Introduction
In January 2025, Cal Newport – an MIT Computer Science PhD, accomplished Georgetown professor, and famous author of several well known books, including “Deep Work,” “Digital Minimalism,” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” – gave me a reality check and detailed career advice after I had the chance to ask him about my PhD and career situation, which was seemingly turning into a disaster at the time.
I’d been an avid reader of his books since 2023 and had been listening to his podcast since early-mid 2024 – roughly at the same point where I had to switch PhD topics for the third time due to reasons outside of my control – and in January 2025, I’d decided to email his producer Jesse a question along the lines of:
I’m a PhD student in Astronautical Engineering at USC, and I’m considering dropping out after three and a half years. My goal is to be an astronaut and entrepreneur. My PhD topic is okay, I’m overwhelmed, and I have financial troubles. It’ll probably take me another 3 years to realistically finish if I stick with my current research.
Should I enter the space industry now, with just a master’s?
The only difference from what Cal’s producer, Jesse, said, was that I changed the details “Astronautical” to “Aerospace” and “USC” to “UCLA” when submitting the question just to preserve my anonymity at the time in case anyone I knew watched it then, but it was me that submitted it asking about my situation at USC.
The full clip of my question being asked and Cal’s detailed reply starts at 49:40 in the YouTube Episode 337 below and goes on for about 15 minutes thereafter. Feel free to check out Cal’s reply to my question below:
Cal’s response to my question on Episode 337 of his podcast on January 27th, 2025 – a transcript is available here.
With this post, which is being written just over a year and a half later – my goal is to re-analyze Cal’s advice and give a case study in how I’ve implemented it and improved my life since then.
It hasn’t been an easy process by any means, but I’d argue that his advice has been transformational and turned my career around. My hope is that I can use this to avoid similar mistakes in the future, continue reaping the benefits of Cal’s approaches in the future, and help inspire others who are reading this to do the same.
Context
Before diving in, here’s a quick overview of my last year and a half since Cal’s advice:
I continued in my PhD program for 11 more months, dropping out in December 2025, but I took advantage of my free tuition and strategically took coursework in more valuable and lucrative career areas such as AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks over the course of that last year.
In that time, I ramped up the amount of conversations I was having for evidence-based career planning, talking to as many people as I could – classmates who I finished my masters with who were in industry now, professors who worked at SpaceX, and I also reviewed important notes (sort of similar to what I did with this blog, in a way) and asked as many people as possible how to get these jobs – from learning what to say in a cover letter to what to look for in a company, to how to structure your resume, say in interviews, and even what to do once you’re hired and how to make the most of that – I learned every trick in the book to get any and every advantage I could. I’d asked a lot of people for advice over the years before this, but at this point, I started rigorously executing on evidence-based career planning significantly more.
In August 2025, I’d landed two internship offers with Blue Origin – one for GNC and one for AI/ML/Robotics. Both were great opportunities, but I ended up picking GNC. This was my door out of the PhD program into something else that was much more lucrative than my Plasma Physics / Contamination PhD Research track.
Since it was only a Spring internship, I continued interviewing for Summer 2026 internships throughout my last semester at USC in Fall 2025. I didn’t get any of those, but I got a lot of great experience, then from March 2026 until early September 2026 (roughly 6 months), I interviewed for quite a few full-time GNC positions. Over the course of the last 13 months, I’ve interviewed with over 31 different space companies for GNC roles – including all the top ones – after having ZERO interviews for anything over the first four years of my PhD studying plasma physics and contamination.
As of mid September 2026, I’ve reached the end of that process and have fielded several GNC offers, and while I haven’t made a decision as of this writing, I likely will be very soon!
Cal’s Feedback
Evidence-Based Career Planning
Cal mentioned that evidence-based career planning is probably the number one thing that was lacking here and needed to be aggressively inserted.
He mentioned that once you pick a plan, you need to figure out the right way to make progress.
You have to ground the decisions in evidence from real people who understand how that part of the world works, who are saying what I’m doing makes sense and is the right way to get there.
Avoid “The Vague,” “The Romantic,” and “The Convenient”
Within evidence-based career planning, Cal said to avoid simply doing the most “emotionally interesting” or “emotionally available” option.
Obviously at a high level, on the surface, going to a school like USC or UCLA has a certain “romance” about it – but the problem, he effectively said, is that while this might be the “flashy” thing to do, it might not be the right thing to do.
But then the problem, to paraphrase him, is that all of these questions I’m asking – whether I should drop out or not and what I should pivot into etc. – don’t have clear answers if I don’t do rigorous evidence-based career planning.
Crystal-Clear Evidence
On the other hand, he said that I should only decide to stay in my program – or take any path in particular – if there’s crystal clear evidence that it works.
Like, if I stay in my lab at USC for example and stick it out with the PhD, I would need to gather crystal-clear evidence that it would lead to the opportunities, and that without the PhD, I wouldn’t get those particular opportunities, and so on.
On the other hand, if there wasn’t crystal clear evidence that it would necessarily lead to those opportunities, then I would need to “ripcord it.”
Pretend Like You’re Writing a Book
Cal also mentioned that in order to obtain that “crystal clear evidence,” I needed to “pretend like [I’m] writing a book on whatever [I] decide what [I’m] going to do.”
Like, I need to “write a short book called ‘How to do X’ – like I’m a journalist systematically doing research about how to succeed in the thing.”
With this “how-to-book,” I need to figure out how to succeed in the path that I choose, figure out if it’s possible, and change if it’s not.
