Ep. 248: Decoding Overload

Cal Newport talks about Decoding Overload in Episode 248 of the Deep Questions podcast.

Few professional experiences feel worse than overload. But what really causes this unfortunate state? In this episode, Cal takes a closer look at overload, identifying its main culprits, identifying solutions, and helping listeners with their specific overload-related questions.

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0:00 Cal's intro
4:00 Operations of overload
24:30 Cal talks about Huel and Rhone
26:28 Does Cal use an executive assistant?
36:50 How do I write an effective communication policy for my team?
42:57 Does overhead compound exponentially?
48:19 How rare are high expectation/low overhead jobs?
51:55 My job has few shallow obligations. What should I do with my free time?
55:30 Cal talks about Zocdoc and Blinkist
59:57 The future of social media is less social

Connect with Cal Newport:

About Cal Newport:
Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to his academic research, he writes about the intersection of digital technology and culture. Cal's particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives.

Cal is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including, most recently, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. He's also the creator of The Time-Block Planner.

The videos are considered to be used under the "Fair Use Doctrine" of United States Copyright Law, Title 17 U.S. Code Sections 107-118. Videos are used for editorial and educational purposes only and I do not claim ownership of any original video content. I don't use said video clips in advertisements, marketing or for direct financial gain. All video content in each clip is considered owned by the individual broadcast companies.

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[anaybaid]

What an amazing video Cal! Learnt so much about decoding!! :)

[PlanningwithChloe]

I love that you got hung up on the phonetics! I'm not a 'writer' but I also care about how words flow, in the auditory sense, and whether they feel like they're tripping over themselves when spoken aloud

[nonedone]

Holy shit, i did notice that you didn't say 'in an increasingly'. We are so used to it Cal. Please bring it back 😂

[theencryptedpartition]

This is absolutely true. I always get overwhelmed when my to-do list just piles up. I need to finish 3 programming projects, 1 extended essay, and 2 projects related to math and economics. I feel my program losing rationality. I just wish I could remove these emotions whenever I could.
Unfortunately, my interest/fascination usually occurs whenever I go to bed. I do look at my phone and suddenly get super interested in hard topics like mathematics and physics at higher level, but I guess my mind is playing irrational game theory with me

[datafriki]

Maybe people is just lazy and don't know or want to use shared docs or even document anything. Another tool will not improve at all. I see that most of the times we "work" and decide on a meeting but never document what was discussed or agreed on that meeting what leads to more meetings, more discussions and more status updates.

[drbenirusani]

Hi Cal, as someone who understands how new technology (and its limitation) impacts on productivity, we are wondering what your take on iPhone:
1) which iPhone model do you use?
2) how do you decide when to upgrade your iPhone? (They don't come cheap nowadays)
3) what other devices you have in the Apple ecosystem that you use to improve your productivity?

Thanks! from Malaysia

[bluebellbeatnik]

I have so much mental overload I can't watch 1 hour long video. I hope to return to this someday unless you can do a tl/dr version or 'short' of this.