Speaker 1: Hello. I'm Caitlin. My workplace problem is I'll be in
Speaker 1: a meeting and there's a man who likes to sit
Speaker 1: right next to me, and you will use this pan
Speaker 1: or pencil and just tap incessantly. And I'm having issues
Speaker 1: with accountability in returning assignments. I want to know how
Speaker 1: to make more time. I guess I could just yank
Speaker 1: it out at this hand. I don't know, but that
Speaker 1: would make me too many friends. And I've tried several
Speaker 1: different things when it comes to time blocking. One thing
Speaker 1: to note is I am twenty five years old, and
Speaker 1: the group that I am coordinating typically are our superiors.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you get out of the time block and it
Speaker 1: feels a little bit like you've already You're already behind.
Speaker 1: I am curious to hear what you have for group
Speaker 1: coordination and accountability. Thanks much, I have a good day.
Speaker 1: Bye bye. A lot of you have problems that you're
Speaker 1: trying to solve at the office. So today, on the
Speaker 1: final episode of Works for Me this season, we're going
Speaker 1: to look back at everything we've done and figure out
Speaker 1: whether solving work problems even works. Welcome to Works for Me,
Speaker 1: the show where we try to solve all of our
Speaker 1: work problems using productivity hacks to see if they'll work
Speaker 1: for you. I'm Francesco Leafy and I'm back at Greenfield.
Speaker 1: So this week is the last show of our season,
Speaker 1: so sad, sad, So we're going to do something a
Speaker 1: little different. We are going to look back at all
Speaker 1: the experiments we did and see if the hacks really
Speaker 1: did work for us. Let's get started for our very
Speaker 1: first episode, Becca, you decided to make a bullet journal.
Speaker 1: This is a hand drawn journal that you customize with
Speaker 1: to do lists, calendars and trackers and kind of whatever
Speaker 1: else you want to put in it. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people get very serious about decorating it because it
Speaker 1: really doesn't matter if it's not parfect, because you're the
Speaker 1: one who wants to look at it every day. I'm
Speaker 1: just like so nervous to mess up that it comes
Speaker 1: out looking kind of dumb. Oh my god, is ugly.
Speaker 1: I'm really messing up basically, like I'm getting black pen
Speaker 1: and places it shouldn't be the how did that happen?
Speaker 1: I don't love this pen. Oh god, that's ugly. As
Speaker 1: we just heard you, maybe we're not that great at
Speaker 1: like the beautiful aspect of it. Because it has this
Speaker 1: Instagram quality of people making all these decorations and putting
Speaker 1: pretty flowers and illustrations in the borders and using calligraphy
Speaker 1: and stuff. But you did find some use from it.
Speaker 1: So I want to know, first of all, are you
Speaker 1: still bullets turning? Yes, I still have a bullet journal.
Speaker 1: It's sitting right here in front of me right now,
Speaker 1: and I do still use the to do lists. So
Speaker 1: I never kept to do list before the bullet journal,
Speaker 1: which I know what was I thinking, um, But now
Speaker 1: I write it to do list every day when I
Speaker 1: get to work, and I'm pretty strict about writing it,
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty strict about crossing things off every day,
Speaker 1: and I that is a habit I picked up totally
Speaker 1: from this. So I don't do a lot of the
Speaker 1: other bullet journal things, but at the very least I
Speaker 1: do to do list. Yeah, because you learned how to
Speaker 1: do like calendars and activity trackers and all these other
Speaker 1: special features. And you're saying, like you mostly it's mostly
Speaker 1: just a book of to do list to do list book.
