Final Lessons and Future Projects

Have you ever had one of those days? We are so fed up from the constant connectivity and the distraction that you wish you could just turn back the clock to the nineteen nineties? I mean, I'm talking about a time where Work couldn't easily follow you home. Like if your boss wanted you after hours, he would have to call you. on a landline, a time where you could build a delightful evening O of whatever random video you're able to pick up at the rental store Well not long ago, I met someone who is doing exactly this His name is Chris Moody He teaches journalism at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina, which is a small scenic town that's perched right off of the blue ridge. Now Chris lives along with his wife and his young son in a cabin that's located about fifteen minutes outside of town that receives no cell reception and has no internet only connection to the outside world is a landline phone Now this is connection is on purpose. Chris and his wife used to live a frenetic life in New York City where Chris was a senior correspondent for CNN politics, but after the pandemic hit, they decided to live more intentionally. Now Chris's situation raises some fascinating questions. What's it actually like to live in nineteen nineties mode. and what lessons can the rest of us learn from his experience. Well, it's Monday, which means it's time for an advice episode of this show, which is the perfect opportunity to seek some answers. So here's what I did. I called up Chris 'use I want to find out more about What led him to that cabin in Boon? What is the actual reality? of his current life, I have a bunch of questions about some like in the weeds details about how does he do this and how does he do that? And most importantly, what lessons can we extract for the rest of us who might also be tempted to try something extreme in the quest for a deeper life. Now, look, I love this conversation. you'll hear it in my voice. I was expecting to come away with mixed emotions. like that was cool, but that seems like it was pretty hard But to be honest, it was almost entirely inspiring. I think Chris' brand of hybrid simplicity really is pretty compelling, especially when he discusses The impact of this way of living on his young son. Let me give you a spoiler from later in the interview He tells me about recently taking his three year old son a modern dance performance. They were sitting in the front row And he said his three year old son, who has only grown up around nineteen nineties tech none of these like screens and iPads and bluy or whatever was able to sit and give full focus to this modern dance performance while the boomers around them couldn't help but fidget and look at their phones before the performance ended All right so anyways, look, if you've um If you've ever felt like taking an extreme step towards intentional living, but or maybe worried about the reality or looking for some inspiration to make changes You have to listen to this episode. I think you're going to love it As always, I'm Cal Newport and this is deep questions The show for People seeking depth in a distracted world Well, Chris, I'm glad we finally found this opportunity to get you on the show. I feel like I talk about you to people all the time so now we can actually spread your story more widely. I wanted to start. if you could just set the stage about where you currently live and what that lifestyle is like. And then we'll go back and kind of build up the story to how you got there Well, thanks so much for having me on the show, Cal. It's great to be here. I live in Southern Appalachia in Boone, North Carolina with my wife and my son. He is three years old now. And for the past three years, we've been living in a log cabin without internet access or cell phone service. We're kind of deep in the haoller, so the cell phone towers don't really get to us. And three years ago, we went to the cable company and had our Wiifi turned off and had a landline plugged in. We did that for many reasons that you and I will discuss today. We realized that the life of permanent, constant digital connection was not serving us, was not serving our family life. And I found it personally to be so powerful and intoxicating that the only thing we decided we could do was to cut it off inside our home and live a life together in our home without digital connection. We certainly engage with the internet outside of the home, but when we're at home, it is our sanctuary, our Sabbath space. And we did that for many, many reasons. We started doing it when my son was just a couple of months old, so an infant in the house. And anyone who has children knows what a household like that is like And I found myself, especially after our son was born Just getting deeper and deeper into screen time, as maybe a lot of people can relate. I think my screen timee app at that time had said maybe four, six, maybe sometimes eight hours a day, just looking at the phone When you have a newborn in the house, there's a lot of sitting around together, waiting, just being together and I would pull out the phone and just scroll, scroll, scroll. It got worse and worse and worse. And my wife told me that when you pull out your phone, it's as though you disappear and I started to think Is this what life is going to be like? for the rest of our lives 'cause it's pretty mediocre. I'm not really enjoying this And one day I said to my wife, I think we need to do something different. And she said sounds like we should get rid of the internet. I said, when? She said, right now It was something we thought we'd do for a couple of months, maybe for a summer. That was three years ago, and we have not gone back And it's the greatest decision I've ever made I have a long list of questions about the reality of your internet free life, but let's now backack up the tape to get to this point. So where I'm going to start is how did you end up in boom, right? So where were you before that? Because I get the feeling the move there, you were already thinking in terms of being intentional about your life. So back up the tape to before you moved to the Hollers of North Carolina how that decision Well, I was a senior correspondent for CNN politics, covering presidential campaigns, Congress, and living in Washington, DC and later New York City And as you might imagine, the life of a political journalist is very connected I was working cononstantly, workor was my life. It was my religion, it was my and It was everything at that time. And I would be connected in the middle of the night. I would wake up and check stories to make sure they were okay. I would check social media. If I told you at that time that I had a hobby, I would have been lying. Work was everything to me. And so I always dreamed of a time, like maybe someday I could live and be disconnected or something like that. And my wife had been talking about doing this in different ways. but it just was impossible as a political correspondent in DC and in New York U and u But we would play around with this at times. We would in our apartment in New York City, where of course, you know you can't get away from cell service or anything like that We would put our phones in baskets by the door between like six and eight PM, and we would call that cabinning, kind of pretending that we were off the grid for just two hours. And it felt so rebellious to just be alone together without any chance of anyone reaching us, even just for a couple of hours. And we realized the freedom of time. it harkened back Listeners might have experienced this, you go on vacation in the nineteen nineties or something like that to a cabin or a