WEBVTT - Learning to Love (or at Least Live With) Email 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:03.720 Right now, I have two thousand and twenty six unread 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:07.480 emails in my inbox. And you know what, I'm totally 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:10.440 fine with that. We're talking about learning to live with 0:00:10.600 --> 0:00:26.080 and love your email. This is game plan. Hi. I'm 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:29.360 Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Francesco Weedy, and this week we 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.760 are talking about everyone's favorite thing to hate email mail. Yeah, 0:00:33.800 --> 0:00:37.000 so everybody really hates on email. Emails the worst. I 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:41.080 get so many of them, busy and important, but the 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:43.280 o there's a lot of articles talking about how emails 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:47.680 the cockroach of the Internet, and it's so distracting, and 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:49.919 I mean I can see why. I mean, I just 0:00:50.040 --> 0:00:52.960 mentioned that I have over two thousand unread emails in 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.520 my work email. Yeah, but you seem to be able 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:59.360 to live with it. Yeah, I actually love email. My 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:04.000 Gmail box is very different than my Bloomberg in box. 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:08.200 My Gmail inbox has no one reading emails. Wow, that's impressive. 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:12.360 I think I have several thousand unready. Feel like we're 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.560 actually opposite because you have no one reads in your Bloomberg, right, 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:18.680 I'm working on that for my boobs. Yeah. Well, my 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:21.520 issue with email is that, um, I get so many 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.600 emails that are not for me specifically, I'm just they're 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.479 either spam emails, I'm copied on them along with ten 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.560 other people, and I don't need to respond to them 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:34.080 that it fills up my inbox so quickly that I 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:37.240 miss important emails. So I've since I came back from 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:39.959 maternity leave, I made a resolution to try and delete 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.880 all of my unimportant emails every day. Well, so, I 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.119 think this is one reason that email is so loved 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:49.320 and hated and loved to be hated, is because it 0:01:49.360 --> 0:01:51.800 gives us so much anxiety, Like it takes a lot 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.480 of brain space. So people feel the need to either 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.920 be like an inbox zero person, right, so you can 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.600 talk about or I'm not even going to think about 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:02.720 all these emails in my inbox person. I guess I'm 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:04.760 both of those people. Yeah, let's let's talk about in 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.320 box zero. Do you want to explain what it is 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:12.000 for people who don't know it's this way of life? 0:02:12.400 --> 0:02:15.320 Religious about it? Yeah? Where you have I'm not sure 0:02:15.440 --> 0:02:18.880 is that either no emails at all in your inbox 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.640 or no unready emails. I think it's no unready emails, 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:23.880 but maybe like a purist what, Yeah, I think there 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.440 might be a purist version of it, where it's like 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:27.000 no emails at all, and if there's an email that 0:02:27.000 --> 0:02:29.079 needs to be saved, it goes into a folder. Yeah, 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:30.960 and I relate to this because if I have an 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:34.400 unread email in my Gmail, it will not at me 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:36.959 because it's telling me I need to do something right. 0:02:37.240 --> 0:02:38.880 I use it in that way, and I think that's 0:02:38.880 --> 0:02:43.360 how inbox zero people use it. But you have a misillian. Well, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.600 my feeling about inbox zero has changed a little bit. 0:02:46.639 --> 0:02:48.360 It used to be I used to think it was 0:02:48.360 --> 0:02:50.880 the biggest waste of time, and it was this kind 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:56.079 of artificial sense of superiority or accomplishment that you got 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:58.679 from deleting all these emails when actually you were investing 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.760 all of this time and delete emails. And if you 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:04.120 could just learn to be okay with having unread emails 0:03:04.120 --> 0:03:07.520 in your inbox, then your life would be exactly the 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:09.960 same and you wouldn't have an empty emox. But then 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.000 I wish I didn't have these pathologies that do Yeah, 0:03:13.040 --> 0:03:14.639 and I think a lot of people do. And then 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:16.919 I I still eventually I had to come to grips 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.560 with the whole like missing an email from my boss 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:23.840 because it was buried under like six hundred, you know, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:27.040 spam email from emails from PR people or notes from 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:30.160 the facility staff on like the bathroom downstairs being closed. 