Speaker 1: I do a couple other things. I keep a wind's page,
Speaker 1: which is very popular in the bullet journal world, where
Speaker 1: you write down your winds, which is really good for
Speaker 1: people who um have low self esteem or impostors and
Speaker 1: worn't get really down about their work yourself. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I did try this other a couple other things, but
Speaker 1: mostly to do list journal. But you did. Also. One
Speaker 1: of your takeaways from doing the bullet journal in the
Speaker 1: first place was that, like, you can kind of pick
Speaker 1: and choose the parts of it that work for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the big takeaway was that writing things down can
Speaker 1: help reveal things about yourself. I'm not as good at
Speaker 1: that part, but I did try something called a good
Speaker 1: time journal, where you write down all your tasks throughout
Speaker 1: the day and you categorize them in a special way
Speaker 1: to figure out what you most like about your job.
Speaker 1: So that falls into the category of writing things down
Speaker 1: to reveal a deeper truth. Maybe I should try that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool. After hearing me go through bullet journaling, did
Speaker 1: you take anything from the experiment and apply it to
Speaker 1: your work life? You know, while you were doing the
Speaker 1: bullet journal, even though originally I thought it was kind
Speaker 1: of silly and over the top, like just how much
Speaker 1: time people spend on it in the bullet journal world
Speaker 1: and how fussy it seemed, but secretly I was actually
Speaker 1: kind of catching some of the fever. And at the time,
Speaker 1: I think I even bought some jail pens and like
Speaker 1: maybe I'd didn't get as far as buying a bullet journal,
Speaker 1: but I thought maybe I'd start doing it, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't really bring myself to do it. But what I
Speaker 1: did instead was I started using a physical journal again.
Speaker 1: I have like a date book that has blank pages
Speaker 1: in it. I was keeping to do lists in like
Speaker 1: lots of different places electronically, and now my to do
Speaker 1: list in my appointments are all analog and they're all
Speaker 1: in the same place. Yeah, that's great. That's That's exactly
Speaker 1: what I use mine for. And I'm proud of you.
Speaker 1: Week number two, you were trying to fix your mornings,
Speaker 1: which had become a mess according to you. So you
Speaker 1: did the rise Up method, which was a six step
Speaker 1: method to make the most out of the early hours.
Speaker 1: So on day one, after making it out of bed,
Speaker 1: I did my level best to follow along with the
Speaker 1: yoga video I found on YouTube hold your blank three
Speaker 1: and then going side to side, did you want at
Speaker 1: a time working away signing with are you still doing
Speaker 1: this rise Up method? I kept up with it for months.
Speaker 1: I was like a dedicated riser, didn't touch the snooze button.
Speaker 1: That had been my big challenge in the episode was
Speaker 1: like training myself to stop pressing snooze and just face
Speaker 1: my demons and get right out of bed and get started,
Speaker 1: no matter how tired I felt. And then the other
Speaker 1: my other big takeaway was how good it felt to
Speaker 1: find time to exercise, to do a little yoga routine
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning, every morning. So I was
Speaker 1: doing it every day, five days a week for months
Speaker 1: and months, and then I got pregnant and I took
Speaker 1: a break because I stopped, I think, but I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to going back to it. I think that of
Speaker 1: all of the experiments we've done, it probably had like
Speaker 1: the most holistic impact on my whole the whole rest
Speaker 1: of my life. Like I felt fitter. I started my
Speaker 1: day feeling like I was kind of taking control of it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't controlled by like whenever my son decides to
Speaker 1: wake up and make noise and demand things. I was
Speaker 1: just like doing my thing, and I was, you know,
Speaker 1: notching a little win the first thing in the morning.
Speaker 1: That is amazing considering where you started from. Which was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like kind of total chaos and really pushing that
Speaker 1: snooze button a lot. And I think it is impressive
Speaker 1: to do anything in the morning, So I think that's cool.
Speaker 1: What about you. Did you have any takeaways from my
Speaker 1: morning routine? I was sincerely impressed with you doing exercise
Speaker 1: in the morning. I did not change my morning routine
Speaker 1: one bit. I know there's so much room for improvement,
Speaker 1: but I just can't do it right now. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm not motivated enough. But it's good to know that
Speaker 1: that options there the morning exists for me to take
Speaker 1: one day. There you go, just not right now. In
Speaker 1: episode three, you wanted to work on your concentration and
Speaker 1: your ability to really focus deeply on tasks at work.
