Should I Turn Off the Internet? (Lessons From a Family That Did) | Monday Advice

It’s a dream a lot of us have: to finally say “enough!”, and turn off the internet inside our homes, returning us to a lifestyle that requires more presence, introspection, and connection. But is this even possible? And what would it really be like? In this episode, Cal seeks answers to these questions by talking to Chris Moody, a journalism professor at Appalachian State, who lives with his wife and young son in a cabin with no internet, television, or cellular signal. Below are the questions covered in today's episode (with their timestamps). Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: https://bit.ly/3U3sTvo Video from today’s episode: youtube.com/calnewportmedia (0:00) Should I turn off the internet? (3:28) Interview with Chris Moody (1:02:58) Cal’s closing remarks Links: Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at www.calnewport.com/slow Get a signed copy of Cal’s “Slow Productivity” at https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/ Cal’s monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba? Thanks to our Sponsors: This show is sponsored by Better Help: https://www.betterhelp.com/deepquestions https://www.calderalab.com/deep https://www.shopify.com/deep https://www.pipedrive.com/deep Thanks to Jesse Miller for production and mastering, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Nate Mechler for research and newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Cal Newport?

  Have you ever had one of those days where you're so fed up from the constant connectivity and the distraction that you wish you could just turn back the clock to the 1990s? I mean, I'm talking about a time where work couldn't easily follow you home. Like if your boss wanted you after hours, he would have to call you on a landline. A time where you could build a delightful evening out of whatever random video you're able to pick up at the rental store? Well, not long ago, I met someone who is doing exactly this. His name is Chris Moody. He teaches journalism at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina, which is a small scenic town that's perched right off of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

• 0:45Cal Newport?

  Now, Chris lives along with his wife and his young son in a cabin that's located about 15 minutes outside of town that receives no cell reception and has no internet. Their only connection to the outside world is a landline phone. Now, this connection is on purpose. Chris and his wife used to live a frenetic life in New York City where Chris was a senior correspondent for CNN Politics. But after the pandemic hit, they decided to live more intentionally. Now, Chris's situation raises some fascinating questions. What's it actually like to live in 1990s mode?

• 1:25Cal Newport?

  And what lessons can the rest of us learn from his experience? Well, it's Monday, which means it's time for an advice episode of this show, which is the perfect opportunity to seek some answers. So here's what I did. I called up Chris because I wanted to find out more about what led him to that cabin in Boone. What is the actual reality of his current life? I have a bunch of questions about some like in the weeds details about how does he do this and how does he do that? And most importantly, what lessons can we extract for the rest of us who might also be tempted to try something extreme in the quest for a deeper life? Now, look, I love this conversation. You'll hear it in my voice. I was expecting to come away with mixed emotions like that was cool, but that seems like

• 2:09Cal Newport?

  it was pretty hard. But to be honest, it was almost entirely inspiring. I think Chris's brand of hybrid simplicity. Really is pretty compelling, especially when he discusses the impact of this way of living on his young son. Let me give you a spoiler from later in the interview. He tells me about recently taking his three-year-old son to a modern dance performance. They were sitting in the front row, and he said his three-year-old son, who has only grown up around 1990s tech, none of these like screens and iPads and Bluey or whatever, was able to sit and give full focus to this modern dance performance while the boomers around them couldn't help but fidget and look at their phones before the performance ended.

• 2:54Cal Newport?

  All right, so anyways, look, if you've, if you've ever felt like taking an extreme step towards attentional living, but are maybe worried about the reality or looking for some inspiration to make changes, you have to listen to this episode. I think you're gonna love it. As always, I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, the show for people seeking depth in an distracted world.

• 3:26Cal Newport?

  Well, Chris, I'm glad we finally found this opportunity to get you on the show. I feel like I talk about you to people all the time, so now we can actually spread your story more widely. I wanted to start, if you could just set the stage about where you currently live and what that lifestyle is like, and then we'll go back and kind of build up the story to how you got there.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Well, thanks so much for having me on the show, Cal. It's great to be here. I live in Southern Appalachia, in Boone, North Carolina, with my wife and my son. He is three years old now. And for the past three years, we've been living in a log cabin without internet access or cellphone service. We're kind of deep in the holler, so the cellphone towers don't really get to us. And three years ago, we went to the cable company and had our Wi-Fi turned off and had a landline plugged in. We did that for many reasons that you and I will discuss today, but we realized that the life of Permanent, constant digital connection was not serving us, was not serving our family life.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And I found it personally to be so powerful and intoxicating that the only thing we decided we could do was to cut it off inside our home and live a life together in our home without digital connection. We certainly engage with the internet outside of the home, but when we're at home, it is our sanctuary, our Sabbath space. And we did that for many, many reasons. We started doing it when my son was just a couple of months old, so an infant in the house. And anyone who has children knows what a household like that is like. And I found myself, especially after our son was born, just getting deeper and deeper into screen time.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  As maybe a lot of people can relate, I think my screen time app at that time had said maybe four, six, maybe sometimes eight hours a day, just looking at the phone. When you have a newborn in the house, there's a lot of sitting around together, waiting, just being together. And I would pull out the phone and just scroll, scroll, scroll. It got worse and worse and worse. And my wife told me that when you pull out your phone, it's as though you disappear. And I started to think, is this what life is going to be like for the rest of our lives? Because it's pretty mediocre. I'm not really enjoying this. And one day, I said to my wife, I think we need to do something different. And she said, "Sounds like we should get rid of the internet." I said, "When?"

• 6:01Speaker 01

  She said, "Right now." It was something we thought we'd do for a couple of months, maybe for a summer. That was three years ago, and we have not gone back. And it's the greatest decision I've ever made.

• 6:11Cal Newport?

  I have a long list of questions about the reality of your internet-free life, but let's now, let's back up the tape to get to this point. So where I'm going to start is, how did you end up in Boone, right? So where were you before that? Because I get the feeling to move there, you were already thinking in terms of being intentional about your life. So back up the tape to before you moved to the Hollers of North Carolina and how that decision emerged.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Well, I was a senior correspondent for CNN Politics, covering presidential campaigns, Congress, and living in Washington DC and later, New York City. And as you might imagine, a life of a political journalist is very connected. I was working constantly. Work was my life, it was my religion, it was my...