lakehouse. and time sort of expands. There's no phone, there's no internet. mean back then, certainly, and you were just alone with your family, playing backgam and taking long walks, having those deep conversations cabin life that we cherish on those long summer days. Over time, when I would meet with my family, those cabin days started to dwindle down. First it was flip phone games and then it was laptops out in the common area until finally it was smartphones. and all that kind of deep time we had together was slowly eroding And Fast forward to the twenty teens, my wife and I really wanted to kind of take back what it felt to be in a cabin in our apartment in Manhattan in New York City And so we had these kind of small little rebellions, things like that. it felt like we were getting away with something In twenty eighteen, there was a reshuffling at the network where I worked and I was laid off. and we had an opportunity at last, to kind of give up that digital connection So we actually gave away most of our possessions and we built a solar powered tiny house into the back of a used cargo van. And my wife and I lived for two years traveling the country in a cargo van, living in national forests, national parks mostly off the grid, largely in search of other people that were dissatisfied with modern life and finding alternatives and new ways to opt out of modern kind of distraction and opt into new ways of living. And then we took that and then actually moved back to New York City right before COVID started And we had never installed the internet into our apartment, our new apartment in New York. So we were living internet free in an apartment in New York City and then COVID happened and everything went online. And COVID kind of moved us out of New York City again And we ended up in Boom, North Carolina, where I teach journalism at Appalachian State University And that presented itself this wonderful opportunity. Here was a place where we live that does not have cell service because it's rural And we can turn off the internet and have log haveab an experience that we always wanted to have And now We're doing it with a child in the home and the challenges that come with that, being able to keep the culture at bay and then allow it into our home on our own terms and not on its terms. And that's really what motivates us And let's take a quick break to hear from some of the sponsors that make the show possible Have you ever had that experience where you put something off again and again? and then when you finally get around to doing it, you kick yourself for having waited so long. I mean, I felt that way about this podcast. People kept telling me, you need your own show And I agreed but I didn't wantan to bother. And then once I finally did start it, I was like, oh man I have done this a while ago Well, I don't want you to feel this way about that business idea that you have been sitting on. 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Start your free trial at shhopify d. com slash deep today You heard that right, startart your Free trial Today att shhopify d. com slash deep. that's shhopify. com slash deep Al also want I talk about our friends at Pipe Drive. Here's a stat that genuinely shocked me sales team spend about fifty percent of their time on admin work instead of selling building relationships or closing deals. This pseudo productivity is devastating to the bottom line. Fortunately, this is where today's sponsor Pipe Drive comes in Here's what I love about Pipe dririve It is a fantastic sales CRM system that's built with small and medium sized businesses in mind is built from the ground up to strip away repetitive work. 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He's actually on vacation and this is Would you say a friend's barn? is that how you describe it? But has wi Fi, thank goodness. yeah. I have to back you up though about this cargo van situation. Like, okay, let's go there. First of all, when you say cargo van, are we talking about one of those sprinter vans? A are we talking about one of those like white you know, vans that the painters drive around. It's a white RAM pro mester, like something that an electrical company or a painter would have. And it was nondescript because our plan was to live as long as we could without paying rent. We were paying off about A lot of student loans, let's just say, six figures of student loans. and we were just trying to live rent free so we could pay off our student loans. And we just lived in places that didn't have access to the internet. We learned The joy of living together without those distractions as a couple. att this time, we did not have a child and getting to know one another kind of on those terms and realizing what an abundant rich life that we had together without constant distractions in our lives that we had when we lived in New York and in Washington. Where some the placere are some of the places you went Well, we did fifty thousand miles. We would kind of go back and forth following the weather. We didn't have heat or air conditioning in the back cabin of the van. So we would follow, you know when it got hot, we went up, when it got cold, we went down, you know. And that included national forests out in the West. You know For anyone interested in this, you can camp for free all over the United States of America and Canada and Mexico if you want to, you know, And so you don't always have to like pay for a campsite. And we built systems into our van that allowed us to be off grid for long periods of time in many ways. and it transformed the way we approach a more normal life today with a child, with a job, with a house, and not just traveling around in advance. Like let's say I'm just fascinated by this. So let's say it's like a day where you're not driving, you're parked at a state park somewhere, you know, out west What would you do During the wake up, Yes. Wake up We have enough solar power from the sun to boil one pot of water for our coffee We sit and read for three hours in the morning goo out into the woods, collect U collect wood for a fire B buildild a fire, have breakfast Maybe take a hike, do some writing, you know, maybe I travel into town, get on Wiifi, send pictches to editors. I'm a writer, you know, write magazine stories and things like that then go back into the woods and write and cook and read. It was really was a really ideal kind of kind of situation. then pack up the van and move on to the next place, however long we were staying somewhere. But it involved a lot of reading, a lot of writing, a lot of time together, really understanding how we wanted to live. We were you know on the brink of wanting to start a family and have children and just It was really a blessing to be able to think deeply about the kinds of Americans, the kinds of people we wanted to be. I tell you, it really feels like living the standard way where you just go with the flow is not leading people place. I think you need to be intentional and follow your North star and know what that is, but you have to give yourself the time to understand what you think about things. And I feel like with so many distractions coming at us, so much content flooding our lives and even our most private spaces, people don't really have the time anymore to think, what is the good life? What is the life I want to live? And this provided us with that time to come to those conclusions together So you were getting You were getting insight because you could introspect. So you're getting insight into what mattered to you and your wife And it the answer was not We want to just live in a van forever. It was more the simplicity of the van gave you the time and