0:03:30.639 --> 0:03:35.640 And so as soon as I started doing that, um, actually, 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:37.400 it became a lot more like it to do list. 0:03:37.480 --> 0:03:39.600 Like now I know if I have an email in 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.440 there that something needs to be done about it. And 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:44.640 most of the time it's just to delete it. But 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:46.680 if it's if it's sitting there for longer than a 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:49.040 few hours, that means like require some kind of action. 0:03:49.280 --> 0:03:51.760 Welcome to the fold. Yeah, although I'm not like that 0:03:51.800 --> 0:03:54.960 with Bloomberg. But but email is also so hada that 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.320 some people have tried to get rid of it in 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.200 their lives. There are offices that tell their internal staff 0:04:02.240 --> 0:04:07.080 they cannot use email to communicate. Wow, So what's the alternative? 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:11.640 They use something like flack or hip chat or whatever 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:14.400 social network that your company is on. And I think 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.240 it does cut down on emails, and I think that's 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.760 happening organically at a lot of companies. But I don't 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.719 see how you can avoid email communication altogether if you 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:23.840 have any sort of role where you communicate with people 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.719 outside of your office. Right, and as we've talked about 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.240 in other episodes, those alternatives can get cluttered up and 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:32.520 start taking up your time to write. You can spend 0:04:32.520 --> 0:04:36.560 too much time sending and receiving messages on a chat platform. 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:39.640 So yeah, on top of having all these notifications now 0:04:39.680 --> 0:04:41.720 from your chat app, it really doesn't get rid of 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.680 email altogether in most offices. So I think instead of 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.520 trying to get rid of something that is never going 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:50.800 to go away, we need to embrace it and learn 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:53.240 to live with it and maybe even if you're like me, 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:57.720 one day you'll love it. And to tell us how 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:01.000 to get to that point, our guest today a as 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:04.520 a behavioral economist at Duke. His name is Dan Ari Yellie. 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.760 He wrote a book called Payoff, the Hidden Logic that 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:10.320 shapes our motivations, and he's going to teach us how 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:22.520 to trick ourselves into loving email. Thanks for coming on 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:28.240 my pleasure. So, Dan, you have an elaborate approach to email, 0:05:28.279 --> 0:05:31.039 and I would love to just start by talking about 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.560 what happened when I emailed you to talk about coming 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:37.000 on this show, um to give to give our listeners 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:40.080 a sense of how much work and how much thought 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:43.120 you've put into your own email strategy. So I want 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:44.760 to do you want to tell people to sit down 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:47.360 and kind of take a drink of something. Yeah, exactly, 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:50.880 you sit down and get comfortable. So I emailed you 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:52.839 to see if you would be interested in coming on 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:54.360 the show to talk to us. And what I got 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:59.120 back was a long and very detailed automatic response, and 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.160 it had a list of frequently asked questions that I 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.200 assume was to head off the questions you get from 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:07.640 a lot of people that can be answered really easily. 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.800 And then it had another list of contacts that wait 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:13.080 before before you did you? Did you look at any 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.120 of the frequently asked questions? I didn't. I assumed it wasn't. 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:20.200 I assumed none of my issues. So so here's what 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.320 I recommended you do at some point to go back 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.200 to those and look at the last two. The last 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.040 two are a general positive response or a general negative response. 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.000 So I asked people, if you just want me to say, yes, 0:06:32.040 --> 0:06:34.560 you're right, you're smart, and so on, click here and 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.120 you get the YouTube with me agreeing with you. And 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.320 if you want me to disagree with you, there's another 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:41.480 link to another YouTube. Will I tell you it's a 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:44.400 stupid idea and you should never do that. But but 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.279 there's some there's some real answers there as well. I 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:50.800 love that it's the most entertaining automatic email response I 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:54.000 think I've ever received. But yeah, it assumes people read 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:56.720 automatic email responses. Well I did. I mean, as soon 0:06:56.760 --> 0:06:58.200 as I saw it, I saw that there was enough 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.120 there that I was probably going to have to do 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.760 a little more work than just emailing you and forgetting 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:04.520 about it. So I saw that if you had an 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:07.359 interview request, for example, you should email your publicists. And 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.520 I did that, and here we are. Can you talk 0:07:10.560 --> 0:07:13.400 a little bit about this, what led to you developing 0:07:13.480 --> 0:07:16.520 that response, and you know, like how you got there? Yeah? 