Speaker 1: So you try a method where you built up to
Speaker 1: thirty minute sessions of totally uninterrupted focus on one thing.
Speaker 1: And I feel so freaking good, Like it's just doing
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of writing where you just get through it,
Speaker 1: you focus. I feel like a queen. Are you still
Speaker 1: a queen? Do you still feel like a queen? Do
Speaker 1: you still feel like a focused ruler? You had gotten
Speaker 1: like addicted to doing these focus sessions. Are you still
Speaker 1: doing them. I have back slot a tiny bit, but
Speaker 1: I do still do focus sessions. I would say that
Speaker 1: for me, this episode had the biggest impact on my
Speaker 1: day to day work life. I when I need to
Speaker 1: get work done, I put on my playlist. In fact,
Speaker 1: my Spotify Discover has now learned that that's the type
Speaker 1: of music that I listened to most often. And I
Speaker 1: put a time around for thirty minutes, and I try
Speaker 1: it really hard to get through it, and it still works.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I'm still into it. I think I haven't
Speaker 1: tried to increase the time more and I'm not as
Speaker 1: consistent about it, But just knowing that I have that
Speaker 1: in my back pocket can make me feel a little
Speaker 1: better when I'm feeling a little overwhelmed about a task
Speaker 1: I have to do. You told me you've got a
Speaker 1: lot of responses to this particular episode. What kind of
Speaker 1: feedback were you getting from listeners. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to try the focus session. I think it's
Speaker 1: something that a lot of people struggle with, and they
Speaker 1: were excited to have a pretty concrete, easy thing to do.
Speaker 1: I did get some questions from people. They asked how
Speaker 1: often I was doing it or how often they should
Speaker 1: be doing it in a given day. And my response was,
Speaker 1: just as often as you think you need to do
Speaker 1: it for me in a given day, I'll do it
Speaker 1: anywhere from zero to four times thirty minute sessions. Obviously,
Speaker 1: four time means I have a lot of work going
Speaker 1: on in that day, so I think you can customize
Speaker 1: it for however works for you. Did you ever try
Speaker 1: a focus session? Once again, impressionable me. I was influenced
Speaker 1: by you, and I totally did. I haven't done it recently,
Speaker 1: but basically, any time I've had deep work to do,
Speaker 1: like something thoughtful to write, like a script, I have
Speaker 1: I expand to the full screen so I can't see
Speaker 1: any of the apps, I try to snooze any notifications,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'll do that. I'll do I usually try
Speaker 1: to do twenty minutes or thirty minutes, and if I
Speaker 1: go longer, that's great, because sometimes you pick it up
Speaker 1: and you just get into it and you lose track
Speaker 1: of the time, and then you focus for longer than
Speaker 1: you intended to, which isn't bad. But I have found
Speaker 1: it to be you feel so accomplished, Like you can
Speaker 1: hear it in that tape where you're like on top
Speaker 1: of the world. I feel great because you get so
Speaker 1: much done so quickly, and I think we're used to
Speaker 1: like seeing time just disappear without feeling that great about
Speaker 1: what we've done in that time. So when you've passed
Speaker 1: twenty minutes and you've like written a couple of pages
Speaker 1: of something, it's like it feels so compressed and you
Speaker 1: feel like a hero. So because you've been telling yourself
Speaker 1: for so long that you can't, Yeah, but you can,
Speaker 1: but you can. And then I guess the danger is
Speaker 1: which you got at in your episode. And I noticed
Speaker 1: also that you can then be like we've done that,
Speaker 1: like no need to do anything else for the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I do. Think there's another episode on procrastination
Speaker 1: to be done next season. An episode for you tried
Speaker 1: to reign in a meeting that you thought had gone
Speaker 1: off the rails, and you used a bunch of different
Speaker 1: techniques for meeting experts to try to get more out
Speaker 1: of your meetings. Hello, welcome to the team meeting. Please
Speaker 1: help yourself to some rude or doubta enjoy beling with
