Dr. Cal Newport

Ultimately, this is the thing I do best for my company.

So let me do that.

Let me do that really well.

There's also an aspect, by the way, of if you do a deep thing really well, that does not attract as much work as if what you do is you're just really good at like responding to people's things and putting out fires.

It's like you don't want to get too much trapped in that game unless that's the game you want to play.

If you get trapped in the game of how I distinguish myself is I reply right away.

It doesn't matter when it is.

I make your life easier.

You're playing the game of making other people's lives easier, and that's what they're going to ask you to do.

But if instead you play the game of I'm competent with this, like I'll respond to the emails and not be – I won't be pathological about it.

But the real thing you care about is like this code I'm producing or these reports I'm producing are just really second to none.

Then you're not going to get much of the small stuff.

They're like, okay, well, do that then.

That's what we want you to work on.

So like what is your equivalent of research is probably a really key question for a lot of people.

Well, you know, I treat work schedule different from non-work schedule.

So my work schedule is this time block plan, part of a multi-scale plan, really dialed in.

Like when I'm working, I'm working.

But then when I'm not working, I'm way more lax.

So I don't do time block planning of my weekends or my evenings.