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.400 So first, well, you know, I do apologize because it's 0:07:20.440 --> 0:07:23.600 kind of an arrogant thing to do, right. People email 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:25.280 each other and all of a sudden I say, hey, 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:27.160 you know, I know you emailed me, but you know, 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:29.640 here's the whole list of the emails and things I 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.520 want you to do to email me. And there's some 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:35.840 something very arrogant about it. And I've been holding off 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:39.520 for a while trying not to do that. But um, 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:42.600 the same thing is that I get about three hundred 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:46.760 emails a day, and it's just very hard to to manage. 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.200 And you know, there's there's like a level of personal stress, 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:51.960 you know, waking up in the morning and seeing you know, 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.320 handling some emails, just waiting. Sometimes I wake up and 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.280 now early just to do email, and an hour later 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.240 when I just finished, I have more email then when 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:03.840 I started. So so, partially I think that when people 0:08:03.880 --> 0:08:09.560 send an email, we're not really good at conveying our intentions, 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.080 like what exactly do you want? What? What? How? How 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:14.320 you do it? What is this email about? You're asking 0:08:14.320 --> 0:08:16.840 a question? Do you want something? So, so emails are 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:20.800 often long and hard to understand what people exactly know. 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:22.880 I need to read the long email and say what 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:24.520 what do they actually want from me at the end 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:28.040 of this of this email? Um so so part of 0:08:28.040 --> 0:08:30.240 it is just the inability to to cope and the 0:08:30.280 --> 0:08:32.240 stress that comes with it. So so I had this 0:08:32.320 --> 0:08:35.280 outgoing message and then I try to direct people two 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:37.200 different things. So first of all, I say, if you 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:40.600 want to me to give a talk, my schedule is online. 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:44.160 Um you can look every day of the year where 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:46.640 I'm at and you can see by yourself if I'm 0:08:46.640 --> 0:08:49.440 busy or not. And then if you if you want 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:51.319 to if you still want to write me after all 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:56.080 of this, please go to this a website. And I 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:59.439 got somebody to write me a program that is called 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:03.160 short will. That's the term we gave it. And in 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:06.920 that system, I asked people to write me, but by 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.640 first answering a few questions. So I ask people to 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.880 tell me what is this about? Is this a request 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:17.400 for talking, interview advice, just to chat, exchange information the 0:09:17.559 --> 0:09:20.240 different options, and then they ask people tell me when 0:09:20.280 --> 0:09:23.400 they want an answer by do you want like for 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:26.480 me to drop everything and answer immediately, end of the day, 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:28.480 end of the week, end of the month, or no 0:09:28.600 --> 0:09:31.679 response necessary. And and then I say, okay, now tell 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:34.160 me what the question is. And this has actually been 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:37.920 incredibly useful. So let me ask you to kind of 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:41.640 guess from all the people who write me through this system, 0:09:41.760 --> 0:09:44.400 what percentage of the emails do you think having the 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:48.960 title drop everything and answer me immediately? I would think 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.800 a very low percentage, or maybe it's a lot of people, 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.600 because I don't know. I think I'm important and you 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.400 are important, But but you know, what do you think 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:01.400 is the percent give me numbers? I don't know. I 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:04.800 would say maybe Becca, I have to go high now, 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:09.000 so okay, so it's two percent, right, So so first 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.200 of maybe two even maybe even two percent is too high. 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.520 But but it is amazing, right when you give people 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:18.720 a chance to stop and reflect and say, shoot the person. 