Speaker 1: some of these NINDS enhancing toys. If you need something
Speaker 1: to do with your hands, are you still using any
Speaker 1: of the techniques to hold meetings like that that the
Speaker 1: meeting experts told you about. This is the experiment that
Speaker 1: I have fallen off the most on. Some of the
Speaker 1: techniques that I learned were, like, make an agenda ahead
Speaker 1: of time that you involve everybody else in the meeting
Speaker 1: in so that they contribute items and you all collectively
Speaker 1: own the discussion. Keep a timed agenda so that things
Speaker 1: stay on track and no one person is dominating the conversation,
Speaker 1: are talking too much, and like try to keep people
Speaker 1: engaged with food on the table and toys and other
Speaker 1: kinds of things. And I I pretty much do none
Speaker 1: of that when I have this weekly meeting. I think
Speaker 1: what I did retain from it was that the other
Speaker 1: people in the meeting also rely on it, rely on
Speaker 1: it to be a source of information that they can't
Speaker 1: really get anywhere else. And so when I'm in the meeting,
Speaker 1: I think I do kind of take it more seriously
Speaker 1: and I try to make it a little more structured
Speaker 1: than it was. But I was run out of time
Speaker 1: to prepare for the meeting, and so it's really hard
Speaker 1: to make a weekly meeting something that you feel like
Speaker 1: you kind of think about a bunch the day before
Speaker 1: or even like the hour before. So I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think I still have a lot of work to
Speaker 1: do in this area. Did you learn anything from my
Speaker 1: meetings adventures? Not really. I don't have the same meeting
Speaker 1: problem as you. I think it's so specific, so I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think that's fair. I've heard a lot
Speaker 1: from listeners that a lot of people have issues with meetings,
Speaker 1: but none of them are really the same issues. Some
Speaker 1: people have too many meetings and they just want to
Speaker 1: know how to have fewer, or some people have meetings
Speaker 1: where they never get a chance to talk. So you
Speaker 1: can't solve everybody's meeting problems in one episode. This this
Speaker 1: episode really felt like the one where it's like the
Speaker 1: big existential problem everybody has, just like meetings are on
Speaker 1: everybody's minds, but for different reasons. We also learned that
Speaker 1: like canceling all meetings is not the answer either, because
Speaker 1: meetings do serve a purpose. So I don't know, man
Speaker 1: meetings crack that NT yet. Yeah. In episode five, you
Speaker 1: wanted to address the fact that you didn't feel like
Speaker 1: you had anyone to talk to about your long term
Speaker 1: career goals, so you went out mentor hunting. You used
Speaker 1: a four step method to find somebody who could be
Speaker 1: a sort of official career mentor for you. Hi, Arian
Speaker 1: Hayman Nush Hi Jodi, Hi Rebecca. My name is Becca
Speaker 1: green My name is Becca Greenfield. I'm a reporter. I'm
Speaker 1: on the Race, Class and Gender in the Right Place
Speaker 1: team here, I admired. So have you continued your mentor
Speaker 1: hunt or are you still talking to Manus Samaroti, who
Speaker 1: was the woman who end up kind of meeting your
Speaker 1: mentor needs in that episode. I have not tried to
Speaker 1: find a different mentor yet. Um. The process is a lot,
Speaker 1: and I think it's it's emotionally exhausting to just reach
Speaker 1: out to people all the time and networking and being
Speaker 1: social and all that. I've tried some of the tricks
Speaker 1: that the mentor expert Ellen and Shirt told me to
Speaker 1: keeping up my relationship with Manuche, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: reaching out to her about other things. Um. I sent
Speaker 1: her that episode when it came out. She was really
Speaker 1: nice and put it in her newsletter. So I think
Speaker 1: the relationship is slowly continuing and building, but it's still
Speaker 1: not to level in my fantasy mind of us gabbing
Speaker 1: all the time about my my career stuff. What was
Speaker 1: your what's your unrealistic fantasy that you would meet once
Speaker 1: a month and have like, yeah, a two hour dinner.
