How to Gain Control of Your Time
Cal Newport walks through the stripped-down organizational system he'll run during his fall 2026 sabbatical, explains why to rebuild systems each season, then answers listener questions on AI, checklist productivity and agent hype.
The gist
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Newport stores tasks in Things 3 during his sabbatical, uses Trello in busier semesters, and keeps a separate Google Calendar for notes to himself.
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A printed vision document, kept in his sock drawer, lists the season's big picture, major projects, the tools and rules he uses, and daily metrics.
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His methods: time block each weekday in his planner with a shutdown and metrics, spend at least 20 minutes daily on tasks, and plan weekly.
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Newport says friction kills systems and novelty keeps you energized, so he rebuilds his system each season, around the questions what, when and why.
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He warns AI fuels checklist productivity, and argues agent mishaps come from prompt loops blindly running LLM outputs, calling AI a normal, messy technology.
Cal Newport uses it
"The first material is where am I storing my tasks this fall? Well, because I'm on sabbatical I am storing them all in a computer program called Things 3. The nice thing about Things, what I like about it, is the interface is very easy. It tries to simplify adding things, remov..."
▶ Play at 4:052 creators recommend it, including Greg Isenberg.
See all on the Things page
Cal Newport uses it
"In a more busy fall like when I have multiple administrative or research roles at Georgetown, I would typically use Things for home things and use Trello for my major roles, because if I need to have more complicated information or I need to store files along with tasks, then ..."
▶ Play at 5:122 creators recommend it, including Nick Vasilescu.
See all on the Trello page
Cal Newport uses it
"The third tool I use is probably the most typical and boring, which is a calendar, but you need it. I use a Google Calendar. I actually have multiple Google Calendars and I can put them all on the same display. Maybe the most interesting tweak I do is that I have a calendar th..."
▶ Play at 6:138 creators recommend it, including Peter Yang, Kath Korevec, and Reed Robinson.
See all on the Google Calendar page
Cal Newport uses it
"The final key tool that I have is a vision document. This is something I print out and is going to contain the core ideas for the season ahead. It becomes the root to your entire productivity system. Print it out, put it in your top drawer where your socks are, because you go ..."
▶ Play at 7:06
Cal Newport uses it
"For example, if you do metric tracking, which I do and I recommend as a way to sort of keep up on practices you want to do on a regular basis, you've got to write down somewhere these are the metrics I track every day."
▶ Play at 9:29
Cal Newport uses it
"Number one is time blocking. On the weekdays I time block plan the day. On the weekdays I do shutdowns — shutdown complete, I check the checkboxes after I've done my shutdown ritual, and I keep track of metrics when I do my shutdown. Run that system: your time block planning, ..."
▶ Play at 10:453 creators recommend it, including Amy Timberlake and David Epstein.
See all on the Time blocking page
Cal Newport uses it
"The next piece of material, the next tool I'm going to use is a time block planner. Obviously, I sell my own time block planner, so I have the advantage of using one that's planned by me. I get four uses out of mine: planning my day, capturing tasks when I'm away from a machin..."
▶ Play at 5:33What they recommend · 7 picks
Productivity
7 picks · Cal Newport ·Cal's productivity →
"The next piece of material, the next tool I'm going to use is a time block planner. Obviously, I sell my own time block planner, so I have the advantage of using one that's plan..."
"The final key tool that I have is a vision document. This is something I print out and is going to contain the core ideas for the season ahead. It becomes the root to your entir..."
"Number one is time blocking. On the weekdays I time block plan the day. On the weekdays I do shutdowns — shutdown complete, I check the checkboxes after I've done my shutdown ri..."
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