# Ep. 252 — the Deep Life Stack  ## About - Author: Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Title: Ep. 252 — the Deep Life Stack - Tags: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/f0892624-d9db-434a-915e-18d374935132 ## Highlights Establishing Your Values: Code, Rituals, Routines Transcript: Speaker 1 We'll call this values. All right. We're not yet choosing to quit your job. We're not yet the moving. This is where you are going to establish what it is that is important to you. What are the truths that exist rooted outside of just your own preferences around which you were going to structure your life? This is committing to what is important to you. There's three pieces to figuring out what your values are going to be. I'll write them all three down and then we'll talk about it. Code, rituals, routines. --- Living by a Code Transcript: Speaker 1 Code is actually figuring out this is my code that I live by. I strive to do this. I will never do this. I have integrity. I am honest. I will prioritize the protection of others. Whatever it is, this is where you make that clear. I have a code by which I live and all of my decisions are going to come back and make sure that they satisfy this code. All my big decisions. All my short-term actions will live by this code. The code should be something that forces you on occasion to do things that are hard or scary in the moment to move away what might be in your best interest. But you have a code written down. --- The Importance of Discipline and Values as a Safety Net Foundation Transcript: Speaker 1 You set that up in the central place for it because you set that up in discipline. These two things, these first two layers of the stack, discipline and values, this now becomes our safety net foundation. Before we go up, the things that are going to follow are going to be a little bit more complicated and ambitious. But if everything else falls apart in your life, your professional system goes apart, there's health or sickness issues, your life takes a turn or some sort of disaster. The two levels that will always be there for you to fall down on will be discipline plus value. So this is very important. --- The Importance of Structure in Life Transcript: Speaker 1 Right. The time block planner is something you might introduce as calm. The metric planning is installed in the discipline stack. Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah. I think one of the things I was underestimating, so in addition to just the psychological preparation, was I take for granted structure and organization in my life. And it's something we hear from listeners a lot is if --- Managing Your Obligations with Time Management Transcript: Speaker 2 Yeah. I mean, a lot of it has come down to your time management system. Yeah. Speaker 1 How do you keep checking your time? Then how do you manage your obligations? And how do you then prune those obligations? Right? It's very difficult to keep breathing room in your life if you can't control the stuff that's taken away the air. If you don't control it, you're just grabbing. It's very hard to get it things or organize things or move things out of the way. --- Managing Obligations and Creating Breathing Room in Life Transcript: Speaker 1 How do you keep checking your time? Then how do you manage your obligations? And how do you then prune those obligations? Right? It's very difficult to keep breathing room in your life if you can't control the stuff that's taken away the air. If you don't control it, you're just grabbing. It's very hard to get it things or organize things or move things out of the way. It's very paradoxical because people say, I don't want to be so, I don't have time to do all these systems and be so rigid. And then my whole life will be planning, but it's exactly the people that make a structure for the stuff in their life that have the flexibility, that have the breathing room, that are, you know, have their feet up by the lake and are reading. --- The Paradox of Structure and Flexibility Transcript: Speaker 1 It's very paradoxical because people say, I don't want to be so, I don't have time to do all these systems and be so rigid. And then my whole life will be planning, but it's exactly the people that make a structure for the stuff in their life that have the flexibility, that have the breathing room, that are, you know, have their feet up by the lake and are reading. Is this misnomer that somehow have an organization will mean your time is more filled? Speaker 2 It's actually the key to actually gain back time, the fine time affluence, to take some flexibility. It's your boy, Jaco, discipline equals freedom. Yeah. --- Importance of the Discipline and Value Stacks in Planning for Control and Breathing Room Transcript: Speaker 1 You trust by how much control and breathing room, even a standard busy middle class or upper middle class life can seem, how much room you can find, how much breathing room you can find. And I don't want you to go right to this. I mean, I want you to follow the stack. I think there's a, the, the discipline stack is key because you have to have the sense of, uh, I'm able to do things that are hard and I have a place I keep track of them and I follow what I write down. You need the value stack because it's hard to prune. It's hard to take things back when you don't have the, the bigger values driving you. But once this column is in place, then and only then do I think you're ready to think about the planning step. --- If you marry someone, for example, you are in some sense giving up the option of, I'm just going to focus on me and make my life as good as possible. What you're focused to is trying to build a dual life, a family life that's as good as possible. --- Balancing Work and Personal Life Transcript: Speaker 1 I need to get three hours this week in the gym too. It's business partners that are trying to negotiate some sort of equitable access to resources and that clashing visions of a deep life do not add up to a coherent whole. If you marry someone, for example, you are in some sense giving up the option of, I'm just going to focus on me and make my life as good as possible. What you're focused to is trying to build a dual life, a family life that's as good as possible. You have to work to stack together. --- Thinking Systematically About Careers Transcript: Speaker 1 That was failing as the millennials who were raised with this were first leaving college. And the financial crisis hit and we realized it's more complicated than just I'm meant to be a sports marketer. I can tell from self reflection. If I do that, I'm going to be happy there on out. So this was part of this revolution in thinking about careers more systematically. This is a design problem to solve not a sole alignment type problem. --- Apple's approach to AR: Starting with experience, not technology Transcript: Speaker 1 So this is what Apple is doing and I think it's smart because essentially what Magic Leap discovered after wasting not wasting but spending tens of billions of dollars is that the waveguide is hard. And so they couldn't deliver the experience they wanted because the technology was harder. So Apple is coming the other way. Let's get the experience right and then we'll figure out how to make the delivery of that experience more and more palatable. I think that's the right way to do it. I think Apple is smart to invest in that as opposed to going all in on AI. And I think they're smart for two reasons. ---