Speaker 1: Yeah that sounds great. I feel okay about that. I
Speaker 1: think it's a really big goal, and so I'm just
Speaker 1: happy that I even tried to chip away at it
Speaker 1: in an episode. Have you tried to fend a mentor?
Speaker 1: And I inspire you? I have not gone out looking
Speaker 1: for a mentor, but I was impressed by your journey,
Speaker 1: and I think what I took away from it was
Speaker 1: that you should always go after bigger, bigger things, and
Speaker 1: also just like bigger people than you, then you think
Speaker 1: you're entitled to because you got the encouraging thing with
Speaker 1: a lot of people wrote you back. So it just
Speaker 1: kind of reminded me that, like, we're always a little
Speaker 1: people always have a tiny bit more time for us
Speaker 1: than we expect them to. Yeah, people are nice. In
Speaker 1: episode six, we worked on our problem together. We sought
Speaker 1: out a management coach to help us with our teamwork. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the two of you really like each other, you really
Speaker 1: respect each other, and which is great. What we're going
Speaker 1: to move into now is I'm gonna ask you about
Speaker 1: some things that have been challenges between the two of you,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to let either of you start. I
Speaker 1: can start, okay, since Becka started with the nice things,
Speaker 1: so he gave us some tips for working better together,
Speaker 1: things like talking to each other in person rather than
Speaker 1: over chat. Um, not making every situation into or not
Speaker 1: feeling like every single situation is an emergency and urgent
Speaker 1: it has to be dealt with right away, and phrasing
Speaker 1: requests in a way that showed how we individually feel
Speaker 1: about them, not like their demands. Um. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like you're still using these tips now? I think the
Speaker 1: one that's stuck with me the most is trying to
Speaker 1: realize that not everything is an emergency all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've particularly tried to talk in person more.
Speaker 1: I noted a time where I did the thing that
Speaker 1: he said we weren't supposed to do, which was, instead
Speaker 1: of leading with my emotions, lead with you need to
Speaker 1: do X thing in this time. But I remember looking
Speaker 1: back and thinking, oh, I probably should have done the
Speaker 1: emotions thing. So it's a mixed bag, how about you.
Speaker 1: I also haven't been doing a great job of keeping
Speaker 1: up with talking in person. I think we talk in
Speaker 1: person a lot, but I've definitely noticed a couple of
Speaker 1: times when I've expressed my displeasure with how something was
Speaker 1: handled over chat and then I've been like, should I
Speaker 1: pick this up in real life? But then by then
Speaker 1: it's kind of like past and it doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: a big enough deal to keep going with it, and
Speaker 1: we don't have a podcast that we're recording that is
Speaker 1: an incentive to like have a sit down conversation. I
Speaker 1: do think when we talk in person, and we do
Speaker 1: talk in person a lot, we always get more out
Speaker 1: of it than when we try to like sort through
Speaker 1: a problem over chat um. But I haven't increased I
Speaker 1: haven't increased my I r L time. I One of
Speaker 1: the things I've tried to do more that he also
Speaker 1: recommended to us was kind of giving more context for
Speaker 1: why when I have to triage or when I have
Speaker 1: to change the way we're doing something, um, like what
Speaker 1: else is going on with my workload that I might
Speaker 1: want to make and then offer a solution. And I've
Speaker 1: as a result, I felt a little less bad about
Speaker 1: doing it because my issue was, like I was kind
Speaker 1: of getting I was having a lot of guilt about things,
Speaker 1: and then I just wasn't talking about them. I also
Speaker 1: thought the upshot of our whole session was good, like
Speaker 1: we came away from it feeling like we do work
Speaker 1: pretty well together and that the problems that we had
Speaker 1: to solve were relatively minor unsolvable, And so I think
Speaker 1: that that left a good like halo on our whole collaboration.
