cogitationes, labores, et gratiae (thoughts, works, and gratitudes)

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! 🙏