• 7:07Speaker 01

  It was everything at that time. And I would be connected in the middle of the night. I would wake up and check stories to make sure they were okay. I would check social media. If I told you at that time that I had a hobby, I would have been lying. Work was everything to me. And so, I always dreamed of a time, like maybe someday I could live and be disconnected, or something like that. And my wife had been talking about doing this in different ways, but it just was impossible as a political correspondent in DC and in New York.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  But we would play around with this at times. We would, in our apartment in New York City, where of course, you know, you can't get away from cell service or anything like that. We would put our phones in baskets by the door, between like 6:00 and 8:00 PM. And we would call that cabin-ing, kind of pretending that we were off the grid for just two hours. And it felt so rebellious to just be alone together, without any chance of anyone reaching us, even just for a couple of hours. And we realized the freedom of time. It hearkened back... Listeners might have experienced this. You go on vacation in the 1990s or something like that, to a cabin or a lake house. And time sort of expands. There's no phone, there's no internet, there's... I mean, back then, certainly.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  And you were just alone with your family, playing backgammon, taking long walks, having those deep conversations. That cabin life that we cherish on those long summer days. Over time, when I would meet with my family, those cabin days started to dwindle down. First, it was flip phone games, and then it was laptops out in the common area. And then till finally, it was smartphones. And all that kind of deep time we had together was slowly eroding. And fast forward to the 20-teens, my wife... And I really wanted to kind of take back what it felt to be in a cabin in our apartment in Manhattan in New York City.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And so we had these kind of small little rebellions, things like that. It just, it felt like we were getting away with something. Then in 2018, there was a reshuffling at the network where I worked and I was laid off. And we had an opportunity at last to kind of give up that digital connection. So we actually gave away most of our possessions and we built a solar powered tiny house into the back of a used cargo van. And my wife and I lived for two years, traveling the country in a cargo van, living in national forests, national parks,

• 9:40Speaker 01

  mostly off the grid, largely in search of other people that were dissatisfied with modern life and finding alternatives and new ways to opt out of modern kind of distraction and opt into new ways of living. And then we took that and then actually moved back to New York City right before COVID started. And we had, we had never installed the internet into our apartment, our new apartment in New York. So we were living internet free in an apartment in New York City and then COVID happened and everything went online. And COVID kind of moved us out of New York City again. And we ended up in Boone, North Carolina, where I teach journalism at Appalachian State University.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And that presented itself, this wonderful opportunity. Here was a place where we live that does not have cell service because it's rural. And we can turn off the internet and have that log cabin experience that we always wanted to have. And now we're doing it with a child in the home and the challenges that come with that. Being able to keep the culture at bay and then allow it into our home on our own terms and not on its terms. And that's really what motivates us.

• 10:53Cal Newport?

  Hey, let's take a quick break to hear from some of the sponsors that make this show possible.

• 10:58Speaker 02

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• 11:28Cal Newport?

  Well, first of all, disclaimer for the audience who is watching, who's wondering, where is Chris talking from? That is not his cabin. There is no internet there. He's actually on vacation and this is a, what'd you say, a friend's barn? Is that how you describe it?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yes, but it has wifi, thank goodness, yeah.

• 11:44Cal Newport?

  I have to back you up though about this cargo van situation. Like, okay, let's go there. First of all, when you say cargo van, are we talking about one of those Sprinter vans? Are we talking about one of those like white, you know, vans that the painters drive around?

• 11:58Speaker 01

  It's a white Ram Promaster, like something that an electrical company or a painter would have. And it was nondescript because our plan was to live as long as we could without paying rent. We were paying off about a lot of student loans, let's just say, in the six figures of student loans. And we were just trying to live rent free so we could pay off our student loans. And we just lived in places that didn't have access to the internet. We learned the joy of living together without those distractions as a couple. At this time, we did not have a child. And getting to know one another kind of on those terms and realizing what an abundant, rich life that we had together without constant distractions in our lives that we had when

• 12:42Speaker 01

  we lived in New York and in Washington.

• 12:44Cal Newport?

  Where were some of the places, where were some of the places you went?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Well, we did 50,000 miles. We would kind of go back and forth following the weather. We didn't have heat or air conditioning in the back cabin of the van. So we would follow, you know, when it got hot, we went up. When it got cold, we went down, you know? And that included national forests out in the west. You know, for anyone interested in this, you can camp for free. All over the United States of America and Canada and Mexico, if you want to, you know. And so you don't always have to like pay for a campsite and we built systems into our van that allowed us to be off grid for long periods of time in many ways. And it transformed the way we approach a more normal life today with a child, with a job,

• 13:30Speaker 01

  with a house and not just traveling around in a van.

• 13:33Cal Newport?

  Like what, let's say like, I mean, I'm just fascinated by this. So let's say it's like a day where you're not driving, you're parked at a state park somewhere, you know, out west. What would you do during that day?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yes, wake up. We have enough solar power from the sun to boil one pot of water for our coffee. We sit and read for three hours in the morning, go out into the woods, collect,

• 13:59Speaker 01

  collect wood for a fire, build a fire, have breakfast, maybe take a hike, do some writing. You know, maybe I travel into town, get on wifi, send pitches to editors. I'm a writer, you know, write magazine stories and things like that. Then go back into the woods and write and cook and read. It was really was a really ideal kind of situation. And then pack up the van and move on to the next place, however long we were staying somewhere. But it involved a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of time together, really understanding how we wanted to live. We were, you know, on the brink of wanting to start a family and have children and just,

• 14:40Speaker 01

  it was really a blessing to be able to think deeply about the kinds of Americans, the kinds of people we wanted to be. I'll tell you, it really feels like living the standard way where you just go with the flow is not leading people to a happy place. I think you need to be intentional and follow your north star and know what that is. But you have to give yourself the time to understand what you think about things. And I feel like with so many distractions coming at us, so much content flooding our lives and our, even our most private spaces, people don't really have the time anymore to think, what is the good life? What is the life I want to live? And this provided us with that time to come to those conclusions together.

