Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us, with less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation filled the void, and it gets harder to separate truths from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News.
But we handed that show over to Dan, but anyway, he's here visiting, which is amazing, so maybe I get to see him on his actual birthday, maybe not. Shausen might keep him for herself, but in either case, a happy birthday to him. So today's author, Cal Newport, has a blog that he calls study hacks he's an assistant professor, but I think it's great for everyone, so with that, let's hear his post as we optimize your life. The Einstein principle, accomplished more by doing less by Cal Newport of Cal Newport dot com.
Einstein's push. Between the years of 1912 to 1915, Albert Einstein was a focused man. His previous work on the special theory of relativity and the quantization of light, among other topics, was starting to gain notice. Einstein left a Swiss patent office, and after hopping from professorships in Germany and Prague, ended up in 1912 at Switzerland's ETH Institute.
Once there, he met mathematician Marcel Grossman and became convinced that if he applied the new non-Euclidean math study by Grossman to his own work on relativity, he could generalize the theory to account for gravity. This advance would be huge, nothing short of overturning the single most famous law in the history of science. Einstein said to work. Between 1912 to 1915, he became increasingly obsessed in his push to formalize general relativity.
As revealed by several sources, including his recently released letters, he worked so hard that his marriage became strained and his hair turned white from the stress. But he got it done. In 1915, he published his full theory. It stands as one of the greatest scientific accomplishments, if not the single greatest, of the 20th century.
The Einstein principle. Einstein's push for general relativity highlights an important reality about accomplishment. We are most productive when we focus on a very small number of projects on which we can devote a large amount of attention. Achievements worth achieving require hard work.
There is no shortcut here. Be it starting up a new college club, or starting a new business, eventually, effort sustained over a long amount of time is required. In a perfect world, we would all be in science. We would each have only one or at most two projects in the three major spheres of our lives, professional, extracurricular, and personal.
We would be allowed to focus on the specialized set in exclusion as we push the projects to impressive conclusions. But this doesn't happen. In search of your own theory of relativity. Our problem is that we don't know in advance which project might turn out to be our theory of relativity, and which or does.
Because of this, most ambitious people I know myself included follow a different strategy. We sow lots of project seeds. We email a lot of people, join a lot of clubs, commit to a lot of minor projects, set up lots of meetings, constantly send out feelers of friends and connections regarding our latest brainstorm. We don't know which seed will ultimately take root and grow, so by planting many, we expose ourselves to enough randomness over time to maximize our chance of a big deal, interesting, life-changing success, eventually happening.
These newer seeds however have a tendency to transform into weeds. While some of them clearly grow in a pursuit worth continuing and others die off quickly, many instead exist in a shadowy in-between state, where they demand our time but offer a little promise of reward in the end. These weed projects violate the Einstein principle. We can no longer focus on a small number of important projects, but find ourselves instead, rushing between an increasingly overwhelming slate full of a variety of obligations.
This time, Frytrick can prevent real accomplishment. Imagine if Einstein maintained a blog, wrote a book, joined a bunch of clubs at ETH and tried to master rowing at the same time he was working on general relativity. We'd still be living in the age of noon. The Productivity Purge Most of us will never fully satisfy the Einstein principle.
It's too risky. If you invest fully in one thing and then it fails, you're left empty. More importantly, it can be boring. Life requires zigs and zags.
There is, however, a simple strategy for coming as close as possible to satisfying the principle without giving up a quest for the unexpected next big thing. It's called the Productivity Purge and it works as follows. Number one, when it feels like your schedule is becoming too overwhelmed, take out a sheet of paper and label it with three columns. Professional, extracurricular, and personal.
Under professional, list all the major projects that you are currently working on in your professional life. If you're a student, then this means classes and research. If you have a job, then this means your job, etc. Under extracurricular, do the same for your side projects, your band, your blog, your plan to write a book.
And under personal, do the same for personal self-improvement projects from fitness to reading more books. Number two, under each list, try to select one or two projects which, at this point in your life, are the most important and seem like they would yield the greatest returns. Put a star by these projects. Number three, next, identify the projects that you can stop working on right away with no series consequences.
Cross these out. Number four, finally, for the projects that are left unmarked, come up with a one to three week plan for finalizing and dispatching them. Many of these will be projects for which you owe someone something before you can stop working on them. Come up with the crunch plan for the near future for shutting these down as quick as possible.
Number five, once you've completed your crunch plan, you'll be left with only a small number of important projects. In essence, you have purged your schedule of all but a few contenders to be your next theory of relativity. Here's the important part, try to go at least one month without starting any new projects. Resist at all costs, committing to anything during this month.
Instead, just focus with an Einsteinian intensity on your select list. The productivity purge is a necessary piece of project gardening. By doing these regularly, you keep yourself focused on what's important. You get at least one month after every purge in which serious work gets done on a small number of projects.
It's during these focused months when Einstein principle comes into play, they'll end up making the progress on those activities that might end up becoming life-changing. Case study, my most recent purge. As I write this, I'm in the second week of a two week purge. After a busy summer of traveling and wildly sowing project seeds, I've been looking forward for a long time for a focused month, spanning mid-October to Thanksgiving, during which the Einstein principle can be in full effect.
Here's how the purge is taking shape. In my professional life, I'm clearing some lingering research projects off my plate. This includes, among other things, finishing some revision on papers under submission and finalizing some proofs for some close to being finished new work. My crunch plan has me pushing to finish these lingers with a rabbit intensity.
My focus for this upcoming period is on two research projects that I think hold great promise. I look forward to spending 90% of my academic time racking my brain on these pursuits, which I think will shape the direction of my first year or two after graduation. Bring it on. In my extracurricular life, I'm finishing up the final articles in a long series of those I-O various editors through various pitches conducted over the summer.
With this slate cleared, I can spend my focus period on exactly two things. The first, producing quality, user-tested content for this blog. The second, finally completing the preliminary research for my second book idea. I need to either officially abandon it or get my agent's blessing and start work on the proposal.
In my personal life, I'm turning my focus back to some lifestyle improvement issues that have fallen foul recently. It's time to throw out clothing I bought before college. I'm also planning to push into overdrive the variety of interesting things I do each week. I have a long list of other projects I would love to tackle, but they can wait.
In conclusion, if the Einstein principle holds come Thanksgiving, I should have a fully developed new book idea, a much expanded readership of this blog, interesting new academic research results, and a mind overstuffed with new experiences and ideas. I'm looking forward to it. How would your life change if you were to plan a productivity purge today? You just listened to the post titled The Einstein Principle, Accomplish more by doing less by Cal Newport of Cal Newport.com.
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That's enough for today. Have a great rest of your day and I'll see you tomorrow where you're off in my life. I'll wait. Hey, this is Dan from the Optimal Finance Daily Podcast, which is a lot like this show, except more focused on personal finance.
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