space to figure out what you actually cared about? Is that the way you would think about it? Yes, we paired everything down to its just most basic forms. We only had a couple of hundred of lots of solar, So very limited amounts of power. We had seventy two square feet for two people You know, you can imagine the privacy, you know you' got to be with someone you really trust and know and like, you know a lot. There's nowhere to escape arguments. You're together all of the time, not just together but five feet from each other. You only have a couple pairs of clothes, kind of a capsule wardrobe J living very, very simply. There's no room to store anything like that. And that getting those distractions out and just focusing on the essentials of life. somethingomething as simple as what do we eat today? o? Do we have enough water? we have to collect water? We have to collect wood, those kinds of chores. And I'll tell you just from a family perspective The time in the van kind of made me realize that I had been a lazy husband Be in seventy two square feet cal If one person is lounging and the other person is working, there's no escaping the contrast So I'd be lying on the bed reading while my wife maybe is cooking dinner. and it was just so obvious the balance of labor was completely off. And so we had to do things together and continue tntil the job was done. There was no husband kind of escaping to another room and not being found, you know And it frankly, it made me a much better husband in realizing the work that I needed to do the household run or in our case, the van Um And then the question was going forward, how do we apply this to a more normal life And I think we got sidetracked a little bit and with the intoxication of modern life when we came back from the woods, so to speak. But in our current lifestyle, living in a log cabin without the internet, we have really found what we were looking for the entire time So what are some of the other L insights you had during that experience that you've now cararried through to the life you created now. I'm curious and like what type of Epiphanies one might have in those situations There are so many certainly communicating with one another, just as a married couple, getting you know doing things together, learning that time when it's not distracted and punctuated by those distraction can expand and feels almost luxurious to have time together where there aren't things that you're seeking for just constant Consumption, constant entertainment. Living with very little will make you think a lot about kind of how much you consume, how things you own, how much water you use, those kinds of things, how much power you use. We had to get by on very, very little power and just as much water as we could carry. And so it just makes you hyper aware of those all of those things. but also just The contrast of going back into society, maybe having dinner at a restaurant. and you know sometimes they have TV's at a sports bar or something. And once you've been in the woods for a long enough Television and commercials start to look crazy to you. just everything is kind of lower quality in terms of the things that they're advertising don't look enticing anymore. You've had the richness of The woods, the richness of nature of true quality time with one another. and you go and you watch an ad for a new Verizon cell phone, you're just like, I don't really want that, you know. Or certainly coming back into a city. And this was a time in the mid tw teens when we were making the transition to one hundred percent smartphone adoption for the most part, and the streaming wars And so all of a sudden, the world had shifted while I had been in the woods for a couple of years. And now there are all these things I'd never heard of, Disney pllus, Apple pllus, all those kinds of things during that time. And it was as though there was just a flood. of consumption contact being put on people. And it was really overwhelming to see. Everybody else had kind of gone through it like a slowly boiled frog and we just jumped into the deep end very quickly and to see that contrast It allowed us to know what we want and what we don't want. And sometimes you have to separate yourself from the culture in order to see it clearly. Otherwise we're really just kind of looking at it part of it, you do have to back up a little bit, but you can only do that if you allow yourself the space to do it Now I imagine being a political like a reporter in a major city, like there's Two big driving forces are hard to escape would be money and fame. ike you're a reporter New Yorkity, you're like I guess I want to be Anderson Cooper, I want tona be Jake Tapper, whatever you How did you're thinking about Money and fame and notoriety, how did that change when you got some space from it That's a hard one. It really is because it is fun to be on TV. It is fun to have your name published in major publications. And I still do that, you know, And I get to use those skills In a way, you are saying goodbye. I think it was a real wrestling in our minds when we decided to leave New York, I didn't want to go. I you know, I grew up You know, in the suburbs kind of like normal town. and to be in New York was everything to me. It was the epitome of all of my life's work And to leave it was very difficult Cal, I had made work My identity. I have made it my idol And that's an unhealthy relationship with work. And I think leaving that allowed me to have a better relationship with work, to allow me to do what I want to do to write what I wish to write and appear. You know, I continue to appear on shows, things like this, but not have it consume my life in the way. I have no regrets That I was able to do that, incredible work, travel around the country, chase Donald Trump around, you, ask him questions, those kinds of things as a reporter, abbsolutely loved doing it for that season of life. But I never would have been living the way I am, never would have been raising my son the way that I am if we hadn't left. His life in Manhattan, if he were living there now would be extremely different than it is now in a log cabin where he has access to the woods, the streams, the rivers, the trees. you know it's really an abundant life I think we're giving to him What so moving forward the tape a little bit more. So you return to New York COVID hits. Like okay We're going to leave here How did you end up where you are right now? So how did Bon enter the picture Once you decided like okay, yeah. Yeah, we got back into the van, traveled south, just kind of looking for the next steps. This is in the early days of COVID. thingsings are really dark at that time. Sent some time in Chattanooga, Tennessee where we have family, lived there for just a little bit And then there was an opening for a teaching position at Appalachian State University in journalism and broadcast media, things that I've done for many, many years. And I applied and they gave me an invitation to come. And at that time, we were just finding out that we had a baby coming on the way. and we had been traveling for Five, six years at that time, kind of off and on, a very you jet setting or van setting kind of life. We had lived all over the country. We only had a van with two seats. We didn't have health insurance, you know, And the thought of having a little bit more security when my wife gives birth and we can raise a child was very enticing. The ability to teach and also continue writing And that's how we got to Boon, which is a lovely small town in a medium sized small town, I would say in Northwestern North Carolina, right on the Blue Ridge Parkway and has a large public university part of the UNC