• 15:22Cal Newport?

  So you were getting insight because you could introspect. So you're getting insight into what mattered to you and your wife. And the answer was not, "We want to just live in a van forever." It was more the simplicity of the van gave you the time and space to figure out what you actually cared about. Is that the way you would think about it?

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yes, we pared everything down to its just most basic forms. We only had a couple of hundred watts of solar, so very limited amounts of power. We had 72 square feet for two people. You know, you can imagine the privacy. You know, you gotta be with someone you really trust and know and like, you know, a lot. There's nowhere to escape arguments. You're together all of the time, not just together, but five feet from each other. You only have a couple pairs of clothes, kind of a capsule wardrobe. Just living very, very simply. There's no room to store anything like that. And that, getting those distractions out and just focusing on the essentials of life. Something as simple as, "What do we eat today?" Okay? "Do we have enough water? We have to collect water. We have to collect wood." Those kinds of chores.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you, just from a family perspective, the time in the van kind of made me realize that I had been a lazy husband. Because in 72 square feet, Cal, if one person is lounging and the other person is working, there's no escaping the contrast. So I'd be lying on the bed, reading while my wife maybe is cooking dinner. And it was just so obvious. The balance of labor was completely off. And so we had to do things together and continue till the job was done. There was no, you know, husband kind of escaping to another room and not being found, you know. And frankly, it made me a much better husband in realizing the work that I needed to do to make the household run, or in our case, the van.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  And then the question was, going forward, how do we apply this to a more normal life? And I think we got sidetracked a little bit. And with the intoxication of modern life when we came back from the woods, so to speak. But in our current lifestyle, living in a log cabin without the internet, we have really found what we were looking for the entire time.

• 17:29Cal Newport?

  So what are some of the other, like, insights you had during that experience that you've now carried through to the life you created now? I'm curious in like what type of epiphanies one might have in those situations.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  There are so many, certainly communicating with one another just as a married couple, getting, you know, doing things together. Learning that time, when it's not distracted and punctuated by those distractions, can expand and feels almost luxurious to have time together where there aren't things that you're seeking for, just constant consumption, constant entertainment. Living with very little will make you think a lot about kind of how much you consume, how much you, things you own, how much water you use, those kinds of things, how much power you use. We had to get by on very, very little power and just as much water as we could carry.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And so it just makes you hyper-aware of all of those, all of those things. But also, just the contrast of going back into society, maybe having dinner at a restaurant, and you know, sometimes they have TVs at a sports bar or something. And, once you've been in the woods for long enough, television and commercials start to look crazy to you. Just, just, everything is, is kind of lower quality in terms of the things that they're advertising, don't look enticing anymore. You've had the richness of the woods, the richness of nature, of true quality time with one another, and you go and you watch an ad for a new Verizon cellphone, and you're just like, "I don't, I don't really want that." You know? Or certainly, coming back into a city, and this was the time in the mid-20 teens, when

• 19:08Speaker 01

  we were making the transition to 100% smartphone adoption, for the most part, and the streaming wars. And so, all of a sudden, the world had shifted while I had been in the woods for a couple of years. And now, there are all these things I'd never heard of, Disney Plus, Apple Plus, all those kinds of things during that time. And it, it was as though there was just a flood of consumption content being put on people. And it was really overwhelming to see, everybody else had kind of gone through it like a slowly-boiled frog, and we just jumped into the deep end very quickly. And to, to see that contrast, just, it, it allowed us to know what we want and what we don't want. And sometimes you have to separate yourself from the culture in order to see it clearly.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Otherwise, we're really just kind of looking at it as, as part of it. You do have to back up a little bit, but you can only do that if you allow yourself the space to do it.

• 20:00Cal Newport?

  Now, I, I imagine being a political, like a reporter in a major city, like, there's... Two big driving forces or hard to escape would be money and fame. Like you're a reporter in New York City, you're like, I guess I want to be Anderson Cooper. I want to be Jake Tapper, whatever. How did your, your thinking about money and fame and notoriety? How did that change when you got some space from it?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  That's a hard one. It really is because it is fun to be on TV. It is fun to have your name published in, in major publications and, and I still, I still do that. You know, and I get to use those, those skills. But in a way you are saying goodbye. I, I think it was a real wrestling in our minds when we decided to leave New York. I didn't want to go. I, I, you know, I grew up, you know, in the suburbs of this kind of a normal town. And to be in New York was everything to me. It was the epitome of all of my life's work dreams. And to leave it was, was very difficult. But Cal, I had made work my identity.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I had made it my idol. And that's an unhealthy relationship with work. And, and I think leaving that allowed me to have a better relationship with work. To allow me to do what I want to do, to write what I wish to write and appear. You know, I continue to appear on shows, things like this. And, but not have it consume my life in the way. I have no regrets that I was able to do that incredible work, travel around the country, chase Donald Trump around, you know, ask him questions, those kinds of things as a reporter. Absolutely loved doing it for that season of life. But I never would have been living the way I am, never would have been raising my son the way that I am if we hadn't left. His life in Manhattan, if he were living there now, would be extremely different than

• 21:51Speaker 01

  it is now in a log cabin where he has access to the woods, the streams, the rivers, the trees, you know? It's, it's really an abundant life, I think we're giving to him.

• 22:00Cal Newport?

  Well, so moving forward the, the tape a little bit more. So you returned to New York, COVID hits. Like, okay, we're going to leave here. How did you end up where you are right now? So how did Boone enter the picture? Once you decided like, okay, yeah.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got back into the van, traveled south, just kind of looking for the next steps. This is in the early days of COVID. Things are really dark at that time. Spent some time in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we have family. Lived there for just a little bit. And then there was an opening for a teaching position at Appalachian State University in journalism and broadcast media, things that I've done for many, many years. And I applied and they gave me an invitation to come. And at that time, we were just finding out that we had a baby coming on the way. And we had been traveling for five, six years at that time, kind of off and on, a very, you know, jet setting or van setting kind of life. We had lived all over the country.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  We only had a van with two seats. We didn't have health insurance, you know? And the thought of having a little bit more security when my wife gives birth and we can raise a child was very enticing, the ability to teach and also continue writing. And that's how we got to Boone, which is a lovely, small town in, a medium-sized, small town, I would say, in northwestern North Carolina, right on the Blue Ridge Parkway. And has a large public university, part of the UNC system. And we found this cabin in the hauler and turned off the internet and that's how we've been living.

