Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the tactics
Speaker 1: used by the world's most successful people to get so
Speaker 1: much out of their day.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist, the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and I'm obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day.
Speaker 2: Today's show is a best of.
Speaker 1: Show because I'm taking a few weeks off How I
Speaker 1: Work to recharge over summer, and so I've been going
Speaker 1: through the last two and a half years of doing
Speaker 1: How I.
Speaker 2: Work and picking out some of my.
Speaker 1: Favorite episodes to share. So on Today's show is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite interviews that I've done over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, and that is with Cal Newport. Cal
Speaker 1: is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. He is
Speaker 1: the author of six books, including most recently the New
Speaker 1: York Times bestseller Digital Minimalism, Choosing a focused Life in
Speaker 1: a Noisy World. Cal's work has been published in over
Speaker 1: twenty languages and has been featured in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Of, the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: and The Economist. And his book Deep Work Deeply Impacted
Speaker 1: How I Have chosen to change the way I work
Speaker 1: over the last three years.
Speaker 2: So look, it was probably.
Speaker 1: An understatement to say I was excited for this chat
Speaker 1: when I did it because I am a complete and
Speaker 1: utter fangirl of Cals and his work has just had
Speaker 1: such an enormous impact on how I work, and we
Speaker 1: cover a bunch of different aspects of the way Cal
Speaker 1: now approaches his.
Speaker 2: Work in this interview.
Speaker 1: Before I throw to Cal, just a shout out to
Speaker 1: everyone that's been leaving reviews for how I work in
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts and other places. It's so deeply appreciated. I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful for everyone that has done that. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're enjoying how I work and maybe haven't had
Speaker 1: the time to leave a review or think that it
Speaker 1: will go unnoticed, trust me, it won't. I'm so, so
Speaker 1: so grateful and it's a great way of helping other
Speaker 1: pe will find the show. So on that note, let's
Speaker 1: head to Cal to hear about how he works. Cal,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: It's my pleasure.
Speaker 2: I want to start.
Speaker 1: By talking about deep work because I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: about the benefits of creating a deep work ritual, and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could describe what your deep
Speaker 1: work riteal currently looks like in your own life.
Speaker 3: Well, so I differentiate between the types of deep work,
Speaker 3: which is actually an innovation that came after my original
Speaker 3: book came out. This is sort of an evolution of
Speaker 3: some of the ideas from the book because I realized
Speaker 3: there's different types of deep activities that benefit from different
Speaker 3: types of rituals. So, for example, when I'm writing, I
Speaker 3: have a ritual built around writing that's quite specific. I
Speaker 3: actually have in my house. I had a custom library
Speaker 3: table built that was reminiscent of the tables at the
Speaker 3: university library where I used to work as an undergraduate,
Speaker 3: with sort of brass library lamps next to the dark
Speaker 3: wood bookcases. And I have a ritual for writing where
Speaker 3: I clear off that whole desk and I just have
Speaker 3: those bright lights shining right down on the custom desk.
Speaker 3: It's just me and my computer. But that's very different,
Speaker 3: for example, than when I'm trying to solve a theoretical
Speaker 3: computer science proof, where the rituals I use almost always
Speaker 3: involve various walking routes around my town. And so I
Speaker 3: really differentiate now what the ritual is the best match
Speaker 3: the character of the cognitive effort.
Speaker 2: That's that's fascinating. How and I love the sound.
Speaker 1: Of this custom made library table as well.
Speaker 2: That's really cool.
Speaker 1: How How did you like how did your deep work
Speaker 1: routine evolve to that? In terms of getting to the
Speaker 1: insight that you need different rituals for different types of
Speaker 1: deep work.