system We found this cabin in the haller and turn off the interternet That's how we've been living So what's the town like? So it's a college town. Is it like I was just in Ashville recently, which I know is in the general sphere. It's like a smaller version of Asville. like you have like old down old historic downtown. you have like standard suburbs, I assume. likeike what's what's the vibe like in the actual town Much smaller than Asheville, not standard suburbs. People live either in the town or in the county in the mountains. So there's a pretty hard drop between city life and then mountain life. There' student housing, of course around the town, but not suburbs in the sprawl in any way that you might consider in a place like Asheville or something like that There's about twenty thousand people plus the students, which is about twenty thousand. so the city expands in returns. ret tracts throughout the year And you it is a college town, but it's also a tourist town. It's where people come and a lot of Floridians have second homes there. And so you have an interaction that swings between twenty year olds to seventy year olds, know And then the major employers in Boon are the university, the hospital, and there's a major nonprofit there as well Franklin Grahams Samaran's Purse is there. So you have a really a really neat mix of people It is a place of very high social trust, which I value very much when I'm working in coffee shops. I don't even think twice about leaving my laptop. on the desk. I don't even ask somebody to look for it look after it when I step out for a moment. It really it's a place where your kids can run in the woods, where they can play in the parks, where parents don't necessarily hover over their kids very much. You can always tell when somebody's from out of town because they're kind of following their children around the playground And so know it's also a place where people really came together when Hurricane Helene hit very, very hard at that time. And we really learned who our neighbors were, and we found that they were incredible people that look after each other. So it's a pretty splendid place there in the mountains. It's part of the Appalachian. that's the highest east of the Mississippi highest mountains. and so we have ski resorts and It's an ideal place to live for sure Yeah. So when when you were coming out there to take the position It seems like it would have been a brainer, I guess, right? You're like, L look, we will live not in town but in the mountains because then we have cabin life But We can also I can go work at a coffee shop or my office at campus. So was that a no brainer when you got there like, Yeahah, this is great. Let's find something like a cabin, this metaphorical cabin that we've been simulating, now we can actually do it without also having to be off grid in the sense of We really aren't around any civilization. It actually became a lucky accident. Given the real estate crunch that is happening all over America and certainly in Boon, we had to be beggars more than choosers in the place where we lived. There just wasn't a lot available on the market. And so we were able to rent something just by accident that happened to be between the mountains that didn't get sell service So it wasn't on purpose at all. And in fact, we installed the internet when we first moved in. We're just living a normal life. We have a baby coming. We have to have the internet. What if something happens? We didn't even think that it would be possible to do it until we found out what living with full time WiFi did to us We had to re understand this, or would I use us, but it's really certainly me, I think, is the real problem in this We live about twelve, fifteen minutes from town. I can get a cell signal a mile away if I want to get closer and just send an email off or something like that. But really onnce we turned off the internet, it required me to drive into town to my office or to a library or coffee shop And that really allows me to segregate work life from home life. I go to work, I do my work, it turns off I come home and I spend time with my son and my family. And that separation, I think is really, really essential, Cal. We have blended these things out of convenience And for some people, look, it's been really great, but I think there is a cost to that choice. There's a bargain we've made that Your boss can always reach you and that you can always be distracted, alwaysways wonder, is there an email? Whereas what I really try to do is I close the laptop and that's my time away from the office and now I'm home. And that separation has made things a lot better for us. and I would recommend that people in their own way try to find a way to kind of Draw a strong line between work and home life if they can Well I have some questions about this because I'm interested. So like let's start with work Um People are used to. So you have bosses, right? I mean you bosses, department chairs, I assume at the university, when you're working on articles, freelance, you have editors. Did people just adjust? like tell me about people fear if I'm not available. Like if don't I'm not around to answer that email at five because I'm home and I won't be around tntill the next morning, it's going to be a big problem. It's going E is going to fall apart What was the reality of the lack of communication at home when it came to your work. what ended up happening with the other people in your professional life far less than I ever anticipated. actually I think you say this all the time on your show. peopleeople are thinking about you a lot less than you think that they are, you know I thought that we would turn off the internet in our home for a summer and that once the semester began where I was teaching again, I got to go right back. I just expected that. And I was speaking to my chair and I was telling him like, donon't worry, I'll be back online by the fall. And he just said I hope you're not. I hope you don't stop doing this There was a privilege to having that kind of license, certainly to do that. It requires you setting up systems for work certainly. You have to make expectations clear I will answer email between nine AM and six PM and I will answer it within twelve to twenty four hours. probablyably you know I'm pretty good on email. I'm on, you know. People don't really expect me to respond to emails after six PM And that's been just fine. I've received a couple of phone calls from colleagues after that time. Not a big deal, especially if it's, you know, a breaking news, kind of thing, something really, really important. but it's just so rare People don't want to bother you after work hours. I would imagine that In many cases, if a boss sends you an email after it's eight PM or so, they don't really expect you to respond. Now this can be not true for a lot of people The consequences been have been low It does require me to get in the car and drive out and maybe check an email at the bottom of the hill, you know, here and there if I'm working with an editor on a freelance basis and trying to, you be there for people. But I make things very, very clear when I start a project with someone. Here's how you can reach me. know between these hours, just call my landline and we installed a landline and you can talk to me there. and that just hasn't been a problem. In fact, it's actually kind of a novel, fun thing for people to go on a landline to your home. But once people you know Have the expectations set, and you're also diligent. When you're at work, you're at work You're on. you're available. I'm available to my students. I'm available to my colleagues. I am here for them. I'm not distracted, or