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:22.800 The moment you send somebody an email to somebody, it 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:26.200 does beep, right, and they do, to some degree, even 0:10:26.240 --> 0:10:28.480 for a few seconds, stop everything and look at it's 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:32.040 what you've asked them. And I give people, you know, 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:34.240 the request to tell me like what's the time scale, 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.400 and very very few people say drop everything and answer 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:41.040 me now. And that's a wonderful thing because I have 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:44.640 my my email set up so that if people say 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:49.199 that my email pinks and I'm notified immediately. If it's not, 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.720 it goes to a different inbox. What I love about 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.360 that is that that figure is probably a lot lower 0:10:56.400 --> 0:11:00.920 than as the email receiver. That's you probably have a 0:11:00.960 --> 0:11:03.760 higher percentage of emails that you would personally think or 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:06.160 drop everything and respond now emails. So if you are 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:10.400 making the decision, you might think it's a higher percentage. Yeah, 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:12.440 and and but you know so, so two percent of 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:16.120 the people say please answer me very quickly, and I try. 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:19.160 But the rest of them, they go into folded that 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:21.400 says end of the day, end of the week, end 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:24.400 of the month, and and I deal with those in time, 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:27.200 and everybody gets to benefit. I don't get my I 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:30.960 don't get my email. My work interrupted three hundred times 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.079 a day, right for every usually for every email you get, 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:37.360 you get a notification. This way, I get a notification 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.280 only for the things that need immediately immediately response and 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:42.760 then and not. The question is what percentage of the 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:46.040 email you think have the title no response necessary, the 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:50.040 classification no response necessary. I would think yeah, I would 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:54.600 think that one. Because if you're forced to think about 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:57.080 it and you realize there's no response necessary, maybe that's 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:58.720 when you just back off and don't send the email 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:05.680 at all. It's more about what my father. I don't 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.319 think you're right in the white bother right. If somebody says, 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:12.000 you know, thank you, I want you to know I 0:12:12.280 --> 0:12:14.520 read this book, I thought about this, or somebody says 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:16.960 here is an article that I think you might be 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.840 interested in reading. So we wrote this little program called Filter, 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:24.120 and we asked people to check it out. And this 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:30.400 program goes into email and basically takes forty of your 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.880 of your last emails and say when would you want 0:12:33.920 --> 0:12:36.960 to see this email? And we did a couple of ways. 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.400 The way that filter works is by the name of 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:41.559 the person, right the email that comes from this person 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:43.920 when you want to see it. But we also did 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.680 it in another way through a different approach, and we 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:50.200 sample four emails from people. We went to a company, 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:53.440 a big, big tech company. For each person, we took 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:55.480 fully of the emails they sent and forty of the 0:12:55.480 --> 0:12:58.960 emails that they received, and we said, for those emails, 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:01.240 which one of those like? We went one by one 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:03.400 and we said, for each one of those, is this 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:05.840 email you wanted to know immediately when you got it, 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.000 within the hour, two hour, four hour, the end of 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:09.920 the day, end of the week, or never wanted to 0:13:09.960 --> 0:13:12.480 know about it? And we did it for both things 0:13:12.480 --> 0:13:15.120 that people send out and for the things that they received. 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.680 And unsurprisingly, you know, people, things that people said out 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:21.240 they think are more important than they think that they received. Okay, 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.840 that's fine, but the percentage of things that people have 0:13:24.840 --> 0:13:29.160 said they wanted to never know about was was between 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:34.720 fot and that's because we have so much email running 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.480 around that you put you you add people just in 0:13:38.559 --> 0:13:42.160 case they might want to know one day you wanted 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:44.439 to be in their archives. So if they want to 0:13:44.440 --> 0:13:47.600 to get it one day, they'll have it there. But 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:50.480 you certainly don't want people to be disturbed in the 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.520 middle of the work day to basically be notified that 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.120 