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before we get to the questions though i want to do a deep dive the big question i want to address in today's deep fly deep dive is the following how does cal
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organize his life i've talked about this before but i'm going to get granular today and let me tell you why because of a recent experience i had just a couple days before recording this episode
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i got very stressed slash anxious to the point where i actually lost a lot of sleep so yesterday i was very tired i was having a hard time sleeping because once my mind got fired up i had a hard time falling asleep here was the thing
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that was making me stressed and anxious the fall semester is beginning i usually go a little bit lax we'll talk about this i go a little bit lax on my systems in the summer i'm a professor slash writer so in the summer i have
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very little to do but right and i lean into that i take the foot off the gas pedal a little bit of my organizational systems and then i have to get things locked back in for the fall because things get more busy well in the summer i had
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accreted all of these ancillary new or miscellaneous disciplines and systems and ideas and projects that i wanted to tackle and i had these notes about all these different things i was working on spread
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out over many different digital media and many different notebooks and a couple days ago i was like okay i have to actually get this stuff all wrangled and get my systems all ready for the fall and i couldn't make it work
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some of them were redundant with other things some things didn't quite make sense some things seemed like it was just too much i was asking myself there's too many initiatives i was trying to get going and it really stressed me out to the point where i had a hard time sleeping
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then yesterday morning i had an epiphany and i'm going to put quotation marks around the epiphany here because it is the exact same epiphany i have every single fall
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which is that the planning system that i have been perfecting over a decade i have been using this for a decade is what works for me and every time i try to reinvent the wheel
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or add new components onto this i get stressed out and so you know i need to do forget this like i do every fall go back to my standard planning system get all of the pieces of that standard system up and running and i feel much
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better i feel much better this happens to me every summer i think i'm going to come up with some new exciting thing that's going to really jumpstart some sort of ambition of mine and i always go back to my same
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old tried and true three-part planning system that has performed everything i have done as a professional in the last decade which is most of my books most my academic work
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happens because of this planning system so in honor of it and in honor of it being the fall and back to school and work ramping up again for a lot of people i thought i would go through briefly but clearly
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through the planning system i do to organize the stuff in my life and figure out what to do with my time so i have a document i call the root document of the core
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document where i just describe the system this i think is an important place to start i call this rooted productivity where you have somewhere a core document from which everything you do actually comes out of it because to me it's
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important that everything is written down you know where to find it so i like to have one core document that just summarizes here's the pieces of your system so i just have that somewhere it's not floating in my head so the start i actually i actually had jesse
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load up here the actual document i use this is the actual document i use that just summarizes the high level my planning system the exact wording i use you'll notice as we go through this here it's not perfectly written
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it's not perfectly clear it's for me but i will go through it alright so let's start with this all right for those of you who are watching on the youtube channel you can see this for those who are listening i'll narrate it at the top of this document
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is a title core systems here's what i say below are summaries of the three main categories that contain the elements of my course systems core documents productivity and discipline
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so i've broken this document into those three sections everything related to my my core planning system falls uh under one of those three categories all right so we start with category
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number one core documents there's two two types of core documents i maintain for my system one is values a document that as i say here uh describes my roles and values by
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which i try to live and you'll see like if you're looking this online it's important the wording is kind of weird because again it's for me it's not like an essay on publishing it's not polished doesn't have to be polished i know what it means all right
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the other type of documents i keep are my career and personal strategic plans i this is me reading the words here i have one plan for each of these two parts of my life that lays out my current thoughts experimental systems and plans for living
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uh true to my values so what i'm trying to say though again because the writing is not perfect here is like just what's my plan for pursuing those parts of my life in a way that is true to my values i then have a note that says sometimes i'll have extended plans that i'll link
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to from those documents so if there's a particular big project or initiative i'm working on i might describe that in its own document and link to it from let's say the professional strategic plan all right so those are the three
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documents at the core of my system my values here are my values the roles of my life the values by which i live those roles and then my career and non-career strategic plans i have this subcategory here called
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maintenance and it talks about how i update these documents and there's three things here and i'll just summarize the high level once a week i look at my values and create what i call a values plan this is where i
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emphasize particular values i maybe need to be focusing on where i've fallen off of them sometimes i'll have some habits in mind to help emphasize a particular value community connection is important maybe i need to try for this week calling someone every