I try not to be certainly. And I think when you make those things clear, they don't mind that you go home and live with your family after that. There's different jobs out there, like with CNN, probably this wouldn't wouldn't work I' be big trouble. But I still would try to build systems in that would help me at least have some time away from work life. We have to have it. We used to have it You know, when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, my dad would come home And there was almost no way for people to reach him from work. They could call our house if they wanted, but that was really intrusive. He would come home every day and play catch with me until the sun went down or we couldn't see, you know under we play under the lamp I guarantee you, if my dad had a smartphone in nineteen ninety five, We wouldn't have played catch all of those days And it would break my heart, you know, if that hadn't happened. And I don't know who I would be today if I didn't have that relationship with my father. We've lost that We've lost that when dad comes home and he's just on his phone the whole time orre you know just distracted. And I really want to give my son that time and attention when we're together. It's very important to me What about secondcond question I'm sure people are asking is like, okay, so what about entertainment? So what do you do? It's Saturday, your're home. Young kids are not that exciting. As you said, there's a lot of waiting, a lot of nap time. in the evening, what's been the reality of entertainment without? Because everything's internet fueled now. TV is internet fueled. So what's that like for you now Well, let's talk about the principle behind behind this. first of all, we now live at a time. where the entire culture is inside your house at all times. And the entire culture includes wonderful things like thought provoking books and documentaries and great TV shows, certainly It also includes hardcore pornography. It also includes Addictive gambling All of a sudden, just in the past couple of years We've allowed these things into Our bedrooms, into our bathrooms, into our homes Whereas before, if you wanted to indulge in some kind of things that are maybe outside something our southern Baptist brethren would appreciate, you know our ancestors would appreciate right? you had to go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas to gamble or know to do things that you shouldn't be doing, so to speak.? And now all of that is in our home. Um That's a game change. That's a real change in life. And so We still engage with the culture But it's on our terms. At the threshold of our door, we have far more control of what comes in instead of just the tidal wave. It's kind of like the ocean, right? I grew up as a surfer in California. I love the ocean But I would hate to have it my house be underneath it, right? I know how beautiful it is. I know how deadly it is. And I kind of see Just the vast scope of culture as that kind of that kind of way, right? So We still have Entertertainment in our home. I go to the library and I think what kind of films would we want to watch this weekend? It requires thought, premeditation, kind of conversation with my wife and then also even now our three year old. And we'll rent DVD's. We have a DVD and a blue ray player, but we don't a television We have I bought a nineteen sixties classroom pull down screen Then I attach to hooks at the wall. I have a projector And I have to set all of this up if we want to watch something It takes about ten minutes, there's friction I can't just sit down and click on the TV I have to think I have to think a few days ahead, rent the movies or the, you know, whatever we're getting. I have to set up the the film set up And that friction allows us to be very thoughtful about what we're watching. And it also has the benefit of having a beginning and an end. There's no endless scroll on a DVD. There's some special features, but they don't go that far, right? There's no automatic rolling on YouTube kids or something like that. When the film is over, the film is over. And that matters a lot if you have a three year old. It also goes back to the library. so you can't just watch it constantly. So there's that I also download magazines from the library onto an iPad and I'll read that on the weekends. That also has a beginning and an end. You can't just scroll it forever, or I'll download the New York Times And then we have an abundance of books in our home and We have trails outside to go walk around. So Thoughts, Cal that I would be desperately bored and wonder, what am I going to do with myself? A I just going to stare at the wall here I'm never bored. There's so much to do. When you get rid of one thing that's not serving you, it gives you an abundance of time Dive into the things you really want to do on your terms. It's not just something that's popping up and saying, hey, look at this, look at me, or even the things that I shouldn't be engaging in, whether it's gambling or whatever things like that. And there's a power in that. It's really been very, very special, especially having a young child in the house. He has just an abundance of books that he can read. And you know how children are, They like to read things over and over and over again I'm actually right now reading Daniel Mendelson's translation of the Odyssey to my three year old And he loves it. It's wss very'sal Yeah, very oral. Yes, yes. and it's been magnificent to be reading that to him and have him just love these stories because Children are going to consume content In some way, right? There's you know whether it's bluey or something like that. I figurered, why not make the content something that can last their entire life that they can have a relationship with, somethinghing as enriching and enduring as Homer where he can understand it as a three year old and then in ten years as a thirteen year old and then as a grown man. I think that's very special to have that as a young age. So to answer your question There's plenty of entertainment, but we do have to be thoughtful about it. It doesn't just pop into our house Well, as an aside, I bet you're a you get probably much more benefit out of movie watching than the rest of us ' you're in nineties mode. I think about this a lot. when it's just, this is what I have to do. We're putting on this movie and there's not something I can be doing at the same time. So I can't also be looking at a phone Or even if I put the phone in the other room, I don't have this constant in the back of my mind. There could be something more engaging I could be doing and I have to keep having that argument with my mind but let's keep watching this I bet without it, experience of just watching something because you're like, this is what I I want this I want to get as much benefit out of this as I can Like what even if it's not the best movie, like I can get lost in the world and find interesting, you know, elements or whatever. You're probably used to it now, but I bet if we could transport someone into your mind for just watching a movie, that psychic experience for them would be like going to the sphere in Las Vegas. It would be like, whoa That was completely different than what I'm used to It's true, there's no second screen, and I don't have to have that constant battle of resisting urges to see if there's something better out there because I don't have access to it I require not having access to it because that little voice in my head says, whyy don't you just check that email? Why don't you just check that sport score It's gone. It's not in my head. I mean, just not having access to it changes everything becausecause