Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 2: Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Well, if you were to spend an entire Saturday binging
Speaker 3: old episodes of your favorite TV show while snacking on popcorn, Carol,
Speaker 3: I have done it, what would the show be?
Speaker 4: Don't judge me. I'm I can't tell you.
Speaker 3: All right, maybe throw a nap in there too.
Speaker 2: Throw a nap in there.
Speaker 5: Two there, remember the.
Speaker 2: Band got there? That's a good one. You were like, Finally,
Speaker 2: would you call it one of the most productive days
Speaker 2: of your life?
Speaker 5: I don't know if it was productive, but I really
Speaker 5: loved it?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, Laura may Martin did just that, and yes,
Speaker 3: she writes in her new book that watching old episodes
Speaker 3: of Heartland, which I had to google I didn't know
Speaker 3: that was a show for ten hours, was indeed one
Speaker 3: of the most productive days of her life. She should
Speaker 3: know what's productive, because she's the executive productivity advisor at Google,
Speaker 3: also the author of the new book Uptime, A Practical
Speaker 3: Guide to Personal Productivity and well Being. She joins us
Speaker 3: here in the Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. So, Laura, please
Speaker 3: tell us us how in the world is binging something
Speaker 3: on Netflix or a streaming service all day productive.
Speaker 1: I think the old definition of productivity is how much
Speaker 1: are you churning out? How much are you checking off
Speaker 1: your list? But when you think about it in a
Speaker 1: holistic sense, if your intention was to relax and spend
Speaker 1: a day doing something you love, and you set the
Speaker 1: time aside to do that and you execute it on it, well,
Speaker 1: then I would argue that.
Speaker 4: That was a productive day in the long term.
Speaker 5: Interesting. I love this. I mean, take a step back
Speaker 5: and tell us, because you carved out a niche for yourself,
Speaker 5: certainly over at Google in terms of productivity, tell us
Speaker 5: about how that came to be and the kind of
Speaker 5: things you were doing for workers there at the company
Speaker 5: and kind of taking something like were you're telling, you know, employees,
Speaker 5: go home, go binge, come back in twenty four hours,
Speaker 5: like help us through.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think when I started, I was in sales,
Speaker 1: and you know, this job didn't exist, and I was
Speaker 1: really just managing my own email, my own time, my
Speaker 1: own energy in a way that was making me productive.
Speaker 1: And Google has a great program where you can teach
Speaker 1: other Googlers anything, and so I started teaching an email
Speaker 1: training about how to use your inbox like a dashboard
Speaker 1: and manage all of your tasks. And that eventually led
Speaker 1: to me coaching people one on one and working with
Speaker 1: executives and eventually starting productivity at Google. So it was
Speaker 1: something that people were already doing and needed more organization around,
Speaker 1: and that's what led to it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so let's talk about some of like some of
Speaker 3: those executives, because arguably the people who are creating, you know,
Speaker 3: among the most valuable companies in the world.
Speaker 2: Like they're productive.
Speaker 3: Yes, look what they did, Yes, you know, they took
Speaker 3: a project at Stanford and made it into an over
Speaker 3: trillion dollar company.
Speaker 2: What were they doing wrong? Though?
Speaker 1: I think so a lot of times when I'm working
Speaker 1: with an executive, it's at maybe a turning point. So
Speaker 1: it's just having that objective lens to help look at Oh,
Speaker 1: you're taking on a new team, or now you're working globally,
Speaker 1: or you have a different role than before, and so
Speaker 1: this is a good time to take a look at
Speaker 1: priorities and responsibilities and how you're thinking about your time.
Speaker 1: So many times I'm there just to kind of ask
Speaker 1: questions and prompt and create systems between a chief of
Speaker 1: staff and an assistant and how everyone works together. But
Speaker 1: the great thing is, like you said, many all of
Speaker 1: them are already productive in a lot of ways. So
Speaker 1: I'm learning from each of those sessions and then spreading
Speaker 1: some of those across the company.