• 23:39Cal Newport?

  So what's the town like? So it's a college town. Is it like? I was just in Asheville recently, which I know is in the general sphere. It's like a smaller version of Asheville, like you have like an old historic downtown. You have like standard suburbs, I assume. Like what's the vibe like in the actual town?

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Much smaller than Asheville, not standard suburbs. People live either in the town or in the county in the mountains. So there's a pretty hard drop between city life and then mountain life. There is student housing, of course, around the town, but not suburbs in the sprawl in any way that you might consider in a place like Asheville or something like that. 10,000 people plus the students, which is about 20,000. So the city expands and retracts throughout the year. And it's, you know, it is a college town, but it's also a tourist town. It's where people come and a lot of Floridians have second homes there. And so you have an interaction that swings between 20-year-olds to 70-year-olds, you know?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  And then the major employers in Boone are the university, the hospital, and there's a major nonprofit there as well. Franklin Graham Samaritan's Purse is there. So you have a really, a really neat mix of people. It is a place of very high social trust, which I value very much. When I'm working in coffee shops, I don't even think twice about leaving my laptop on the desk. I don't even ask somebody to look for it, look after it when I step out for a moment. It's really, it's a place where your kids can run in the woods, where they can play in the parks, where parents don't necessarily hover over their kids very much. You can always tell when somebody's from out of town because they're kind of following their children around the playground. And so, you know, and it's also a place where people really came together when Hurricane Helene hit very, very hard at that time.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  And we really learned who our neighbors were and we found that they were incredible people that look after each other. So it's, it's a pretty splendid place there in the mountains. You know, it's part of the Appalachian. It's the highest in east of the Mississippi, highest mountains. And so we have ski resorts and it's, it's an ideal place to live for sure.

• 25:45Cal Newport?

  Yeah. So when you, when you were coming out there to take the position, it seems like it would have been a no-brainer, I guess, right? You're like, look, we will live not in town, but in the mountains because then we have cabin life. But we can also, I can go work at a coffee shop or at my office at campus. So was that a no-brainer when you got there? Like, yeah, this is great. Let's find something like a cabin, this metaphorical cabin that we've been simulating. Now we can actually do it without also having to be off-grid in the sense of it, we really aren't around any civilization.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  It actually became a lucky accident. Given the real estate crunch that is happening all over America and certainly in Boone, we had to be beggars more than choosers. In the place where we lived, there just wasn't a lot available on the market. And so, we were able to rent something just by accident that happened to be between the mountains that didn't get cell service. So it wasn't on purpose at all. And in fact, we installed the internet when we first moved in. We're just living a normal life. We have a baby coming. We have to have the internet. What if something happens? We didn't even think that it would be possible to do it. Until we found out what living with full-time Wi-Fi did to us. We had to re-understand this. Or, I would, I use "us" but it's really, certainly me, I think, is the real problem in this.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  We live about 12, 15 minutes from town. I can get a cell signal a mile away if I want to get closer and just send an email off or something like that. But, really, once we turned off the internet, it required me to drive into town to my office or to a library or coffee shop. And, and that really allows me to segregate work-life from home-life. I go to work, I do my work, it turns off, I come home, and I spend time with my son and my family. And, and that separation, I think, is really, really essential, Cal. We have blended these things out of convenience. And for some people, look, it's been, it's been really great, but I think there is a cost to, to that choice.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  There's a bargain we've made, that your boss can always reach you, and that you can always be distracted, always wonder, is there an email? Whereas, what I really try to do is I close the laptop and that's my time away from the office, and now I'm, I'm home. And that separation has, has made things a lot better for us. And I would recommend that people, in their own way, try to find a way to kind of draw a strong line between work and home-life if they can.

• 28:10Cal Newport?

  Well, I have some, I have some questions about this, I'm interested. So, like, let's start with work. People are used to, so you have bosses, right? I mean, you have bosses, department chairs, I assume, at the university. When you're working on articles freelance, you have editors. Did people just adjust? Like, tell me about, people fear if I'm not available. Like, if I don't, I'm not around to answer that email at 5:00 because I'm home and I won't be around till the next morning. It's gonna be a big problem. It's gonna, everything is gonna fall apart. What was the reality of the lack of communication at home when it came to your work? What ended up happening with the other people in your professional life?

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Far less than I ever anticipated. I actually, I think you say this all the time on your show. People are thinking about you a lot less than you think that they are, you know? I thought that we would turn off the internet in our home for a summer and that once the semester began, where I was teaching again, I gotta go right back. Like, I just expected that. And I was speaking to my chair and I was telling him, like, "Don't worry. I'll be back online by the fall." And he just said, "I hope you're not. I hope you don't stop doing this." And there was a privilege to having that kind of license, certainly, to do that. It requires you setting up systems for work, certainly. You have to make expectations clear. I will answer email between 9:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. And I will answer it within 12, 24 hours.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  I'll be, you know, I'm pretty good on email when I'm on, you know? People don't really expect me to respond to emails after 6:00 p.m. And that's been just fine. I've received a couple of phone calls from colleagues after that time. Not a big deal, especially if it's, you know, a breaking news kind of thing, something really, really important, but it's just so rare. People don't want to bother you after work hours. I would imagine that in many cases, if a boss sends you an email after it's 8:00 p.m. or so, they don't really expect you to respond. Now, this can be not true for a lot of people, but the consequences have been low. It does require me to get in the car and drive out and maybe check an email at the bottom of the hill, you know?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Here and there, if I'm working with an editor on a freelance basis and trying to, you know, be there for people. But I make things very, very clear when I start a project with someone. Here's how you can reach me. You know, between these hours, just call my landline. And we installed a landline. And you can talk to me there. And that just hasn't been a problem. In fact, it's actually kind of a novel, fun thing for people to call on a landline to your home. But once people, you know, have the expectations set, and you're also diligent. When you're at work, you're at work. You're on, you're available. I'm available to my students, I'm available to my colleagues. I am here for them, I'm not distracted, or I try not to be, certainly. And I think when you make those things clear, they don't mind that you go home and live with your family after that.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  There's different jobs out there, like with CNN, probably this wouldn't work, I'd be in big trouble. And, but I still would try to build systems in that would help me at least have some time away from work-life. We have to have it. We used to have it. You know, when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, my dad would come home. And there was almost no way for people to reach him from work. They could call our house if they wanted, but that was really intrusive. He would come home every day and play catch with me until the sun went down, or we couldn't see, you know, under the, we'd play under the lamp. I guarantee you, if my dad had a smartphone in 1995, we wouldn't have played catch all of those days. And it would break my heart, you know, if that hadn't happened.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  And I don't know who I would be today if I didn't have that relationship with my father. And we've lost that. We've lost that when dad comes home and he's just on his phone the whole time, or, you know, just distracted. And I really want to give my son that time and attention when we're together. It's very important to me.