the exhaustion is not necessarily in the consumption of the media, it's in the constant fight I have with that voice of whether I should be engaging with it or not at this moment There's no clicking over to something else. And it's funny, you say that Cal, because in the week after we turned off the internet, I found myself ravenous for content I was reading everything I could get my hands on because my whole day was spent just consuming things online. And I was reading tags on pillows. and once I finished all my magazines and I was just looking at all the binding of my books and everything, just looking for something to kind of fill that addiction. Now that has lessened now and it's kind of feels very silly in hindsight And certainly in the moments after of the internet, went down I went around the house looking for a signal of some kind that I could find. Once I realized that It was gone. There was no getting it back It changed everything But you adjusted, That's interesting. So like now You're just operating at a slower, you're more comfortable with a slower pace at home. It's like, I'm doing this now And now I'm going to do that. And that change. That's what that's interesting to me. is that sense of like, I need content How long did that take? I always hear two weeks. People always talk about two weeks being an important threshold? Was it roughly that for you I think so a week or two, you had on your show a study recently about people giving up mobile interternet for two weeks. And I would say that that is what is required for that kind of detox You will find how little you miss it and how rich real life can be. I don't know how people who do eight hours of screen time or consume videos on Netflix all day and have children actually do anything in the world. Just the time to cook the food and clean the house and take care of the child and do your work. takes up all of the time, at least in my case. and also your thoughts. are able to stretch for long periods of time. They are not punctuated by pings and U you know, things on your phone coming up or even that kind of battle you have with a little voice in your head that says, maybe find something better. You just get to spend the day thinking a single thought for a long period of time You really just can't do that in today's media ecosystem I mean, the way I see it, Cal, there are billion dollar industries that know everything about us that want nothing but our attention and time How are you and I fragile human beings any match billion dollars against us There's no way. there's no way. we can't do it U And that's why I say we have to have spaces where we can opt out of those things. And for us, it's our home, for other people, it can be something smaller But If we are living our life forever as these just digital consumers They've got us. They know everything about us We're no match for it And and we have to find a place where we can kind of dive into our own humanity and a space and a time to do that. I mean, it's It's part of the reason why there's an ancient tradition of Sabbath in the Jewish and Christian traditions where you are declaring independence from the the secular world from the market And just saying, you know what? for one day, I don't need you If you're a religious person for one day, I can show that I only have reliance on God, right? But I think a secular person can embrace this in the same way I do have independence, and sometimes you just need to prove it to yourself that I don't need these external things in order to thrive And I think a lot of people haven't done that in a very long time. I certainly hadn't until we started I want to take another quick break to hear from some of the sponsors that make this show possible Look, I'm never someone who thought a lot about my skin, but as I've gotten older, I discovered something that you know, ninety nine percent of women already know, but no one told me. You have to take care of your skin. 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That's caldera lab C a l D E R a lab dot com slash deep for twenty percent off your first order This episode is also sponsored by Better health Here's the thing. we talk about mental health more openly now than we used to asking for help can still feel hard. BetterHel's latest research confirms this twenty twenty six state of stigma repeport Surveyed two thousand Americans and revealed that eighty five percent believe getting support is wise, yet seventy four percent say society discourages people from doing so These are shocking results. So here's my message to you If you're struggling with your thoughts and mood Consider getting help from a professional If your knee was hurting you go see a doctor. So why not do the same if your mind is feeling out of sorts finding a therapist seems too daunting You should consider better help The world's largest online therapy platform, which has served over six million people globally. It's easy to use. 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So what's the effect of that detox brain when you're actually like at your office at Appalachia State, just working on normal work I'm certainly more refreshed. I come in ready to work. I know that I have a limited amount of time to do that work And so I have to focus and do it But I do get distracted When I have access to those kinds of those things, they just come roaring back. So I'm no saint in this. and I didn't do all of this because I am some kind of saint. I did this because I am the chief of sinners. I cannot. you know Focus if If I'm not in the right place to do so, but I've gotten much better, better at it. But it does allow me to focus on work and be present with the students and with my colleagues in ways that I think I was just kind of constantly tired and irritable and distracted before. So it really changes because you know you're just like, okay, here's my window to do the work. Let's knock it out Let's get it done and then try to take that intention home with familyily life You're probably a very good email writer, I would assume, because when you know We can't just start unspooling a back and forth conversation that can just kind of last into the night or whatever I bet you would be like the case studies in deep work. you're like, I'm actually gonna put into this email All the information you kind of need for us to move forward because I don't have the luxury of just like, I'll just grab it on my I'll grab it on my phone when you respond to me later tonight. So I would assume your emails are good Yes, deep work, digital minimalism Life withithout email But that was the correct title, write Life W without a world world without email, excuse me Your books have been very instrumental in how we've built our work life here, certainly. Yes, I try to put everything in the email. and they know that you know this correspondence will end after six, you know? And I also try to do things in person, like let's try to knock this out in conversation. I'm a big believer in phone calls. They're so much faster knock this thing out in a thirty second phone call or a brief chat I do not like back and forth emails at all or text exchanges. I try to keep my phone is just a nokia flip phone by the way. So I can't send long text messages. it's exhausting to me. And so I try to keep that to just, good, yes, I'll be home, those kinds of things. And if it's anything more than that, boom, I'm calling you on the phone. Some people might find that ridiculously obnoxious, but I find it to be so much faster to do anything meaningful that you need to just communicate something very quickly between two people Okay, final question about life without Innet. you and I have talked