Speaker 5: There's being productive kind of with your work life, there's
Speaker 5: being productive with your personal life. We have Michael a
Speaker 5: listener writing in wondering if people would improve productivity by
Speaker 5: scheduling times for their personal goals as well. So how
Speaker 5: did you factor in that side of it.
Speaker 1: I actually don't recommend people come up with personal girls
Speaker 1: and work goals because there's only one you. There's only
Speaker 1: one pie of times.
Speaker 2: So depressive.
Speaker 1: No, it's good because it helps you think about I'm
Speaker 1: one holistic person with one set of time and things
Speaker 1: I can focus on. So if I have a personal goal,
Speaker 1: I have to make room for that at work. If
Speaker 1: I'm taking on more at work, I need to make
Speaker 1: room for that in my personal life.
Speaker 4: And so you know, it's a trade off mindset.
Speaker 5: Every decision impacts everything in your world.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and saying yes anything is saying no to something else. Implicitly,
Speaker 1: So you have to figure out what that is at
Speaker 1: all times, and so you know when those personal changes
Speaker 1: come up, if you're moving your family across the country,
Speaker 1: something at work might need to take it back to.
Speaker 5: The heads of the company, Like could we talk to
Speaker 5: you and say, hey, we need some help.
Speaker 1: With something I do training for everyone at the company,
Speaker 1: So all the way down to new employees, two executives.
Speaker 5: What's your advice? Because Tim, you and I talk about
Speaker 5: this a lot. You have a young family, my daughter's
Speaker 5: elder at this point. But I mean it does feel
Speaker 5: like we live you know, we have full jobs to
Speaker 5: say the least. Yeah, we commute, You're in New York City.
Speaker 5: Like there's just a lot that comes at you. I mean,
Speaker 5: how do you kind of work with somebody and how
Speaker 5: do you help them kind of be more productive on
Speaker 5: in all aspects of their life.
Speaker 1: A lot of times the first question I ask is
Speaker 1: if you had an extra hour of your day, what
Speaker 1: would you do with it?
Speaker 4: And what that gives me? That information of what I
Speaker 4: call kind of the cusp.
Speaker 1: You know what you want to be doing, but you're
Speaker 1: not quite getting to and so it's usually something like
Speaker 1: I wish I could spend more time with my family,
Speaker 1: or I work on this bigger picture project, or I've
Speaker 1: really been wanting to learn how to sew.
Speaker 2: Well, that's my question.
Speaker 3: Do people who you asked that question to ever say
Speaker 3: they want to spend more time working.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's I have a team and I want to
Speaker 1: f on more big picture, like you going to report
Speaker 1: back to my.
Speaker 3: Boss, sleep, spend more time with family.
Speaker 1: You know, it can be just what they've been meaning
Speaker 1: to get to, and it usually just means what they're
Speaker 1: just out of reach.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny.
Speaker 5: You know, there's a book I read of Steve Schwartz
Speaker 5: been a Blackstone but and a colleague of ours, Jason Kelly,
Speaker 5: we talked about and there's a thing in him and
Speaker 5: what he said is.
Speaker 2: Like what it takes is the book?
Speaker 5: What what it takes?
Speaker 2: Thank you?
Speaker 5: But he was like, think big that don't kind of
Speaker 5: get caught up in the tedious small things. If there's
Speaker 5: something kind of similar but on a bigger scale that's
Speaker 5: going to have a bigger impact, don't waste your time
Speaker 5: on that little stuff.
Speaker 2: Go big.
Speaker 5: And I wonder if you kind of incorporate that thinking
Speaker 5: into how you be more productive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think a lot of times people get in
Speaker 1: the weeds again of like, if I'm a salesperson.
Speaker 4: How do I figure out how to make more calls
Speaker 4: per day?
Speaker 1: But the reason I recommend even incorporating downtime into your
Speaker 1: schedule is because that's when you come up with those
Speaker 1: big picture ideas. I just talked to someone yesterday who said,
Speaker 1: my boss should pay me for my hour run in
Speaker 1: the morning because that's when I contribut most to work.