• 32:00Cal Newport?

  What about, second question I'm sure people are asking is like, okay, so what about entertainment? So what, you know, what do you do? It's Saturday, you're home, you know, young kids are not that exciting. As you said, there's a lot of waiting, a lot of nap time in the evening. What's been the reality of entertainment without, because everything's internet fueled now. TV is internet fueled, so what's that like for you now?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Well, let's talk about the principle behind this, first of all. We now live at a time where the entire culture is inside your house at all times. And the entire culture includes wonderful things like thought-provoking books and documentaries and great TV shows, certainly. It also includes hardcore pornography. It also includes addictive gambling. All of the sudden, just in the past couple of years, we've allowed these things into our bedrooms, into our bathrooms, into our homes. Whereas before, if you wanted to indulge in some kind of things that are maybe outside the, something our Southern Baptist brethren would appreciate, you know, our ancestors would appreciate, right? You had to go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas to gamble,

• 33:03Speaker 01

  or, you know, to do things that you shouldn't be doing, or so to speak, right? And now, all of that is in our home. And so, that's a game changer, that's a real change in, in life. And, and so, we still engage with the culture, but it's on our terms. At the threshold of our door, we have far more control of what comes in, instead of just the tidal wave. It's kind of like the ocean, right? I, I grew up as a surfer in California, love the ocean, but I would hate to have it, my house be underneath it, right? I know how beautiful it is, I know how deadly it is. And I kind of see just the vast scope of culture as, as that kind of, that kind of way, right? So, we still have entertainment in our home.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  I go to the library and I think, what kind of films would we want to watch this weekend? It requires thoughts, premeditation, kind of conversation with my wife, and then also even now our, our three-year-old. And we'll rent DVDs. We have a DVD and a Blu-ray player, but we don't have a television. We have, I, I bought a 1960's classroom pull-down screen that I attached to hooks at the wall. I have a projector. And I have to set all of this up if we want to watch something. So it takes about 10 minutes, there's friction. I can't just sit down and click on the TV. I have to think, I have to think a few days ahead, rent the movies, or the, you know, whatever we're getting. I have to set up the, the film setup.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  And that friction allows us to be very thoughtful about what we're watching. And it also has the benefit of having a beginning and an end. There's no endless scroll on a DVD. There's some special features, but they don't go that far, right? There's no automatic pre, you know, rolling on YouTube Kids or something like that. When the film is over, the film is over. And that matters a lot if you have a three-year-old. It also goes back to the library, so you can't just watch it constantly. So there's that. I also download magazines from the library onto an iPad and that I'll read that on the weekends. That also has a beginning and an end. You can't just scroll it forever or I'll download the New York Times.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  And then we have an abundance of books in our home and we have trails outside to go walk around. So I thought, Cal, that I would be desperately bored and wonder what am I going to do with myself? Am I just gonna stare at the wall here? I'm never bored. There's so much to do. When you get rid of one thing that's not serving you, it gives you an abundance of time to dive into the things you really want to do on your terms. It's not just something that's popping up and saying, "Hey, look at this. Look at me." Or even the things that I shouldn't be engaging in, whether it's gambling or whatever, things like that. And there's a power in that. It's really been very, very special. Especially having a young child in the house. He has just an abundance of books that he can read and you know how children are.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  They like to read things over and over and over again. I'm actually, right now, reading Daniel Mendelsohn's translation of The Odyssey to my three-year-old. And he loves it. It's one of his whole life.

• 36:09Cal Newport?

  Yeah, really.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  It's very oral. Yes, yes. And it's been magnificent to be reading that to him and have him just love these stories. Because you think children are going to consume content in some way, right? There's, you know, whether it's bluish or something like that. I figure, why not make the content something that can last their entire life? That they can have a relationship with, something as enriching and enduring as Homer, where he can understand it as a three-year-old and then in 10 years as a 13-year-old and then as a grown man. I think it's very special to have that as a young age. So to answer your question, there's plenty of entertainment, but we do have to be thoughtful about it. It doesn't just pop into our house.

• 36:52Cal Newport?

  Well, as an aside, I bet you're a, you get probably much more benefit out of movie watching than the rest of us. Cause you're in nineties mode. I think about this a lot. When it's just, this is what I have to do. We're putting on this movie and there's not something I can be doing at the same time. So I can't also be looking at a phone. Or even if I put the phone in the other room, I don't have this constant in the back of my mind. There could be something more engaging I could be doing and I have to keep having that argument with my mind. But let's keep watching this. I bet without it, the experience of just watching something, cause you're like, this is what I have, I want this. I want to get as much benefit out of this as I can. Like what, even if it's not the best movie, like I can get lost in the world and find interesting, you know, elements or whatever.

• 37:34Cal Newport?

