grand goal strategy. The grand goal strategy says you pick something that’s important to you, you put all of your energy into mastering that thing, and in that success, your life will become good. That’s what’s going on now. You’ve implicitly put all of your eggs in the aviation basket. And because of that, your mind is like, well, this is going to be the key to us feeling like our life is meaningful, is succeeding in this goal of aviation. Then why are we doing anything else? So of course, your attention keeps coming back to this. And you’re having a hard time enjoying or being present for anything else because you have set this up in your mind as the key, the thing you were doing to make your life better. What is the contrast? As we talked about in the deep dive, it’s lifestyle-centric planning. You say, what I want to build is a vision of my ideal lifestyle in all of its elements, not just professional, but in all of its elements. What is the general properties of my ideal lifestyle? And then you work backwards asking, how do I get there? And you do that by coming up with different instantiations, like different concrete scenarios that move you closer to that. And you see which of these is most feasible. And then you begin pursuing the-
Lifestyle-Centric Planning Benefits
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Lifestyle-centric planning helps you enjoy other aspects of life besides your main goal.
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It incorporates various elements of your ideal life, not just professional ones.
By considering all aspects, you’re more likely to pursue and appreciate things like time with friends, hobbies, and community involvement alongside your career goals.
Cal Newport
A, you’re just much more likely to pursue and enjoy the other stuff that’s part of that plan right away. You’re not going to push the stuff aside that you’ve just identified as important just to focus on this one thing because they’re part of what you want in your life. That time with friends, the outdoor hobbies, the community leadership, whatever it is, like, well,-
Process-Focused Planning
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Focus on the process of achieving your goals, not just the goals themselves.
Regularly review and refine your process, like Darwin’s approach to study habits.
Cal Newport
The final thing you can do is once you know what the particular target you’re aiming for in aviation and why is you can care about process. Once a quarter when you’re doing your quarterly plan, go back and review my process for working on this career, like how I’m studying, how I’m training, how I’m trying to, like, how is That going? Just like I advise students do at college where I say, my famous advice was to study like Darwin. Always go back and evaluate all the things you’re doing as part of your academic activities. Get rid of the stuff that’s not working and prove the stuff that is. You evolve your study habits over time. Do the same thing with your process. Okay, here’s a good process that I think is going to keep me on track for my goals in aviation, which is part of my bigger lifestyle vision. Let’s try this for a quarter. At the end of the quarter, I will evaluate and maybe we’ll make some changes. Then during the quarter itself, you can just execute. Yeah, I’m just focusing. I have a process. I execute. Here’s how much time it takes. I just trust this is right. If it’s not right, within a few months, I’ll notice that and we’ll change it. It’s not the stakes aren’t so high. And again, you’re able to pay attention to things outside of it. So you become more process focused as well. Lifestyle centric planning is really at the key of navigating this tightrope that we talked about in the in-depth episode, I guess it was last week. Man, my time might’ve been the week before. Jesse, when was the in-depth episode with Kendra? Did that come out last week? Yes. Okay. So last week’s in-depth interview episode with Kendra Adachi, we’re talking about- When they hear this, it’s going to be Monday.-
Pseudo-Productivity’s Downfall
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Pseudo-productivity, or visible activity, may seem important in a current job, garnering attention from bosses.
However, it doesn’t translate to actual value creation, making it irrelevant when seeking new employment.
Cal Newport
Because this is the reality of pseudo productivity and it’s what makes it sort of insidious. That’s not how you say that. That’s how you say that. Insidious? That’s not right.
Jesse
I was just going to look it up.
Cal Newport
I pronounced that dead wrong.
Jesse
I was literally just about to look it up.
Cal Newport
I mean, I can spell it. Again, I’m a writer not a speaker uh that’s what makes it dangerous let’s use simple words here insidious that’s not how you say that well anyways insidious maybe insidious no oh my god We’re going down a rabbit hole now we’re gonna get a lot of emails on this oh my god we have to distract people from this so they don’t email us about this. Brandon Sanderson wrote Name of the Wind. I’m trying to distract the audience so they forget about Insidious Gate. I’m just blocking on things. But here’s what makes pseudoproductivity dangerous is that within a current job, it feels like what’s giving you good attention. It feels like this is what matters. Visible activity. My boss sees I respond to those emails so quickly. I am on that Slack channel so fast. Like you’re not even done sending your Slack message and you see the dots that indicate that I’m typing back in response, right? In the moment, this feels like the most important thing you can do to help your career but as soon as you’re left that job and someone says why should we hire you none of that matters pseudo Productivity doesn’t actually directly create value you are not going to impress an employer if you say my average-
Focus on Value You Bring to a Company
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When seeking employment, focus on the concrete value you’ll add, not pseudo-productivity.
Quantify the money you’ll bring in above your salary, emphasizing your direct contribution to the company’s bottom line.
Cal Newport
There’s this cool book written by Jeff Fox years ago. Jeff Fox, who wrote How to Become CEO, which was the inspiration for my first book, How to Win at College, which I pitched to Jeff’s agent. Or no, it was Jeff, the editor who bought that book for Jeff, who became an agent, Lori, my longtime agent. I pitched to her. I said, I want to write How to Become a CEO, but for college kids. He then wrote a follow-up book called Don’t Send a Resume about getting hired. And he had this sort of extreme idea that’s more relevant to sales than other places. But I think at the core of the idea is critical. He said, here’s how you get hired. If you get your resume, quantify how much money you’re going to bring in above your salary, right? I’m going to cost you this much money in salary. I’m going to bring in this much money. The second number is this much larger. So by hiring me, you’re getting this much money. That’s ultimately what matters. Now in sales, you can actually do that calculation. You can say, I expect to bring in $3 million in sales per year. Here’s my salary. This is how much profit you’re going to make off. I’m going to increase the bottom line by this much. But you can hint at this in non-sales jobs as well by focusing relentlessly on the things you can do that directly brings in value to the company. That’s what matters. Not generic skills, not your people skills, not your character, not what you’re owed. None of that really matters to them. What matters is, does our bottom line number, our profit number get larger or smaller once we have you on board?