Speaker 1: And so while we feel like it's all about how
Speaker 1: much we're doing little, it has to be also how
Speaker 1: are we thinking big?
Speaker 3: I like that I think a lot of that has
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've noticed this, but Laura, there's
Speaker 3: been this shift since the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I feel like that it's it's much less.
Speaker 5: So she hasn't noticed it.
Speaker 2: But but you don't know what I'm gonna say. Fine,
Speaker 2: I thought, I know, you know it's not productive. You
Speaker 2: know it's not productive for me. Is I just think
Speaker 2: I know?
Speaker 5: I'm so okay, go ahead, gohead.
Speaker 3: Is this idea of like, productivity doesn't necessarily mean buttson
Speaker 3: seats at the office, right, So it's the idea of, actually,
Speaker 3: if you create a good product, does it matter if
Speaker 3: you're actually working from you know, three to five PM,
Speaker 3: or like you need to go pick.
Speaker 2: Up your kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's why I tell managers that January to
Speaker 1: March should be the new nine to five. You need
Speaker 1: to be thinking about macro goals and how people are
Speaker 1: reaching them because some people, yeah, people in the pandemic
Speaker 1: realize that they liked waking up super early, working for
Speaker 1: a bit, then having a workout, or waking up late
Speaker 1: and working into the night. And that's such a big
Speaker 1: part of productivity as.
Speaker 4: Your own natural rhythms.
Speaker 1: Not all time slots are created equal, and so if
Speaker 1: you figure out when you work the best, you should
Speaker 1: be able to honor that as much as possible versus
Speaker 1: the traditional schedule.
Speaker 5: Well, you know you guys in the tech world, and
Speaker 5: we had folks that we talked to you during the
Speaker 5: pandemic and said, listen, we've been working from home and
Speaker 5: flexible and hybrid and all this stuff for years. We
Speaker 5: have a story that's on the Bloomberg most read has
Speaker 5: to do with Steve Cohen, big hedge fund investor know well,
Speaker 5: but he our audience knows him well, saying that he
Speaker 5: thinks the four day work week is coming. How do
Speaker 5: you guys say, if an employee says to you, listen,
Speaker 5: I'd be much more productive if I work three or
Speaker 5: four days, just jam it all in. How do you
Speaker 5: approach something like that.
Speaker 1: I can't speak for how Google as a whole is
Speaker 1: thinking of that, but I think that when you're honoring
Speaker 1: flexibility in general, that should be something that you're thinking about.
Speaker 1: If somebody says, again, my goals are from January to March.
Speaker 1: Can I accomplish those in four days?
Speaker 4: And is that something that you know?
Speaker 1: Unless it's interfering with your ability to meet on Fridays
Speaker 1: or something like that that affects collaboration, then it should
Speaker 1: be considered, because you know, it's not about the hours.
Speaker 3: Did you see a shift at Google in your years there?
Speaker 3: You know, there's this whole idea early on with Google
Speaker 3: where I don't even know if they still have this
Speaker 3: around twenty percent time where you can just dedicate a
Speaker 3: fifth of your time to whatever project you want to do.
Speaker 2: Have have they pulled back on that a bit?
Speaker 4: This program that I created was my twenty percent project.
Speaker 4: So it's really about.
Speaker 1: Finding your passion and your need and merging that with
Speaker 1: the need of someone in the company. So clearly here
Speaker 1: there was a need for an organized, you know, version of.
Speaker 4: Productivity at Google. And that's what I spent my time on.
Speaker 5: There's one thing in the book, and it says one
Speaker 5: component of peak p Yeah, one component of peak productivity
Speaker 5: is having a good inventory of everything you're not doing yet.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 5: That is equally as important as everything you are doing?
Speaker 1: So in other words, like a to do list, to
Speaker 1: do list, but what happens is people make When I've
Speaker 1: studied to do lists and how people usually.