there are you know, the eighth person B. C. Seed 0:13:56.240 --> 0:13:59.320 on some email about a new procedure that is happening 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:01.040 in the company. Right, you want to be able to 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.000 say you sent it to them. You want to say, 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:04.960 and then at some point they search for it. You 0:14:04.960 --> 0:14:08.839 want them to have access to it. The idea that 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:14.280 this something needs to beep and interrupt somebody's day multiple times, 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.400 it is kind of shocking. And you know we took 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.160 We take lots of different types of communications and we 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.920 call them email, like when things come to your house 0:14:23.920 --> 0:14:27.560 in the mail, at least you see regular envelopes and postcards, 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:29.840 and you see junk mail, and you see catalogs, and 0:14:29.880 --> 0:14:32.320 they look very different and you know how to approach 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.080 them differently. Right, You never start by opening the ones 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:38.120 that are You start by the personal letters and the 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.600 rest of them. You probably kind of know immediately that 0:14:40.640 --> 0:14:43.840 there's nothing in a hurry about this but an email. 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.600 We treat everything is if we're in a hurry, right, 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.840 And Gmail has made an attempt to try its hand 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:52.400 at sorting these emails into the most important and less important, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.800 right they have. But but here's the thing. There's a 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:58.640 huge difference between important and urgent. And this is no 0:14:58.720 --> 0:15:02.560 disrespect to my mother, but but everything my mother rights 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:07.240 me is important. Nothing has yet been urgent. And and 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:08.840 I think that what what we need to do is 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:12.440 we need to think both about importance and urgency. You're 0:15:12.960 --> 0:15:17.120 you're a behavioral economist. Are you using behavioral economics when 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:21.960 developing these apps and websites and theories? Yeah? So partially 0:15:22.080 --> 0:15:25.800 you know this question about how do we frame things? Okay, 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:28.040 so let's let's start from the beginning. One thing is, 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:33.080 I am actually acutely aware of the cost of distraction. Right. 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:35.240 Somebody doesn't know the research might say, oh, you know, 0:15:35.320 --> 0:15:38.560 my phone BIPs, nothing happens. But the reality is if 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:41.920 your phone bibs or your computer bibs, something big happens. 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.320 You're just not aware how big it is. So there 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.040 was one study in which they took undergrads and they 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:51.240 got them to solve math problems in the computer, and 0:15:51.280 --> 0:15:53.880 they paid them by how many math problems they were solving, right, 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.160 so they were highly motivated to solve these math problems 0:15:56.160 --> 0:15:58.640 as quickly as possible. And they asked them to put 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:00.760 their phone on the side and not to touch their 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.280 phone for the time that they were solving these problems, 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:05.840 and unbeknown to them, from time to time they would 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.560 text them, and from time to time they would call them. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.520 And what they saw was the incredible reduction in people's 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:16.160 ability to solve these problems, not only when the phone 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.160 was being called or vibrating because of texts, but it 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:21.960 lasted for a few minutes after that. So when when 0:16:22.000 --> 0:16:25.400 we have a notification on that something is happening, we think, oh, 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.200 it's just that notification, But in ten seconds we're back 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:30.920 to it. Now we're not really back to it. So 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:35.479 I I have an agenda of fighting notifications, so I'm 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:39.240 aware of of the cost of distraction that I'm trying 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:42.200 to minimize it. That I think is number one. The 0:16:42.280 --> 0:16:47.680 second thing is this idea of thinking about urgency rather 0:16:47.720 --> 0:16:51.280 than importance. And you know, I wish I could ask 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:55.360 people how how important is your email? Could I live 0:16:55.360 --> 0:16:58.960 without it? But but that that's aside understanding that the 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:01.520 real issue is urgent, seeing what is the time frame 0:17:02.120 --> 0:17:05.080 of how to deal with this? And that email create 0:17:05.119 --> 0:17:09.040 a tremendous burden when you have a big to do 0:17:09.160 --> 0:17:12.000 list and you are burndened by the fact that you 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:13.520 have a big to do list and it just sits 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.600 there on your mind and weighs on you. And I 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.359 have a big one, and we all have actually big ones, 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.800 often in the form of email that just sits there 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.320 and wait for us to respond to it. So I'm 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:26.119 doing as much as I