  You're probably used to it now, but I bet if we could transport someone into your mind for just watching a movie. That psychic experience for them would be like, uh, going to the sphere in Las Vegas. It would be like, whoa. That was completely different than what I'm used to.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  It's true. There's no second screen and I don't have to have that constant battle of resisting urges to see if there's something better out there. Because I don't have access to it. And I require not having access to it because that little voice in my head that says, why don't you just check that email? Why don't you just check that sports score? It's, it's gone. It's not in my head. I mean, it, it just not having access to it changes everything. Because the exhaustion is not necessarily in the consumption of the media. It's in the constant fight I have with that voice of whether I should be engaging with it or not at this moment. There's no clicking over to something else. And it's funny you say that, Cal, because in the week after we turned off the internet. I found myself ravenous for content.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I was reading everything I could get my hands on, cause my whole day was spent just consuming things online. And I was reading tags on pillows and I, it, once I finished all my magazines and I was just looking at all the binding of my books and everything. Just looking for something to kind of fill that addiction. Now that has lessened now and it's kind of feels very silly in hindsight. And certainly in the moments after the internet went down. I went around the house looking for a signal of some kind that, that I could find. And, and so, once I realized that.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  It was gone. There was no getting it back. It changed everything.

• 39:12Cal Newport?

  But you adjusted. That's interesting. So like now, you're just operating at a slower, you're more comfortable with a slower pace at home. It's like, I'm doing this now, and now I'm going to do that. And that changed. That's what, that's interesting to me, is that, that sense of like, I need content. How long did that take? I always hear two weeks. People always talk about two weeks being an important threshold. Was it roughly that for you?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  I think so. A week or two. You had on your show a study recently about people giving up a mobile internet for two weeks. And I would say that that is what is required for that kind of detox. You will find how little you miss it, and how rich real life can be. I don't know how people who do eight hours of screen time, or consume videos on Netflix all day, and have children actually do anything in the world. Just the time to cook the food, and clean the house, and take care of the child, and do your work, that takes up all of the time, at least in my case. And also, your thoughts are able to stretch for long

• 40:12Speaker 01

  periods of time. They are not punctuated by pings and, you know, things on your phone coming up, or even that kind of battle you have with a little voice in your head that says, maybe find something better. You just get to spend the day thinking a single thought for a long period of time. You really just can't do that in today's media ecosystem. I mean, the way I see it, Cal, there are billion-dollar industries that know everything about us, that want nothing but our attention and time. How are you and I, fragile human beings, any match for a billion dollars against us? There's no way. There's no way. We can't do it. And that's why I say we have to have spaces where we can opt out of those things.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  And for us, it's our home. For other people, it can be something smaller. But if we are living our life forever, as these just digital consumers, they've got us. They know everything about us. We're no match for it. And we have to find a place where we can kind of dive into our own humanity, and a space and a time to do that. I mean, it's, it's part of the reason why there's an ancient tradition of Sabbath in the Jewish and Christian traditions, where you are declaring independence from the secular world, from the market, and just saying, you know what? For one day, I don't need you. If you're a religious person, for one day, I can show that I only have reliance on God,

• 41:38Speaker 01

  right? But I think a secular person can embrace this in the same way, that I do have independence. And sometimes you just need to prove it to yourself, that I don't need these external things in order to thrive. And I think a lot of people haven't done that in a very long time. I certainly hadn't until we started.

• 41:54Cal Newport?

  I want to take another quick break to hear from some of the sponsors that make this show possible.

• 42:00Speaker 02

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• 42:30Cal Newport?

  Do you think because of your situation at home, and you've lost this sort of craving for the easy engagement of content, how does that change now when you're at the office for a workday? Are you working, like, is your mind while you're working, is it different than other people? Like, in other words, is it you don't, for example, you don't find yourself so easily distracted, you're able to stay more on task, the day feels more productive? Like, so what's the effect of that detox brain when you're actually like at your office at Appalachian State, just working on normal work?

• 43:03Speaker 01

  I'm certainly more refreshed. I come in ready to work. I know that I have a limited amount of time to do that work, and so I have to focus and do it. But I do get distracted. When I have access to those kinds of, those things, they just come roaring back. So I'm no saint in this. And I didn't do all of this because I am some kind of saint. I did this because I am the chief of sinners. I cannot, you know, focus if I'm not in the right place to do so. But I've gotten much better, better at it. But it does allow me to focus on work and be present with the students and with my colleagues

• 43:43Speaker 01

  in ways that I think I was just kind of constantly tired and irritable and distracted before. So it really changes me, because you know, you're just like, okay, here's my window to do the work. Let's knock it out. Let's get it done, you know? And then try to take that intention home with family life.

• 43:58Cal Newport?

  You're probably a very good email writer, I would assume, because when you know, we can't just start unspooling a back and forth conversation that can just kind of last into the night or whatever. I bet you would be like the case studies in Deep Work. You're like, I'm actually going to put into this email all of the information you kind of need for us to move forward because I don't have the luxury of just like, I'll just grab it on my, I'll grab it on my phone when you respond to me later tonight. So I would assume your emails are good.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yes, Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, Life Without Email. But that was the correct title, right?

• 44:30Cal Newport?

  A world without, a world without email.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Excuse me. Your books have been very instrumental in how we've built our work life here, certainly. Yes, I try to put everything in the email. And they know that, you know, this correspondence will end after six, you know? And I also try to do things in person, like, let's try to knock this out in conversation. I'm a big believer in phone calls. They're so much faster. Just knock this thing out in a 30-second phone call or a brief chat. I do not like back and forth emails at all or text exchanges. I try to keep, my phone is just a Nokia flip phone, by the way, so I can't send long text messages. It's exhausting to me. And so I try to keep that to just, you know, good,

• 45:14Speaker 01

  yes, I'll be home, those kinds of things. And if there's anything more than that, boom, I'm calling you on the phone. Some people might find that ridiculously obnoxious, but I find it to be so much faster to do anything meaningful that you need to just communicate something very quickly between two people.

• 45:29Cal Newport?