Speaker 5: Did, I make them all the time to say, frustrate.
Speaker 1: That, well, exactly because you probably have something that's to
Speaker 1: doe by five pm. And then you're also like, I
Speaker 1: should do this before the summer, and then you have
Speaker 1: just a list that's kind of merging all those things together.
Speaker 1: And so in the book, I talk about having a
Speaker 1: list of everything you possibly could do versus everything you
Speaker 1: realistically will do, and keeping inventory of those.
Speaker 3: I'm loudly because I'm thinking about the way my wife
Speaker 3: and I figure out like calendars and stuff. It's like
Speaker 3: the Google calendar, It's the whiteboard of the kitchen. It's
Speaker 3: like texting each other. I mean, what do you do
Speaker 3: at home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I do have a Google calendar with my husband.
Speaker 1: I invite him when he needs to pick up or
Speaker 1: I need to pick up. And you know, it's if
Speaker 1: it's not on the calendar, it's not truth.
Speaker 2: It's not going to happen.
Speaker 5: Twenty seconds left here. If somebody wants to start thinking
Speaker 5: about being more productive in their life holistically, well to
Speaker 5: be one step step that they should take.
Speaker 1: Just quickly start planning for the day after the night before,
Speaker 1: so making an hour by hour plan of how you
Speaker 1: plan to spend your day tomorrow before you go to bed.
Speaker 2: All right, add it to your to do list, Carol, I.
Speaker 5: Kind of do do lists the night before.
Speaker 2: You know what you need on your to do list
Speaker 2: and just to make it to do list.
Speaker 5: So with my computer, there's like lots of stickies all
Speaker 5: over it.
Speaker 2: I can't see anything in your Good luck with the book?
Speaker 4: Thank was fun Martin.
Speaker 5: Her new book is well First of Us. She's an
Speaker 5: executive productivity advisor at Google. Her new book Uptime, A
Speaker 5: Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and well Being.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we talked a little bit just now about
Speaker 3: the jobs report from me on on Friday, we got
Speaker 3: a little peek into the labor market today, because private
Speaker 3: payrolls increasing one hundred and eighty four thousand in March
Speaker 3: after an upwardly revised one hundred and fifty five thousand
Speaker 3: gain a month earlier. That's according to figures published earlier
Speaker 3: today by ADP. The median estimate Carrol in a Bloomberg
Speaker 3: survey of economists, called for one hundred and fifty thousand increase.
Speaker 3: On Friday, we're going to get the government's monthly payroll
Speaker 3: report that's expected to show a gain of roughly two
Speaker 3: hundred fifteen thousand in private and public sector jobs.
Speaker 5: All right, we have another take on the labor market.
Speaker 5: We welcome back Jayne. She's senior policy advisor for Working Nation.
Speaker 5: It's a nonprofit media organization organization excuse me, that focuses
Speaker 5: on the future of work. She's also a former Assistant
Speaker 5: Secretary of Employment and Training under the Obama administration. She
Speaker 5: joins us on this Wednesday in Arlington, Virginia. Jane, good
Speaker 5: to have you back here on Bloomberg. How are you
Speaker 5: and how do you describe the US workforce right now?
Speaker 5: I mean, we keep seeing data points that remind us
Speaker 5: it's still kind of tight and workers are doing okay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean I think you know Tim menche first
Speaker 6: of all, Carol, great to be back, Thank you for
Speaker 6: inviting me back, the two of you. But he just
Speaker 6: mentioned the ADP report. Not only was that job number terrific,
Speaker 6: but I hope you saw that soutres a up five
Speaker 6: point one percent year over year. I mean, I think
Speaker 6: that's the best news. We at Working Nation try to
Speaker 6: do everything from that personal standpoint, and when people are
Speaker 6: making more money, it's a happier kitchen table, whether they're
Speaker 6: using Costco skin cream or Chopolo chips.
Speaker 2: Or not fair. I love it.
