Cal Newport

I think for a living, I don't use social media.

I was trained professionally to be a thinker.

And because of that, to use myself as an example,

I can, for example, write incredibly quickly.

I can sit down and have an idea and 30 minutes later have like a polished newsletter article or draft of an op-ed or a script for a podcast.

That's an incredible productivity boon that I've gained, not by using like AI.

but by training a brain to produce better.

So I think that's going to be something we see.

Another thing we're going to see as we get to sort of insane mode cognitive fitness industry is going to be the rise of non-instrumental courses.

People taking classes in person or online, like learning languages or hard math or training about puzzles or mastering difficult crafts,

just to get their mind sharp.

Like the whole point is this is going to push your mind.

It's going to be hard to do.

Like your hardest course you took in college, you're doing it now as like a middle-aged man because you want to make sure you keep pushing your mind, not because the skill you're learning is instrumental, but because the learning itself is going to get your mind sharp.

I think we're going to see this process-focused marketing as opposed to skill-focused marketing for courses in the near future, all a cognitive fitness play.

Finally, I want to elaborate an idea that was mentioned in that article that we opened this episode with.

I do think cognitive endurance testing is going to be something that actually we do more often.

It's going to be numbers we know, and it's going to be numbers that we are going to use, which will completely change our conception of cognitive fitness, how to quantify it, and its value.

There'll be some sort of standardized test that gives you a number that I think might play a role in hiring people.

I mean, why wouldn't it?