I speak here {^_^}

Fundamentals despite Chemicals (Cal Newport's podcast notes)

June 04, 2021

Jason Braganza pointed me to this recent episode of Deep Questions with Cal Newport podcast, Ep. 81: How Do I Avoid Burnout?

He strongly emphasized listening to one specific question discussed during the podcast.

This is the one ~ How do you focus on Deep Work and concentrate while dealing with emotional turmoil in your personal life?

I took notes of this question’s answers & that’s what this post is all about.

(Well, I’m bad at taking (short) notes, because my notes usually end up being transcripts of the entire content. And today again, as I was taking notes in my diary, I ended up transcripting the entire answer. But anyways, the notes are useful (indeed, very very useful as they have everything.)) 🙂


So, yea, below are my notes for Cal’s answer to the above question ~

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I also wrote followup notes, reflecting in my own life what values I learnt from above notes.

It was basically me writing answers to the following two questions ~

  • How does this apply to my life?
  • What philosophical or theological structure(s) will I add to my life?

I’m keeping those answers confined to my diary pages only, because they’re really specific to one’s own life. 🙂

But for someone else reading the notes above or listening to the podcast itself, they could also try writing their own answers to the same questions. And then do a retrospective in order to do a reflection on their own life. I’m sure it would be totally worth trying!

That’s all for this post. Thank you for reading! 🙏