Speaker 3: I think what was bothering me at some point is
Speaker 3: that I realized that the rituals I had built were
Speaker 3: centered on only one type of deep work, and then
Speaker 3: when I was getting to other types, I was feeling
Speaker 3: either I wasn't really counting it as deep work, or
Speaker 3: I was feeling frustrated. And so my memory was I
Speaker 3: really had my deep work rituals built around solving proofs
Speaker 3: because that was at the core of my job as
Speaker 3: a professor, and so a lot of what I needed
Speaker 3: to do, for example, for writing, like reading hard things
Speaker 3: or taking notes or actually sitting down and writing chapters
Speaker 3: wasn't being captured by the same rituals I would use
Speaker 3: to solve proofs. And I was just getting really frustrated
Speaker 3: and I would say, Wow, you know, I didn't do
Speaker 3: any deep work this week, And I said, wait a second,
Speaker 3: actually I did.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: I just was too narrow in my definition, and so
Speaker 3: I think it was just reacting to that frustration in
Speaker 3: my own life that I realized, oh, I have to
Speaker 3: be more broad when thinking about what deep work means. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And how do you know if you're actually doing
Speaker 1: deep work, like if the activity that you are working
Speaker 1: on constitutes deep work? Like I've heard you have conversations
Speaker 1: I think on other podcasts where you discuss the difference
Speaker 1: between being in flow versus doing deep work, which has
Speaker 1: had Is that something you're able to elaborate on.
Speaker 3: Well, it's an important distinction. I think the right way
Speaker 3: to think about it is under the category of different
Speaker 3: types of deep work. Some of what's under that category
Speaker 3: might induce a flow state, some of it might not,
Speaker 3: so they're not the same thing, but they're also not
Speaker 3: completely different. So the type of deep work that creates
Speaker 3: a flow state tends to be where you're applying a
Speaker 3: well honed skill to something cognically demanding. But you really
Speaker 3: might get into a flow of you know, I'm writing
Speaker 3: and I'm in a flow, or I'm sort of making
Speaker 3: I'm thinking through a proof and I'm starting to make
Speaker 3: progress on it. I just feel completely engaged. But another
Speaker 3: type of important deep work is when you're trying to
Speaker 3: learn something new or improve a skill, which requires a
Speaker 3: deliberate practice where you're stretching yourself paste you're comfortable because
Speaker 3: you're constraining really hardless stay to try to learn a
Speaker 3: new idea that you've never known before, to learn a
Speaker 3: new tool. That is by definition actually kind of the
Speaker 3: opposite of a flow state, when you're in a state
Speaker 3: of deliberate practice. The Anders ericson, who really helped innovate
Speaker 3: the research and deliberate practice, is very clear that it's unpleasant.
Speaker 3: You don't lose track of time when you're trying to
Speaker 3: learn something new. You actually are quite aware of every
Speaker 3: minute because it's hard. But that's also deep work, and
Speaker 3: so it's just a broad umbrella. Some deep work you
Speaker 3: feel great, you lose track of time. Some you're white
Speaker 3: knuckling it because it's really hard. But the fulfillment you're
Speaker 3: going to get is afterwards, when you're knowing that you
Speaker 3: did something, you did something difficult.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask when I read deep Work a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I remember being struck by the
Speaker 1: insight that I had somehow let shallow work take over
Speaker 1: my life. And I simply tried to fit in bits
Speaker 1: of deep work in amongst it. I'm sure I'm not
Speaker 1: alone in reaching that insight, and I've since completely transformed
Speaker 1: the way I work and get so much more out
Speaker 1: of my days. And I want to know for you,
Speaker 1: have you always been a naturally deep worker or was
Speaker 1: this something you had to build or create into the
Speaker 1: way you work.
Speaker 3: I had always been a natural deep worker, in part
Speaker 3: because of the field in which I worked, and so
Speaker 3: training as a theoretical computer scientist, my world was a
Speaker 3: world in which concentration was just openly considered to be
Speaker 3: the most important skill. This is what you were judged on,
Speaker 3: this is what you were rewarded for. No one could
Speaker 3: care less about busyness. Busyness was actually probably a sign
Speaker 3: that you weren't a very good theoretician. People had pride
Speaker 3: in the number of hours they could spend staring at
Speaker 3: a whiteboard, and so in this sort of esoteric field
Speaker 3: I was in, deep work was at the core of it,
Speaker 3: and so I really understood it. The insight that really
Speaker 3: surprised me, however, is when I discovered that deep work
Speaker 3: is just as important in almost every other knowledge field
Speaker 3: as well, and So for me, the process of coming
Speaker 3: to write that book Deep Work Work was sparked by
Speaker 3: the process of saying, Okay, well, for me, concentration is
Speaker 3: really important, but what's important in other fields? And keep
Speaker 3: coming up with the same answer, the sort of discovery
Speaker 3: that this thing that I thought was pretty narrow that
Speaker 3: applied to only a small number of rarefied jobs, turned
Speaker 3: out to be core to almost everything in the knowledge economy.