about this before, I find it fascinating. Raising a young kid with no internet What was that like or what has that been like Well let me start by saying no regrets. This has been the best decision we have ever made. and I cannot imagine doing this with a constant connection in the home. But I will also say that it raises challenges U When your child has some kind of medical issue, you can't just Google it and look it up you have to the pediatrician, or you have to call a family member Now I would argue that that reliance on your community or on your family is ancient. It's what people did forever and actually having to make that phone call instead of just looking it up on AI or Google or something, increases community. We are relying on each other more. My wife relies on the older mothers who have raised many children in ways she never would if she just was flipping through some kind of TikTok video to find the answer It requires us to be very intentional of how we spend our time together. We don't just sit around and look at each other. We are reading books to him constantly. He has been read to since he was an infant Hard backack know books, real books, including some of yours, Cal, I think I read them aloud while he was very little while I was reading them.or Por. And we're reading him the Odyssey now. It also requires I like that you put those next to each other My books and the Odyssey We're talking about the classics here. So it makes sense. We' these Th these are all Con. course Con. the Western Con. Yeah. Yes yes Um It requires us also to seek out community because we do not have the veneer of community that a digital phone provides making us feel like we have community when we haven't even left the house. No We crave it, so we have to go out. So my wife has started a volunteer forest school where Dozens of children from the area come and run through the hills and swim in the rivers together and they build things in the forest. And so you know my child is constantly interacting with other kids in really healthy ways, gettingting out there. We have to go to public spaces for entertainment. So you know a lot of the weekend is spent at the public library, at the public museum playlay spaces, we are out and about constantly. And I would argue M Cal that we wouldn't be. If we had the luxury of being home and just being able to turn on a screen We probably just stay home and watch Bluey or something, which is fine, I guess, for sometimes. But we don't. Any kind of media consumption we have with him, it is premeditated. We pick out a film, a DVD, we sit with him and watch it. it begins, and then it ends, sccreen rolls up, we're done, right? There's no kind of just turn on the TV and you know let him just kind of vege out. It just doesn't happen. And that requires him to kind of rise to the occasion. He has to learn how to behave Um, when, you know, he's with adults and with other children. There's no iPad to save him and there never will be certainly not in public spaces at restaurants or things like that. And I understand that like there's different circumstances for different people, but we've really tried to do the hard work And I tell you, it is harder, it is hard especially with my wife spending most of the time with him. What's been really important is that we are both on board on this. It's an idea that we share together. If anything, she's been more of a zealot than I have and she's brought me along. and I'm on board too, but she's really really led this and I'm very proud of her for for doing that It's had its extreme benefits. I can take my son anywhere I took him to a modern dance performance. We sat on the front row, and he watched the entire two hours while boomers all around us were playing on their phones. It was absurd m he can he can sit and watch a two hour movie three years old, you know, and he He loves the Odyssey. you know, so it's It's what we've wanted to do, but it's required a lot of work But I wouldn't trade it for anything So let's try to extract a lesson or two here before begins to closeed. It's been fascinating and inspiring. I'll take a stab at a lesson and then I'll let you respond or take a stab So what I'm trying to do here is extract some ideas that the listener can take away with when thinking about their own lives. So one idea that comes to mind hearing from you is, you know, I have this book I've been working on, it's coming out next spring about the deep life And it's about the way I talk about on my show is like I have a very sort of like structured way of thinking about this. I care as much about the how you make changes is I do what the content of the changes are because I think that's a little bit more idiosyncratic And one of the ideas that comes up in the book is that often Do something remarkable in alignment with your values really makes a much bigger difference sometimes than just small things, right? becausecause're you're signaling to yourself, you're signaling to the world. I take this really importantly. It amplifies benefits to like really big levels that we often We're a little tentative Well, let's just nibble around the edges in safe ways, but sometimes it's in the remarkable changes in pursuit of values that you get the remarkable turns. you know, input in has to do with magnitude of output All right, so I want to run want your take on that lesson? and then what's another lesson that we might take away that that we're not thinking about Sometimes you do have to go big and do big things and make massive changes in order to make the life that you want. I think there's a lot of half steps that people take and certainly ones that I took If there is very little friction in keeping you from the things you shouldn't be doing or things that are keeping you from a rich life, you're going to overcome that friction very, very easily. You have to sometimes do something Extreme And what I found is I thought I would do this extreme thing for a short amount of time. And now I can't imagine living any other way And I can't believe it's been three years. Now Lessons for other folks. Um I recognize that most people are not going to throw their WiFi routers into the sea. I understand. I get it. Life is kind of digitally connected in ways inccreasingly so all the time But I'd like to ask yourself in the twenty twenties now, Do you have a space in your life that cannot be touched. by digital connection and all that comes with that Do you have a single room? and not just a room, Do you have a single amount of time a single space where you are free and independent of this. And I think that a lot of people would say, no, I actually don't. This thing follows me everywhere. O even if I I love there was a listener to your show a few weeks ago who called do what he calls landlining, you, putting the phone in the kitchen. I love that U I can unplug it and take it to the couch. You know, like it gets into the cracks. and so I think I would recommend crereate what I would call a Sabbath space somewhere in your life whether it's a time or a physical space where these things cannot go and never will go and do not have access That's going to be essential. and that might be not just a space, but a period of time where you really put your digital devices with you and your family way in a way you cannot reach them for Even just try an hour. Then try in twenty four hours or a weekend The other thing is if you want to try this You can't just copy and copy and paste twenty first century life into this and just, okay, we're going to live without the internet and we're going to keep going, No, no, no. you have to build twentieth century systems back that have atrophied. since that time