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day that type of thing so i put this into a kind of a separate what i call a value plan so it's sort of clarifying and calling out what's important to my values for that week i've noted on here that i also include in my value plan best practices for
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mental health so what am i doing to help keep my mind sharp and healthy and away from anxiety i like to think through my practices have those written down so i try to about once a week to
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update this values plan all right for my strategic plans how do i maintain those well uh once a week i review them we'll get in that more and then i say
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here i can tweak them or change them at any time but i want to make sure at the very least at the beginning of each new semester uh i overhaul it so they're they're written for a semester at a time but i can tweak them at any time i feel like i should and finally i talk about my idea
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notebook or digital idea storage system so i use obsidian as well as a moleskin and uh i keep ideas in there and at the very least when i do my semester plans or the updates to the strategic plans i'll go through and check those ideas
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and see if i need to act on any of them all right so that is the core documents and how i maintain them so a quick summary of a document of my values i have a career and personal strategic plan i look at the values once a week and
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pull out this values plan to just to help keep that at the center of my life and i update those strategic plans usually about once a semester all right the next category for my course systems is productivity
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so how do i actually organize my time in a way where i am happy with what i'm producing i break this down into weekly and daily planning
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so weekly each week i build a weekly plan based on a review of my strategic plans my calendar my task list and my value plan so i do a weekly plan you've heard me talk about this i don't get into detail here about what goes into the
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weekly plan because i play it by ear i'm flexible a very complicated week in the middle of an academic semester might have an intricate jenga game of how i'm going to make the whole week work a week in july in the middle of the
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summer might say right exclamation point exclamation point and that's it so i don't have a set format for that but it's the it's how i make sense of what am i working on this week what do i
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need to keep in mind are there any habits or heuristics i want to have on top of mine is there any particular things i need to get done this week i need to remember to get it done how am i even just attacking this week all that's in the weekly plan
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all right then each day i review my weekly plan i review my value plan i look at my calendar and if it's a weekday i make a time block plan so my weekly plan i check it every day
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the calendar i check every day look at my value plan i got to remember what am i focusing on what's important in my values and then i make my time block plan for the day if it's not a weekday then i do something looser i don't time block plan weekends but you might
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sketch a quick plan what am i working on today what do i need to remember that's how my planning works so you see how these things start to connect together the strategic plan influences the weekly
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plan you look at that weekly plan when you're making your daily plan your daily plan figures out what you're doing right now so what you're doing right now in this particular system is influenced by your big picture strategic plans but you don't have to think about your big
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picture strategic plans right now it comes down to these different levels all right two other pieces to my productivity system clear work shutdowns with a shutdown complete ritual so you gotta have a
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clear separation between work and non-work make a rough but intentional plan for what you want to do with the rest of your day when you shut down that's my shutdown routine and then full capture david allen right here
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full capture of task make sure at the very least at the shutdown each day you process all the tasks that you've captured into the appropriate systems again this is all about for me
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stress management i don't want open loops i want to trust if i write something down it will get seen it will get processed it'll get put on the calendar if it's an appointment or reminder it'll get put in my task list if it's a task it will update my weekly
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plan if it's a thought about what i need to change for my plan and there it will be seen the next day it'll be seen in when i look at my weekly plan it'll get reflected in my time block plan it'll be seen when i look at the calendar to make the plan on the relevant day the whole
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game here is trusting i don't have to keep track of things in my mind i can have this ambitious schema for how i'm trying to advance these big picture goals that have all these moving parts that are rapidly changing in the moment
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i don't want to worry about any of it except for what i'm doing in the moment and if it's in the evening then i should just be worried about whatever relaxing thing that i'm trying to do all right the third category here is discipline
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so i'm maintaining my strategic plans an evolving list of core disciplines this might be things about like exercise it might be things about the number of deep work hours you're going to do each day it might be something if you're in
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sales about the number of calls you make every day whatever but the point is they're disciplines that i try to strictly follow to lay a foundation for a deep life so i think it's important to have hard disciplines i do this i do that
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and i do this other thing and i always do those things these these hard boundaries that you follow to help establish a foundation of a deeper life and so that's the third part of my
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system is having this evolving list of disciplines i talk about here is i often track these with metrics sometimes i don't so typically if it's during an academic semester i'll
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have a metric code for each of my disciplines where i can keep track of my time block planner in the metric planning space did i do this today did i do this today i'd like to actually see it other times i take a break from it like in the summer for example or over a
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break i might there are periods where i'll take a break for it so that is there but i'm typically collecting these metrics that's it that's the system that system can support