Speaker 1: I'm curious about the idea that's interesting for you that
Speaker 1: you have always been a deep worker, and I would
Speaker 1: imagine that a lot of people that have read Deep
Speaker 1: Work probably we're probably stuck in a similar work routine
Speaker 1: to where I was, where the majority of my day
Speaker 1: was shallow work, even though I am a knowledge worker.
Speaker 2: What have you seen to be the most effective.
Speaker 1: Ways for people to break the shallow work cabit.
Speaker 3: Well, the first step is just a vocabulary. So if
Speaker 3: you don't differentiate between what is deep work and what
Speaker 3: is shallow work, it's very very easy to just get
Speaker 3: into a world of busyness. Right. If you don't differentiate
Speaker 3: between these two activities, then the only metric you have
Speaker 3: is am I working harder? Am I not? And this
Speaker 3: is the trap that a lot of people fell into
Speaker 3: in the last ten or fifteen year in this age
Speaker 3: of sort of very low friction communication and internet accessibility,
Speaker 3: is that it just work is work, and either you're
Speaker 3: working a lot or not. It was very easy to
Speaker 3: be very busy and think that that was good. But
Speaker 3: once you have the terminology of deep work and shallow
Speaker 3: work and realize that in most jobs, at most levels,
Speaker 3: deep work is what moves the needle right. Deep work
Speaker 3: is what gets you promoted. Deep work is what gets
Speaker 3: you more revenue as a company. Deep work is what
Speaker 3: actually produces value in the knowledge context, and shallow work
Speaker 3: just supports them. Once you make that distinction, then suddenly
Speaker 3: you become incredibly uncomfortable if you notice that you're doing
Speaker 3: almost no deep work, because in knowledge work, the main
Speaker 3: manufacturing process is mine's concentrating to produce information with more value.
Speaker 3: If you are not doing that, there's something probably problematic.
Speaker 3: You're not producing value. You just talked about producing value,
Speaker 3: doing logistics about producing value. You're planning about producing value.
Speaker 3: So step one is getting the vocabulary right. Once you
Speaker 3: have the vocabulary right, people get a hunger for well,
Speaker 3: I want to do the deep work and so something
Speaker 3: as simple as just well, let me keep track of
Speaker 3: how much I'm doing can be incredibly powerful because if
Speaker 3: deep work is the main activity that actually creates new
Speaker 3: value in almost any position, at almost any level, and
Speaker 3: you see that you're doing two hours of a week,
Speaker 3: then suddenly, instead of thinking, Wow, aren't I great, I'm
Speaker 3: really hustling, you look at this and say, what in
Speaker 3: the world is going on? This is sort of a
Speaker 3: degenerate setup I've ended up in. I'm spending almost no
Speaker 3: time actually trying to produce things that are valuable and
Speaker 3: that can give you the big spark you need to
Speaker 3: make big changes because it's not easy. It's not easy
Speaker 3: to push back against the cold the business. So you
Speaker 3: need something like that to really help break you up.
Speaker 1: Have you found that just that inside alone is enough
Speaker 1: to spark behavior change.
Speaker 3: Well, it sparks the hunger I've then at that point
Speaker 3: it's helpful. It's helpful to have some meals to serve
Speaker 3: to associate that hunger. And let me mention two things
Speaker 3: real quick that in the aftermath of deep work coming out,
Speaker 3: readers have reported to be very important for you know,
Speaker 3: are at least very useful in practice for satiating a
Speaker 3: new hunger for deep work. One is scheduling deep work
Speaker 3: in advance on your calendar, treating it and protecting it
Speaker 3: like any other meeting or appointment. So once it's on there,
Speaker 3: that time is taken up you have to plan around it.
Speaker 3: If someone tries to schedule something during that time, you say,
Speaker 3: already have a thing. People are used to the social conventions,
Speaker 3: run meetings, and appointments. If someone tries to get in
Speaker 3: touch with you during one of these blocks and they're
Speaker 3: upset because hey, why don't you get back to me,
Speaker 3: you can say, well, I had a thing from twelve
Speaker 3: to two, like you really do. Treat it like you're
Speaker 3: going to the dentist or in a meeting right where
Speaker 3: you can't be reached. That's really helpful. So then in
Speaker 3: advance people can start putting this time and locking it
Speaker 3: in and then forcing themselves to work around the anchor
Speaker 3: time to try to fit in the other shallow work.