  Okay, final question about life without internet. You and I have talked about this before, but I found it fascinating. Raising a young kid with no internet, what was that like? Or what has that been like?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Well, let me start by saying, no regrets. This has been the best decision we have ever made, and I cannot imagine doing this.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  With a constant connection in the home. But I will also say that it raises challenges. When your child has some kind of medical issue, you can't just Google it and look it up. You know, you have to call the pediatrician or you have to call a family member. Now, I would argue that that reliance on your community or on your family is ancient. It's what people did forever. And actually having to make that phone call instead of just looking it up on AI or Google or something increases community. We are relying on each other more. My wife relies on the older mothers who have raised many children in ways she never would if she just was flipping through some kind of TikTok video to find the answer.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  It requires us to be very intentional of how we spend our time together. We don't just sit around and look at each other. We are reading books to him constantly. He has been read to since he was an infant. Hardback, you know, books, real books, including some of yours, Cal. I think I read them aloud while he was very little while I was reading them.

• 46:53Cal Newport?

  Poor kid, poor kid.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  And we're reading him The Odyssey now. It also requires us to...

• 47:00Cal Newport?

  I like that you put those next to each other. My books and The Odyssey. We're talking about the classics here, so it makes sense. We'll put these, these are all...

• 47:07Speaker 01

  The canon, of course.

• 47:08Cal Newport?

  The canon, the Western canon, yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. It requires us also to seek out community because we do not have the veneer of community that a digital phone provides, making us feel like we have community when we haven't even left the house. No, we crave it, so we have to go out. So my wife has started a volunteer forest school where dozens of children from the area come and run through the hills and swim in the rivers together and they build things in the forest. And so, you know, my child is constantly interacting with other kids in really healthy ways. Getting out there, we have to go to public spaces for, you know, for entertainment. So, you know, a lot of the weekend is spent at the public library, at the public museum, play spaces. We are out and about constantly.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  And I would argue, Cal, that we wouldn't be. If we had the luxury of being home and just being able to turn on a screen... We probably just stay home and watch Bluey or something, which is fine, I guess, for some times. But we don't. Any kind of media consumption we have with him, it is premeditated. We pick out a film, a DVD, we sit with him and watch it. It begins and then it ends, screen rolls up, we're done, right? There's no kind of just turn on the TV and, you know, let him just kind of veg out. It just doesn't happen. And that requires him to kind of rise to the occasion. He has to learn how to behave when, you know, he's with adults and with other children. There's no iPad to save him and there never will be. Certainly not in public spaces, at restaurants or things like that.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And I understand that like there's different circumstances for different people. But we've, we've really tried to do the hard work. And I, I tell you, it is harder. It is hard, especially with my wife spending most of the time with him. What's been really important is that we are both on board on this. It's, it's an idea that we share together. If anything, she's been more of a zealot than I have and she's brought me along. And I'm on board too, but I, she's really, really led this and I'm very proud of her for, for, for doing that. It's, it's had its extreme benefits. I, I can take my son anywhere. I took him to a modern dance performance.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  We sat on the front row and he watched the entire two hours while boomers all around us were playing on their phones. It was absurd. You know, he can, he can sit and watch a two hour movie. He's three years old, you know, and he, he loves The Odyssey. So it's, it's what we wanted to do, but it's required a lot of work. But I wouldn't trade it for anything.

• 49:42Cal Newport?

  So let's try to extract a lesson or two here before we begin to close. It's been fascinating and inspiring. So I'll take a stab at a lesson and then I'll let, you know, you respond or take a stab. So what I'm trying to do here is extract some ideas that the listener can take away with, when thinking about their own lives. So, so one idea that comes to mind hearing from you is, you know, I have this book I've been working on. It's coming out next spring about the deep life. And it's about the way I talk about on my show is like, I have a very sort of like structured way of thinking about this. I, I care as much about the, the how you make changes as I do what the content of the changes are. Because I think that's a little bit more idiosyncratic. And one of the ideas that comes up in the, in the book is that often.

• 50:24Cal Newport?

  Doing something remarkable in alignment with your values really makes a much bigger difference sometimes than just small things, right? Because you're signaling to yourself, you're signaling to the world, "I take this really importantly." It amplifies benefits to like really big levels that we often were a little tentative. Like, "Well, let's just nibble around the edges in safe ways." But sometimes it's in the remarkable changes in pursuit of values that you get the remarkable returns. You know, input in has to do with magnitude of output. All right, so I want to run on what your take on that lesson? And then what's another lesson that we might take away that we're not thinking about?

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Sometimes you do have to go big and do big things and make massive changes in order to make the life that you want. I think there's a lot of half-steps that people take, and certainly ones that I took. But if there is very little friction in keeping you from the things you shouldn't be doing, or things that are keeping you from a rich life, you're going to overcome that friction very, very easily. You have to sometimes do something extreme. And what I found is, I thought I would do this extreme thing for a short amount of time, and now I can't imagine living any other way. And I can't believe it's been three years. Now, lessons for other folks?

• 51:46Speaker 01

  I recognize that most people are not going to throw their Wi-Fi routers into the sea. I understand. I get it. Life is kind of digitally connected in ways increasingly so all the time. But I'd like to ask yourself, in the 2020s now, do you have a space in your life that cannot be touched by digital connection and all that comes with that? Do you have a single room? And not just a room, do you have a single amount of time, a single space, where you are free and independent of this? And I think that a lot of people would say, "No, I actually don't. This thing follows me everywhere." Or even if I, I love there was a listener to your show a few weeks ago who called, do what he calls "landlining," you know, putting the phone in the kitchen. I love that.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I can unplug it and take it to the couch. You know, like it gets into the cracks. And so I think I would recommend create what I would call a Sabbath space somewhere in your life, whether it's a time or a physical space where these things cannot go and never will go and do not have access. That's going to be essential and that and that might be not just a space, but a period of time where you really put your digital devices with you and your family away in a way you cannot reach them for even just try an hour, then try and then 24 hours or a weekend. The other thing is if you want to try this,

• 53:14Speaker 01

  you can't just copy and paste 21st century life into this and just, okay, we're going to live without the internet and we're going to keep going. No, no, no, you have to build 20th century systems back that had atrophied since that time. And so we wanted to live in our home a little bit more like the 1990s, but not the 1890s, right? You know, and so we had to go out and install a landline. And then we thought, well, we don't, we don't know the phone number for like the movie theater or the pediatrician or the church, you know. Uh, we have to get a phone book, you know? So we ordered a phone book. They still have the Yellow Pages. It's called the real Yellow Pages as though there's like all these other Yellow Pages.