can to think about what 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:30.760 are those kind of cognitive challenges that we've created for us, 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:33.240 how much stress are they creating? And what can we 0:17:33.280 --> 0:17:35.359 do to fight them? So let me ask you on 0:17:35.400 --> 0:17:38.880 that urgency topic. Has have you ever been stung by 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:41.120 your by putting your phone to sleep? Because I think 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:43.120 that's a big worry that people have that they'll miss 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:48.080 something urgent. Yeah, I have. But but you know, this 0:17:48.240 --> 0:17:51.080 question of you know, what are you willing to lose 0:17:52.040 --> 0:17:54.840 for what gain? Is a question of do you appreciate 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:58.439 the gain and the losses? Right? So what happens I 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.119 think that we all see the losses like a missed 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:03.720 call and you say, my goodness, I would have gone 0:18:03.760 --> 0:18:05.680 to this other building that that happened to me. I 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:09.360 went to the wrong place for a meeting, and from 0:18:09.400 --> 0:18:12.920 time to time I missed something. Yeah, there is a cost, 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.760 but the question is what's the benefit. And if you 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:18.159 think that the benefit is very small, you say not 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:21.440 worth it. But if you realize how big the benefit 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:24.000 is of not having it, then you would be willing 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.920 to take some cost for it. That's such an economist viewpoint. 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.080 Just think of cost benefit analysis. You have to you 0:18:31.119 --> 0:18:34.160 have to write. So here's another principle that we find 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.440 is that there are things in life that are more 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.280 visible and there are things in life that are less visible. 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:45.280 So you know, email is very visible, and the real 0:18:45.320 --> 0:18:48.720 work you want to do is less visible. Think about 0:18:48.760 --> 0:18:52.240 like something like writing a book. Right, And you don't 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:55.280 have on your calendar every day two hours dedicated to 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.199 writing a book. It's just something you you want to do, 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.840 and slowly you can. You work, and you work, and 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:04.720 you work, but but email comes. And now the question 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:08.760 is which one takes priority, the book or email. Email 0:19:08.840 --> 0:19:12.440 is here and it shows up. And there's a beautiful 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:17.200 term called structural procrastination, the feeling that we make progress 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.199 even though the only thing we're doing is making to 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:22.200 do list and crossing them off, or you know, deleting 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:24.600 email that nobody should have sent us from the beginning. 0:19:24.920 --> 0:19:27.800 But it gives us the sense of progress. Who is 0:19:27.840 --> 0:19:30.639 writing a book doesn't give you the same feeling of 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:33.000 progress because maybe you work the whole day to try 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:36.200 and explain some topic and at the end of the 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:37.760 day decide you didn't do a good job and you 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.119 have to start again tomorrow. I feel like like we 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.800 don't get the same sense of progress. We get a 0:19:43.880 --> 0:19:46.639 sense of progress from all of these emails and to 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.240 do list and things like that, but it's not the 0:19:49.320 --> 0:19:52.600 real progress. I mean, how many people are going to 0:19:52.680 --> 0:19:54.600 die happy knowing that they you know, they got to 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:58.920 invoke zero seven twenty one days during their lives. This 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.720 is just not the stuff that makes long happiness. But 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:07.640 because it is present and immediate and beeps and somebody 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.639 is waiting, it actually takes precedent over the things that 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.160 are important to us. We let other people determine our 0:20:13.160 --> 0:20:17.159 priorities rather than us controlling them. Taking this approach, the 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:21.200 behavioral economist approach, means kind of trying to affect other 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:24.760 people's behavior. You know, it also means so I think 0:20:24.760 --> 0:20:27.639 it's the first thing it means is it means to 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:31.080 understand the real costs and benefits and understand that our 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:36.560 psychology is not mechanical, and something like a notification or 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.000 something like it to do list can can miss direct us, 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:41.959 and something like it to do list can switch our 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.840 priority lists and so on. Then the second thing is 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.919 to try different things, right, just experiment, just try to 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.239 figure out what works and doesn't work. And then in 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.240 this particular case, it also meant, you know, even though 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.080 it's arrogant and um, you know, not a nice thing 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:01.320 to do, let's let's put as on the people who 0:21:01.320 --> 0:21:03.480