Speaker 3: That's useful. The other thing that's useful I've been hearing
Speaker 3: from readers is having a conversation with your supervisor, or
Speaker 3: if you work for yourself, sort of have this conversation
Speaker 3: with yourself where you say this is what deep work is.
Speaker 3: This is what shallow work is. Both are important for
Speaker 3: the organization. What's the ratio I should be shooting for
Speaker 3: in a typical forty hour work week? How many of
Speaker 3: those hours should be deep work for shallow work? And
Speaker 3: the answer will be different for different jobs, right, But
Speaker 3: you get an answer, and then you work backwards and say, Okay,
Speaker 3: what changes might we have to make so that we
Speaker 3: can accomplish this goal that we decided together was going
Speaker 3: to optimize the value I produce for the company. So
Speaker 3: it's a way of approaching deep work with the people
Speaker 3: you work with that is positive, saying how can we
Speaker 3: use this idea and agree on how to do it
Speaker 3: together to make more value, as opposed to what most
Speaker 3: people do, which is negative, which is stop bothering me,
Speaker 3: I don't want to answer an email. Stop scheduling me
Speaker 3: in meetings, right, which just tends to make people defensive.
Speaker 3: So those two things scheduling deep work like meetings and appointments,
Speaker 3: and two agreeing on a deep to shallow work ratio
Speaker 3: are things I've been hearing from readers to be really
Speaker 3: effective for getting more of this into your life.
Speaker 2: That's great. I love that question. To ask your boss.
Speaker 1: And I must say I personally have had great success
Speaker 1: with just blocking out deep work in the diary. Generally,
Speaker 1: almost every morning in my diary just has a do
Speaker 1: not book sign over it, which I've personally found very
Speaker 1: effective and funnily enough, the thing that I found hardest
Speaker 1: to apply from deep work was you write a bit
Speaker 1: about having a ritual to end your day and shut
Speaker 1: down your work day, and I've never been able to
Speaker 1: make that stick. But I'm wondering if you could describe
Speaker 1: how your workday ends, because I've found that quite fascinating
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure if it's changed since writing the book.
Speaker 3: No, it's more or less still the same. So the
Speaker 3: idea of a work shutdown ritual is that when you're
Speaker 3: done with work, you want to go through the potential
Speaker 3: open loops, right, So make sure that anything that is
Speaker 3: on your mind but not actually in a system where
Speaker 3: it's going to be dealt with and scheduled, gets into
Speaker 3: a system where it's going to be dealt with scheduled.
Speaker 3: Get everything out of your mind. I used to, depending
Speaker 3: on what's going on in the week, I'll often at
Speaker 3: this point check my calendar, check my task, check my plan.
Speaker 3: Make sure that Okay, I'm on track. I've got a
Speaker 3: plan for the week. I know what I'm doing. I'm
Speaker 3: on track to get things done. I'm not missing anything.
Speaker 3: So that there's no open loops, no concern. Make your
Speaker 3: last look at the inbox. There's nothing lurking there that's
Speaker 3: an emergency, right, and then you shut it down. So
Speaker 3: you and I recommend having at first a phrase. You
Speaker 3: say whatever you want it to be. The idea being
Speaker 3: that once you've done the shutdown and you've said whatever
Speaker 3: the phrase is, if later in the evening your mind
Speaker 3: starts to bother you right and say, you know, like
Speaker 3: maybe we're missing something. Maybe we should go back and
Speaker 3: think some more about this, you can say, you know
Speaker 3: what I said the phrase. I wouldn't have said the
Speaker 3: phrase if I hadn't checked on everything and made sure
Speaker 3: that I trusted our plan. So there must be a plan.
Speaker 3: I trust. I don't have to think about it anymore.
Speaker 3: And what people experience is when they do this shutdown routine,
Speaker 3: and that kind of pushback on the ruminations. After a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks that urge to ruminate and think about
Speaker 3: work after work is over starts to really diminish which
Speaker 3: allow to have a much more sort of present and
Speaker 3: relaxed evening.