Speaker 3: Hey, what's not to love right now about the job market?
Speaker 6: So I'll tell you what bothers me the most. It's
Speaker 6: the labor market participation rate. You know, we know at
Speaker 6: sixty two and a half percent, we know that there
Speaker 6: are able, bodied, talented people sitting on the sidelines, and
Speaker 6: there are lots of employers saying they are desperate for help.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 6: I think that's why we tell the kinds of stories
Speaker 6: we tell at Working Nation. We're trying to motivate people
Speaker 6: there is a good job for you right now, and
Speaker 6: people don't believe you because you hear these stories, and
Speaker 6: I'm sure you can hear them all the time. People
Speaker 6: send in it a resume after resume and hear nothing.
Speaker 6: It's crickets. So they don't get any feedback on why
Speaker 6: they didn't get the job.
Speaker 3: That's so frustrating for people. I've seen them talking about
Speaker 3: this online. I mean, s's TikTok.
Speaker 6: I think that's that's hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Hey, one thing I wanted to ask about. Go ahead,
Speaker 3: Can I just ask you though?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 5: What is the disconnect? I'm looking at my Bloomberg and
Speaker 5: I'm looking at the US labor force participation rate and
Speaker 5: where we were at twenty nineteen. We were up around
Speaker 5: not quite at sixty three. I'm looking at where we are. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we were above sixty three, and here we are at
Speaker 5: sixty two and a half. I mean, you see certainly
Speaker 5: that we have not gotten back to that level. So
Speaker 5: is it what's the disconnect? Is it older people who
Speaker 5: just retired and they've left the workforce, or like what
Speaker 5: is it? Like?
Speaker 2: What's going on? You know?
Speaker 6: I think there were some retirements post COVID, and some
Speaker 6: of them may have been earlier than people had anticipated.
Speaker 5: I've seen it in my own family of members who
Speaker 5: you know, were like kind of done, you know, and
Speaker 5: just were able to take earlier retirement.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you hope that they're happy with that, you know,
Speaker 6: those people that made it as a free will choice,
Speaker 6: that's great. Those people that were kind of pushed out.
Speaker 6: We want to try to get them back in and
Speaker 6: say there's a place for it. But I'll tell you what.
Speaker 6: It worries me that it's a lot of younger workers
Speaker 6: because you know, in last month's jobs numbers, you saw
Speaker 6: that youth unemployment sixteen to twenty year old it was
Speaker 6: twelve and a half percent. Now, that's really scary. Those
Speaker 6: are young people looking for work who couldn't find it.
Speaker 6: So I hope we get better at defining the skills
Speaker 6: that are needed for jobs, and people get better at
Speaker 6: defining their own skills.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know, what's what's interesting to me?
Speaker 2: I'm playing up this. Carol had this.
Speaker 5: On is what's interesting to him today? But that's okay,
Speaker 5: that's another story.
Speaker 3: Carol had this on her terminal and she was looking
Speaker 3: at it just now, so I peeked over. It is
Speaker 3: a chart that shows the labor force participation rate, and
Speaker 3: I have it going all the way back to the
Speaker 3: nineteen forties on. Here we've been in a steady decline
Speaker 3: since the year two thousand, basically two thousand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what's what's been going on here?
Speaker 6: You know, I wish I could get that answer, because
Speaker 6: then I could solve it. Right, I think it's a
Speaker 6: mosaic of causes. You know, this idea. You know, right
Speaker 6: around that time, in the early two thousands, people started
Speaker 6: experimenting with that software that could sort your resumes for you.
Speaker 6: And you know, while that software has gotten better, I
Speaker 6: still think it excludes a lot of talented people.
Speaker 3: So you're saying the participation rate is reflective of people
Speaker 3: not being able to get jobs.
Speaker 6: I believe.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: So it's not necessarily people choosing not to participate in
Speaker 3: a labor for us because the job the jobs are
Speaker 3: out there. I mean, look at we we look at
Speaker 3: the Jolts numbers that we got earlier this week were
Speaker 3: more than eight million job openings.