And so we wanted to live in our home a little bit more like the nineteen nineties. Not the eighteen nineties, right? you know? And so we had to go out and install a landline And then we thought, well, we don' We don't know the phone number for like the movie theater, the pediatrician or the church, you know U We have to a phone book You know, so we ordered a phone, but they still have the yellow pages. It's called the real yellow pages as though there's like all these other yellow pages compitors. Yeah Yeahah,. And we had to give everybody our landline phone. And we had to just kind of set these systems up for it to work because this would never work unless we did that that work to make it make it happen. So Just acknowledging that you don't need constant access to this stuff that you can thrive and build a rich life You'll be far more engaged with your community. you'll be far more engaged with your public library. You will bring Rich text into your house that will be so much better than the slop you're constantlyll scrolling through. And so there's many things that people do, but you just have to cut yourself off for a period of time, you just can't allow yourself to reach that cookie jar or else it just won't work, because I guarantee you give itough time you're going reach up and you're going to grab that cook I like it. I think this is a great example of what I call lifestyle centric planning because you're working M generally speaking, working backwards from your vision of an ideal lifestyle as opposed to working forward towards some like goal you came up with in advance, right? Because lifestyle centric planning can lead you to really interesting but unexpected places that you never would have like, you know, in twenty eighteen As you return to, you know, as you left CN or wherever you were leaving, you never would have been like, oh, I know what I want to do next. That old cliche taking a journalism job at Appalachian State and living in a cabin that doesn't have cell service. Like it's not something that you would have thought of because it's not a common thing. but you had a clear vision You had developed a clear vision of ideal lifestyle. and then now you're open to see like interesting opportunities as they arose, It steered you through this sort of unpredictable path in advance to a really cool situation. So that's the other lesson Ill leave with people When you work backwards from a clear vision of an ideal lifestyle, you'll end up in places you never would have conceived of in advance as this is where I want to get So working backwards from where you want your life to be. really can be more powerful than trying to come up with a goal that's going to fix your life. If we could just do this then everything's going to be better. So I think you're illustrating a lot here Before we go, you just started a new substack is this, right? I want you to tell people about it because I'm going to go subscribe for sure As soon as we're done recording this interview, but maybe maybe tell us a little bit more about what you're up to here Yes, my wife and I have started a new substack called the Opt Oters. and it will have a series of pieces of writing, interviews, essays about our life living this digital off grid life and how people can do it too. I think there's a lot of people out there who want to strive to be opt Oters in some way. and so I'd invite people to join to join us. And we are hoping to turn this whole journey into a book here in the next year or so. So lots of writing to be done, and I'm very grateful for anyone that wants to join us at the Opt Oters on Substack Yeah, so check out the opt Oters. alsoso just search for Chris Moody articles in general. He's written a lot of great stuff, including a classic Atlantic piece about this is like early in your move, right? Like your that first piece about moving to boon. So if people want some more details, they should search that out as well Yes, that's right. It was just in the first couple of months that we had done this. I'd like to write a follow up piece now after three years of doing this, especially the impact it has had on our child. That has just been so important, seeing how he has grown. And we've done this in such great contrast to the way the world has been moving And I do just want to kind of reiterate, Cal, we don't reject the culture. We're not U you know, abstaining from everything. We engage with the culture. We go out into the world and We devour it, but it's on our own terms, right? And we have control over what comes into our house. And that I think has been the healthiest way to live in these times where there's just a fire hose coming at you. And this is one way you can turn off that spiget. Well, Chris, I appreciate it. A lot of inspiration in here. We will for sure have a mailman on a horse deliver a phonograph of this interview once once this is the downside of doing what you did is you're going you're going to get a lot of bad. and asides and reactionary critiques. that's probably just a trade off you're willing to make is a lot of telegraph jokes. I assume, but that's probably a fair trade. But I appreciate you coming on the show Thank you so much Cal. It's been great to be here All right, so there you have it. That was my conversation with Chris Moody I thought it was fascinating. I think what he's up to out there in Boon has some lessons for all of us and remember to check out the new substack, the opt Oters that Chris started with his wife, if you want to keep up with what they're up to and the lessons they have for the rest of us I got toa tell you though, here's something that' kind of interesting Chris and I turns out have all of these u These sort of unexpected connections that we keep discovering. All right, let me give you some examples I recorded this interview right before leaving for a trip to Colorado. I was going to a small town in Colorado with my family for vacation And when I called up Chris to do this interview before I left for the trip I was like, Oh, where are you recording from? Because I know he doesn't an internet his cabin He was staying with family family, they know in this same small town I was about to go out to and visit. All right, right, unexpected connection. unneexpected connection number two Chris's grandfather was a southern Baptist minister who knew well my grandfather who was also also a Southern Baptist minister. I think my grandfather had maybe taught I or mentored his grandfather Also, it turns out that the town Boone where Chris lives is I believe named for Daniel Boone and I am a descendant I can't really say of Daniel Boone. I'm descended from Daniel Boone's brother. my a grandmother's middle name was boon And so the connections T many connections. And of course, the biggest connection of all We share our distrust of a constantly connected life. So there we go Fascinating conversation with someone that has a lot of Almost like spooky, spooky, spooky Sookily abundant connections to my own life. That's how we know this whole interview was gismate. Sories, I hope you liked it. Long interview, I'm out of town, so we'll skip the normal like and A and what I'm up to u that I would normally do But I'll be back next week with another advice episode. So Intell then, as always, stay deep. Hey, if you made it this far You must be ready to join my fight for depth in a distracted world. Now the best way to do this is to join over one hundred twenty five thousand people who receive my email newsletter each Monday, you can sign up at calneewport. com slash ideas. and when you do I will send you a free guide to my seven best ideas about cultivating a deep life Sign up today calnper. com slash ideas.