Speaker 1: In episode seven, you tried in Box zero to tackle
Speaker 1: your unruly in box. You know what, I'm just I
Speaker 1: just gotta do it. This is crazy. I have thousands
Speaker 1: of emails in here. Oh my god, this is nerve wracking. Okay,
Speaker 1: am I really doing this? Okay, here we go shift, click, delete, delete, delete.
Speaker 1: So in the course of the episode, you really transformed
Speaker 1: yourself and it went from someone who ignored emails to
Speaker 1: someone who ignored everyone else to answer her emails. Are
Speaker 1: you still that person? Yes, I'm still I'm still fully
Speaker 1: in box zero. I make sure by the end of
Speaker 1: the day that when I leave the office there's nothing
Speaker 1: in my inbox. I've either deleted it or filed into folders.
Speaker 1: And as for what has had the biggest effect on
Speaker 1: my workplace productivity, it's had some downsides like, yes, I do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm distracted in meetings because I'm checking emails, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I spend too much time on email. But it's
Speaker 1: had more upsides because I am incentivized to react to
Speaker 1: things really quickly because I want so badly to get
Speaker 1: them out of my inbox. So like little dumb, annoying
Speaker 1: tasks that I might have previously ignored, I just do
Speaker 1: them right away. The converse of that is that for
Speaker 1: the bigger tasks, the things that I get emails about
Speaker 1: that I previously might have avoided because they were too
Speaker 1: daunting and scary, Now I have a whole system for
Speaker 1: dealing with them, and I know exactly what's on my
Speaker 1: plate because I'm not worried that there's like three dozen
Speaker 1: emails buried at the bottom of a list of spam
Speaker 1: that I'm forgetting about. Emails are like a debt. It's
Speaker 1: like what you owe to other people. And in the
Speaker 1: past I just wasn't balancing my checkbook. And now I
Speaker 1: know what I owe and so I can deal with
Speaker 1: my expenses as they come in. So I think the
Speaker 1: benefits are worth the distraction that email is to you now,
Speaker 1: because I think that is the biggest criticism of being
Speaker 1: into email. Yeah, I mean I think that the ongoing
Speaker 1: challenge is limiting the amount of emails that I get
Speaker 1: so that it isn't a huge distraction. As I've been
Speaker 1: going along, I've been trying as many new methods as
Speaker 1: I can to get fewer emails. Like I act really
Speaker 1: proactive if I'm on an email thread that I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be on, or I make new folders and filters as
Speaker 1: I realize they're necessary, And so when I sit back
Speaker 1: down at my desk, it's not like thirty new emails.
Speaker 1: It's like ten new emails and eight or ane of
Speaker 1: them I can delete right away. So I don't think
Speaker 1: it's sucking up as much time as it was right
Speaker 1: after I started doing it. What about you? Did you
Speaker 1: take any email tips away from my experience? No, there
Speaker 1: are so many things I want to do that you did,
Speaker 1: Like color coding recipients I think would be really helpful,
Speaker 1: um making folders. Don't have any of those. I just
Speaker 1: have not been proactive. But I I don't feel like
Speaker 1: I have the same angs about email as you did
Speaker 1: going into the experiment. I my system kind of works.