Speaker 6: But part of it is geography. You know, you guys
Speaker 6: are based in New York. Would you move to Iowa
Speaker 6: for a job? You know, I'm based in Virginia. As
Speaker 6: you said, I wouldn't move anywhere for a job. At
Speaker 6: this point, you know, I mean and and so I
Speaker 6: think people are really they're hearing about these millions of
Speaker 6: open jobs, but they're really not adjacent to where they
Speaker 6: want to live.
Speaker 5: But it also means that those people have the luxury
Speaker 5: of not moving right, that somehow they're supporting themselves, Like
Speaker 5: you know, unemployment benefits only go for so long. And
Speaker 5: I guess what I'm trying to understand is if if
Speaker 5: companies have these openings and they really want the jobs filled,
Speaker 5: they'll find the people. So I also wonder if companies
Speaker 5: are kind of holding back a little bit because you know,
Speaker 5: they just want to make sure that they have, you know,
Speaker 5: the workers they need, and they don't want to overhire.
Speaker 5: Like I feel like companies have gotten really careful about that, Carol.
Speaker 6: I think you're exactly right. You know, probably the eighteen
Speaker 6: months as we were coming out of COVID, people were
Speaker 6: over hiring. You saw it in every people weren't going
Speaker 6: to show up. Yeah, and now they're kind of right sizing.
Speaker 6: But they still they post these jobs because they don't
Speaker 6: want talented people not to think they're hiring.
Speaker 3: Okay, we got to talk AI with you because I
Speaker 3: don't think we've had a chance, you don't think you've
Speaker 3: been on since, you know, in a few months, and
Speaker 3: we haven't talked much about AI with you, Jane. What
Speaker 3: happens to people if we become so much more efficient
Speaker 3: as a result of AI, what happens to the worker?
Speaker 6: So look, nobody is going to lose their job to AI.
Speaker 6: I believe people are going to lose their job to
Speaker 6: someone who knows how to work adjacent to AI. So
Speaker 6: it's really important that people not be afraid and they
Speaker 6: learn how to use it. Now that being said, I
Speaker 6: would not counsel anybody right now to go and be
Speaker 6: a paralegal, because I think that's a job that's likely
Speaker 6: going to be as AI improves a job that is
Speaker 6: better done, you know, with automation, and human beings will
Speaker 6: edit it, which means that human beings have to get
Speaker 6: better skills, right, they have to get those editing skills.
Speaker 6: But I think people really need to just as I
Speaker 6: would have said twenty five years ago about technology, I
Speaker 6: mean people need to embrace it because it's going to
Speaker 6: impact every single job. And if you're afraid of it
Speaker 6: and not willing to work with it, I don't mean
Speaker 6: everybody has to be able to create an algorithm, but
Speaker 6: how do you use a tool like chat GPT on
Speaker 6: your job? It doesn't replace you, it makes you work better,
Speaker 6: I hope. And it also is I think a clear
Speaker 6: message to all of us that you have to really
Speaker 6: hone in on those uniquely human skills things that right
Speaker 6: now and in the near foreseeable future, machines are not
Speaker 6: going to be able to docase passion, empathy, leadership, creativity,
Speaker 6: all of those things. We have to double down on
Speaker 6: not only teaching those skills and having people practice them,
Speaker 6: but assessing them so they can say they're proficient in
Speaker 6: those skills.
Speaker 5: I would say that we have to be stewards of
Speaker 5: AI going forward, Like just like we do a search,
Speaker 5: right and we come up with information, we're like, well
Speaker 5: that doesn't seem right, so we're gonna have to kind
Speaker 5: of drill down and we're smart about it. So I
Speaker 5: do feel like this idea of adjacent AI makes a
Speaker 5: lot more sense to me. Jane, we got to leave
Speaker 5: it there, Jane, Oh, it's a senior policy advisor for
Speaker 5: a working nation joining us there from Virginia