Misc
Cal gave some great advice above, and then went on a (good) tangent about doctoral programs in general where he also gave some great insights.
He mentioned that with doctoral programs, if you’re over 3 years in, not producing good stuff, publishing in hard places, or getting recognized, it’s probably time to ripcord it.
(albeit, my counterargument will be it wasn’t me “not producing good stuff” - it was rather “inability to produce good stuff due to constant changes in research direction and funding” that was the issue - not my effort or personal value)
For me, I constantly was laying these deadlines in my head, i.e. “if I don’t do my PhD qual exam (a major milestone meaning you’re still 1-2 years away from finishing at minimum) by Spring 2024, I’m dropping out” then that turned into Fall 2024, then Spring 2025, and it never happened (not because “I didn’t have my stuff together”, but moreso because my topic and research lab “didn’t have a lot behind it”), so that was a huge part of the reason I ripcorded.
How I’ve Implemented These 1.5 Years Later
While I’d used some form of evidence-based career planning to this point - I’d avoided student loans, had scholarships or some way to pay for school in full all the way from my Bachelors through my PhD, and even picked USC because it was the #1 most recruited school for SpaceX at the time (and since it would also provide the best “lifestyle-centric” choice), I didn’t continue rigorously and systematically doing evidence-based career planning once I got to USC.
Over the first four years, I worked insanely hard on both my content and space industry career paths, but didn’t have much to show for it since I didn’t realize that my plasma physics lab wasn’t a great vehicle at all for achieving my goals.
Once it was clear that a lot of things were going wrong, I simultaneously was partially “trapped” since I hadn’t figured out how to overcome the “cold start problem” and make myself marketable for great jobs, while at the same time, thoroughly enjoying everything about USC EXCEPT for the Plasma Physics PhD topic itself (which was the main driver in my success or failure), so it was hard to walk away from that part of USC.
While it sucks that things didn’t work out – largely due to reasons outside my control – it was still my fault for being in the situation and not recognizing the warning signs in the first place.
So while I can’t get the “lost years” back, I did implement Cal Newport’s principles from his advice to me, and consider the last year and a half a success given my very low starting point in January 2025.
I started aggressively inserting evidence-based career planning over the course of the next year and beyond, first figuring out how to break into the industry (and getting a little lucky), and then once I got into GNC, being systematic about figuring out how to succeed in GNC.
I talked to dozens of people, maybe even over 100, and learned a little bit from each one about both how to break into the industry, and then how to succeed in GNC. Included among those are also my interviewers for each GNC role I interviewed for – those interviews with 30+ companies were just as much information gathering as they were interviews.
I figured out the right way to make progress, systematically organized my notes and wrote them down, and effectively “wrote a book” on “How to excel at Spacecraft GNC” (this blog, largely, as well as other private notes which I won’t share).
Furthermore, I also did so for content creation and entrepreneurship – two things I still want to accomplish and have real success over the next few years in – as well. I’ve met some incredible people from those worlds with insights you can’t find just anywhere on the internet on those topics, and hopefully those blueprints will help me reach a similar level there.
I also picked GNC since it’s also crystal clear that within the space industry, they are both the most well compensated and get the best stock options (alongside software engineers), with there being a real possibility of being a millionaire within a few years if I joined the right startup.
On top of being paid a premium compared to traditional roles, there’s also a ton of demand from companies to hire qualified GNC Engineers, so the job security and optionality is much higher than most other types of roles since it’s both specialized yet essential.
In contrast, plasma physics and contamination don’t have great job prospects, job security, growth opportunities, or – frankly – much in the way of life-changing stock options.
I constantly had anxiety about not having those things before I pivoted into GNC, but once I implemented – and successfully executed on – evidence based career planning and got on a much better path, most of those anxieties went away.
Conclusion
All-in-all, Cal’s evidence-based career planning philosophy has worked very well for me and completely changed the trajectory of my career in a good way.
The only thing – which I’ll try not to ruminate on going forward – is that I wish I’d known about and rigorously executed on aggressive evidence-based career planning years ago since I could easily be way farther ahead of where I am now with much less effort.
After all, Cal’s frameworks are supposed to help you avoid such situations – they allow you to test (and pivot if needed) before committing years to something, allowing you to be proactive rather than reactive, and with the lessons learned here, hopefully I’ll continue being the former in the future.
Just over a year ago, I had constant funding worries, zero interviews over the first 4 years of my PhD, and a PhD topic going nowhere. I had zero leverage and no concrete roadmap, which didn’t feel great at all. Today, I’m sitting on several GNC offers and that anxiety is gone.
I admittedly still have some anxiety about “catching up” and “making up for lost time,” and also about being able to self-actualize and still reach my potential, but at least the major, day-to-day anxieties I previously had have completely vanished. While I’m not rich yet, my “peace of mind” is significantly better than it was while in the Plasma PhD lab making only $32k/year!
If I do very well and pick the right opportunity, I could be a millionaire within a few years – if not, I’m still building valuable GNC career capital and would be in that much better of a position to capitalize when the next hot startup with good stock options comes along. With contamination, I wouldn’t even have that opportunity either way.
Cal’s frameworks are built to get you here before you lose the years I lost — so if you’re going into something with no market signal (no interviews, no one paying, a milestone you keep pushing back), don’t wait years for a reality check like I did. Go gather the evidence now.
Figure out what’s valuable, figure out how to get good at those things, and execute – if you focus on value above everything else, you’ll have good odds of becoming successful.