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massively complicated ambitions that system can support an incredibly complicated fast moving professional environment where it's very difficult the to keep track of all the different things that have to fit
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together this system will support that this system will support a life outside of work that you can be present and intentional and interesting and pursue things that are interesting to you and develop yourself and develop your mind develop
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your relationships not get lost in work and not get completely overwhelmed with anxiety and stress the system will support your pursuit of living truer to your values living a good life trying to
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actually practice and implement the things that make a good life good all of these things are important this simple system that i described in these three categories of notes in this one document handles everything
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and it has in my life for over a decade so all this extra type of stuff i was trying to do in the last few weeks i realized that all fits in here i know this i trust this it's not perfect some of this stuff is redundant not all of it makes perfect sense why is
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the value plan a separate thing shouldn't that be part of the weekly planning there's all these little legacy inquiries i say that right jesse incongruities
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yeah he said right incongruities let me write that down my disciplines say words correctly but it all it all can be captured here and it's a system that can flex
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when you're doing complicated things these documents can get big your strategic plans get big your task lists get really big your calendar is full you have extended plans that you're linking to from your strategic plans your weekly
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plans look like epic essays and other periods it can you know you're burnt out you're going through a hard time the system can contract really just down to the basics here's my values got to get
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this core things done in my life a lot of like trying to get out of the despair get out of the depths the system contracts to that as well so it's really a flexible system so this is my my public apology to my system
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sorry for thinking i could do a little better you've always been what i need in my life this then is my call to you out there in my audience if you don't already have a pretty effective system that captures
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all the parts of your life the things that matter to you professional non-professional and goes from captures those for everything from those big thoughts all the way down to what you're doing today what you're doing tomorrow if you
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don't have a system like that try this one try this one for a month i don't know why it works so well but it does these parts in the way they mingle and the daily weekly and the flexibility it's a
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decades worth of experimentation it does work give it a try at first it feels like a lot of moving pieces you get in the rhythm and it actually makes you feel freer and actually makes you feel more relaxed
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hey trust it the system's got me and in the end it does produce stuff that matters so that's how i do it i don't know just you've heard me talk about this system before yeah it's not too complicated right i mean i'm used to it because i've
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done it for a decade it's like muscle memory for me but i don't know when i read it from scratch i'm like do these pieces click i think for people who hear it for the first couple times they just gotta you know watch this video and then
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hear you say it a couple times because it does make a lot of sense after and i've been doing it for like even you know a couple years since you started your podcast yeah it's worked for you right yeah it's great and then
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in terms of the discipline stuff i was thinking about your buddy ryan is writing a new book called this one have you already read it not yet discipline is uh something yeah i forgot the word is yeah so
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because ryan's doing a book on each of the four cardinal yeah yeah uh yeah he has a whole book i'm excited for it i don't know if he gave you like an advanced copy or something he will i mean we we share an editor yeah we we
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tend to see each other's work i talk to him quite a bit um that was the last thing by the way that was added to my if you look at a decade the last thing that was added to my system was being explicit about what are the
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disciplines what are the i do these seven things and just being clear about that i was kind of informally doing things like exercise or whatever but for me if it's not written down other people don't have this issue but for me if it's not written down i
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don't fully trust it and then i get anxious so everything i have to have it written down and it all has to connect back uh it also connect back to this root document so
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there we go i was listening to a um an interview with sisson and rogan and he um they were it was actually from 2021 i listened to that one yeah i just
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listened to it like yesterday i just stumbled across it but he was talking about they were talking about discipline and rogan was talking about his 15 like his 25 minute session in the sauna and then 15 minutes like the last 10 minutes he
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he's got this breathing routine if he thinks about anything else he adds like an extra breath but you got have you ever heard have you ever heard joe rogan talk to laird hamilton i know he was on the show a couple years
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ago you know laird hamilton yeah cleared hamilton fan and rogan i guess was talking about his like i did this like hardcore sauna thing and laird was like hold my beer laird is like insane that guy is so interesting
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he swims with like dumbbells so with dumbbells he has a giant sauna in which so rogan's like man i stay in my sauna for like 15 minutes 25 minutes 25 minutes yeah laird hamilton brings an
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assault bike into the sauna which for people who don't know is like the hardest single piece of right exercise equipment it's like the you know your arms and your legs and resistance you're like mountain climbing i don't know it's impossible right it's
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like one of the hardest uh single exercises you can do he brings one of those into a giant barrel and does does it and then then gets into an ice bath so you know
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his disciplined document is more impressive than mine
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