Speaker 1: I don't think people I don't know maybe if I
Speaker 1: pulled my colleagues, I would say I'm terrible at email,
Speaker 1: but I am pretty responsive, um, and I don't care
Speaker 1: about spam piling up in my inbox. So that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell myself. No, I think if it works
Speaker 1: for you, there's no reason to change it. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's like a big I think that's a
Speaker 1: valid criticism of inbox zero is not everybody needs to
Speaker 1: do it. I think if if, if it's not a
Speaker 1: psychic drain on you to have that number of emails
Speaker 1: in your inbox and it's not actively disrupting your work
Speaker 1: life the way it was with me. Absolutely everybody doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be an inbox zero person. Now that we've
Speaker 1: done all these experiments on ourselves and wondering what you
Speaker 1: think about this whole industry where we've convinced ourselves that
Speaker 1: we need to constantly be optimizing ourselves for work. Probably
Speaker 1: not great for us that we think about this stuff
Speaker 1: all the time. It's probably like, you know, we're just
Speaker 1: cogs in the capitalist machine and just making our employers
Speaker 1: very happy by you know, trying to constantly improve ourselves. However,
Speaker 1: I do think that there's a reason that all of
Speaker 1: these productivity experts have cropped up, like why that is
Speaker 1: a job you can have and why it's an industry
Speaker 1: that's thriving because we haven't adapted well enough, I think,
Speaker 1: to all of the new technologies we work with and
Speaker 1: the new systems that we work with in a modern office,
Speaker 1: and so it just creates I think it creates more
Speaker 1: strife than in the past. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: are coming at that problem and like, whether they're solutions
Speaker 1: work or whether they're just snake oil salesman is kind
Speaker 1: of what we're trying to find out. What do you think? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm of two minds. One thing, it's like the fact
Speaker 1: that we even feel like we need to be the
Speaker 1: most productive people in the world is sissiffician. You know,
Speaker 1: you can always get better and better and is that
Speaker 1: the point of life and work? But then the other
Speaker 1: thing is practical, and it's like we are at work
Speaker 1: all day and we want to feel good and be
Speaker 1: efficient and do the best that we can so that
Speaker 1: we can't have lives outside of work and we're not
Speaker 1: anxious all the time. And I think that some of
Speaker 1: these hacks do help with that, and that's that's good.
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to downplay the
Speaker 1: importance of that. On the other hand, like you said,
Speaker 1: some of it is complete snake oil that's kind of
Speaker 1: feeding into these pathologies that people have where it's like
Speaker 1: I gotta be better for what. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: one of the things we wanted to do with the
Speaker 1: show was kind of like expose some of the silliness
Speaker 1: of some of these solutions. But also we were really
Speaker 1: committed to the idea that we only wanted to try
Speaker 1: to solve problems we were really having, Like we weren't
Speaker 1: just doing stunts for the sake of it. We actually
Speaker 1: wanted to take stuff that was specific to what we
Speaker 1: were going through at work and see if we could
Speaker 1: fix it. And I think that's probably the key, is
Speaker 1: that it's nice to know that there are solutions out
Speaker 1: there and that if you commit yourself to a problem
Speaker 1: you're having at work, you can solve it. But it's wrong,
Speaker 1: I think, to think that you need to solve all
Speaker 1: of these problems or that everybody needs to be approaching
Speaker 1: all of these kind of tasks the same way. Like
Speaker 1: you just said, you have a stuff over stuffed inbox.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really make your job any harder, and you
Speaker 1: don't really care, so you don't have to fix it.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's great. I think that's a
Speaker 1: perfectly good insight you have. And some of these problems
Speaker 1: are not for us to fix. Yeah, and that's it
Speaker 1: for this season of works for Me. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much to our listeners who listened and subscribed and rated
Speaker 1: and reviewed. We really appreciated all of the feedback you've
Speaker 1: given us. If you have more, you can still leave
Speaker 1: us a voicemail at two one to six one seven
Speaker 1: zero one six that might end up in the next
Speaker 1: season of our show, and stay subscribed so that we
Speaker 1: can stay in your fees and keep you up to
Speaker 1: date about what's coming next. The show was produced by
Speaker 1: Tofur Foreheads and hosted by Me Rebecca Greenfield and Me.
Speaker 1: Francisca Levi and Francisca Leivie is Bloomberg's head of podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Bye,