Cal Newport

169 hours.

That's a big part of my productivity philosophy is capturing that extra hour you get from time changes to get more work done.

OK, let's talk about the other thing I really liked.

And I'll tell the listener, by the way, I'm just selectively touching on a few topics because there's many in here and I want you to read the book.

So I'm pulling out a few that I want to emphasize here.

I like the way you thought about big projects, right, that this is an important part of life is whether it's like a big trip or whether it's a big sort of personal hobby project.

But having big things, you're working athletic things you're training for.

A lot of people think about I can't do a big thing without big swaths of time free.

So unless I significantly simplify my schedule, I can't do big projects or big dreams that are optional.

You have a different approach built around small steps towards big goals.

Walk me through that because I really like this.

The word busyness is confusing to me because

At the same time, two things are true.

Like sometimes I feel too busy and it's a stressful thing.

There's too many things going on professionally, non-professionally, and I feel like, ah, these pieces are stacking up.

On the other hand, nothing relieves my stress better, for example, than if it's an evening or a weekend where I make a lot of progress on things that are interesting to me or optional.

Like, oh, I'm less stressed because I cleaned up my office, I ordered this, I built a new whatever.

rack to store stuff in our medicine cabinet.

And so doing more things makes me feel less stressed.

So I'm wondering, busy is probably the wrong word because it captures too many things.