• 53:55Cal Newport?

  A lot of competitors, sure.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, right. And we had to give everybody our landline phone. And we had to just kind of set these systems up for it to work because this would never work unless we did that, that work to make it, make it happen. So just, just acknowledging that you don't need constant access to this stuff that you can thrive and build a rich life. You know, you'll be far more engaged with your community. You'll be far more engaged with your public library. You will bring rich texts into your house that will be so much better than the sloppy you're constantly scrolling, scrolling through. And so there's many things that people do, but you just have to cut yourself off for a period of time.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  You just can't allow yourself to reach that cookie jar or else it just won't work because I guarantee you, given enough time, you're going to reach up and you're going to grab that cookie.

• 54:47Cal Newport?

  I like it. I think this is a great example of what I call lifestyle centric planning because you're working, more generally speaking, working backwards from your vision of an ideal lifestyle as opposed to working forward towards some like. Goal you came up with in advance, right? Because lifestyle centric planning can lead you to really interesting but unexpected places that you never would have, you know, in 2018, as you returned to your, you know, as you left CNN or wherever you were leaving, you never would have been like, oh, I know what I want to do next. That old cliche, taking a journalism job at Appalachian State and living in a cabin that doesn't have cell service. Like, it's not something that you would have thought of because it's not a common thing, but you had a clear vision, you had developed a clear vision of ideal lifestyle.

• 55:31Cal Newport?

  And then now you're open to see like interesting opportunities as they arose. It steered you through this sort of unpredictable path in advance to a really cool situation. So that's, that's the other lesson I'll leave with people. So when you work backwards from a clear vision of an ideal lifestyle, you'll end up in places you never would have conceived of in advance as this is where I want to get. So working backwards from where you want your life to be really can be more powerful than trying to come up with a goal that's going to fix your life. If we could just do this, then everything's going to be better. So I think you're illustrating a lot here. Before we go, you just started a new Substack. Is this right? I want you to tell people about it because I'm going to go subscribe for sure as soon

• 56:13Cal Newport?

  as we're done recording this interview, but maybe tell us a little bit more about what you're up to here.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yes, my wife and I have started a new Substack called The Opt Outers. And it will have a series of pieces of writing, interviews, essays about our life, living this digital off-grid life and how people can do it too. I think there's a lot of people out there who, who want to strive to be opt-outers in some way. And so I invite people to, to join, to join us. And we are hoping to turn this whole journey into a book here in the next year or so. So lots of, of writing to be done and I'm very grateful for anyone that wants to join us at The Opt Outers on Substack.

• 56:50Cal Newport?

  Yeah, so check out The Opt Outers. Also, just search for Chris Moody articles in general. He's written a lot of great stuff, including a classic Atlantic piece about, this is like early in your move, right? Like your, that first piece about moving to Boone. So if people want some more details, they should, they should search that out as well.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Yes, that's right. It was just in the first couple of months that we had done this. I'd like to write a follow-up piece now after three years of doing this, especially the impact it has had on our child. And that has just been so important, seeing how he has grown. And we've done, we've done this in such great contrast to the way the world has been moving. And I do just want to kind of reiterate, Cal, we don't reject the culture. We're not, you know, abstaining from everything. We engage with the culture. We go out into the world and we devour it, but it's on our own terms, right? And it, and we have control over what comes into our house. And that, I think, has been the healthiest way to, to

• 57:54Speaker 01

  live in these times where there's just a fire hose coming at you. And this is one way, you can turn off that spigot.

• 58:01Cal Newport?

  Well, Chris, I appreciate it. A lot of inspiration in here. We will for sure have a mailman on a horse deliver a phonograph of this interview. Once, once, this is the downside of doing what you did is you're going to, you're going to get a lot of bad, like jokes and asides and reactionary critiques. So that's probably just the trade-off you're, you're willing to make is a lot of telegraph jokes, I assume, but that's probably a fair trade. But I appreciate you coming on the show.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Cal. It's been great to be here.

• 58:31Cal Newport?

  All right. So there you have it. That was my conversation with Chris Moody. I thought it was fascinating. I think what he's up to out there in Boone has some lessons for all of us. And remember to check out the, the new Substack, the Opt Outers that Chris started with his wife, if you want to keep up with what they're up to and the lessons they have for the rest of us. I gotta tell you though, here's something that's kind of interesting. Chris and I, it turns out, have all of these, these sort of unexpected connections that we keep discovering. All right. Let me give you some examples. I recorded this interview right before leaving for a trip out to Colorado. I was going to a small

• 59:13Cal Newport?

  town in Colorado with my family for vacation. And when I called up Chris to do this interview before I left for the trip, I was like, oh, where are you recording from? Because I know he doesn't have internet in his cabin. He was staying with family, a family they know in the same small town I was about to go out to and visit. All right. Right? Unexpected connection. Unexpected connection. Number two. Chris's grandfather was a Southern Baptist minister who knew well my grandfather, who was also a Southern Baptist minister. I think my grandfather had maybe taught or mentored his grandfather. Also, it turns out that the town Boone where Chris lives

• 59:55Cal Newport?

  is, I believe, named for Daniel Boone, and I am a descendant. I can't really say of Daniel Boone. I'm descended from Daniel Boone's brother. My grandmother's middle name was Boone. And so the connections, too many connections. And of course, the biggest connection of all, we share our distrust of a constantly connected life. So there we go. Fascinating conversation with someone that has a lot of, almost like spookily spooky, spookily, spookily abundant connections to my own life. That's how we know this whole interview was kismet. So I hope you liked it. Long interview. I'm out of town, so we'll

• 1:00:35Cal Newport?

  skip the normal Q and A and what I'm up to that I would normally do. But I'll be back next week with another advice episode. So until then, as always, stay deep. Hey, if you've made it this far, you must be ready to join my fight for depth in a distracted world. Now, the best way to do this is to join over 125,000 people who receive my email newsletter each Monday. You can sign up at calnewport.com/ideas. And when you do, I will send you a free guide to my seven best ideas about cultivating a deep life. Sign up today, calnewport.com/ideas.