Speaker 2: It's so true, It's so true. It's funny.
Speaker 1: In my own life, I just I can't seem to
Speaker 1: crack that. I always am struggling to resist the temptation
Speaker 1: to hop back onto my computer after my daughter's in bed.
Speaker 1: And I wanted to ask, like, did becoming a parent,
Speaker 1: which obviously happened for you quite a few years ago,
Speaker 1: did that change the way that you approach your work
Speaker 1: in particularly deep work habits.
Speaker 3: Well, in some sense, my deep work habits made it
Speaker 3: easier to make the transition to being a parent because
Speaker 3: the way I used to work, you know, I trained
Speaker 3: myself that I have work hours, and I want to
Speaker 3: get the most of those work hours, and I'm going
Speaker 3: to structure the day. It's going to be intense, depth,
Speaker 3: really organized, shallow, have a shutdown when it comes time
Speaker 3: to be the shutdown period. For whatever reason that that
Speaker 3: was really appealing to me. I used to plan as
Speaker 3: a grad student. I'd planned my day around my wife's
Speaker 3: work schedule, so I was like, I want to use
Speaker 3: every minute that she's at work to get as much done.
Speaker 3: But then I don't want to be one of the
Speaker 3: grad students who sort of was lazy during the day
Speaker 3: and then has to be on campus all night. I
Speaker 3: want to be home with her and doing other sort
Speaker 3: of things. So I have this tight schedule. When I'm working,
Speaker 3: work really hard. When I'm done, be done. So then
Speaker 3: once we had kids, that kind of worked really well.
Speaker 3: So I was like, Okay, when I'm at the office,
Speaker 3: I'll work really hard. But then I was already used
Speaker 3: to the idea that when I'm done, I can shut
Speaker 3: down completely. And now shutting down completely wasn't just well,
Speaker 3: it's just kind of relaxing when I'm home doing what
Speaker 3: I want to do. Of course, now it's kind of,
Speaker 3: you know, it keeps things off my mind when I'm
Speaker 3: home running around doing childcare. But it fits really well.
Speaker 3: And so this notion if I want to work deeply,
Speaker 3: really intensely, keep the shallow work incredibly organized and contained,
Speaker 3: and when I'm done, when I'm done, incredibly compatible with
Speaker 3: being a parent.
Speaker 1: It all sounds very logical. Work when you work and
Speaker 1: don't work when you're not at work. Something I want
Speaker 1: to shift on to, which you write about in digital minimalism,
Speaker 1: is the value of solitude and bottom, I guess which
Speaker 1: you know? Again, like when I was reflecting, when I
Speaker 1: was reading the book and reflecting on my own life,
Speaker 1: it's quite scary to think about how infrequently I was
Speaker 1: feeling bored and how infrequently I would imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of people experience boredom because there's just constant inputs, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Curious to know how.
Speaker 1: And you write a bit about this in the book.
Speaker 1: How do you experience solitude and boredom? How do you
Speaker 1: create those states in your own world?
Speaker 3: Well, so, just to provide a little bit of background,
Speaker 3: some context on the shift from Deep Work to digital
Speaker 3: minimalism before getting to the specific question. Basically, Deep Work
Speaker 3: was this book that was about focus in the workplace
Speaker 3: and how technologies had unintentionally made that more difficult. And
Speaker 3: so one of the big reactions I got the Deep
Speaker 3: Work was, Okay, maybe this is true, Like what you're
Speaker 3: saying about tech and what it's doing in the workplace, Well,
Speaker 3: what about tech in our life outside of work? Because
Speaker 3: people in the last couple of years particular, were really
Speaker 3: beginning to feel that their life outside of work was
Speaker 3: being taken over by screens in a way that was
Speaker 3: making them uneasy. Right, And it wasn't that, Okay, I
Speaker 3: hate what I'm doing when I look at the screen.
Speaker 3: It was the fact that they were looking at the
Speaker 3: screen so much. It was almost like they were losing
Speaker 3: their autonomy, that their whole life was getting eaten up
Speaker 3: by just glance after glance after glance at the screens
Speaker 3: was making them anxious, making them unhappy. I was keeping
Speaker 3: away from friends and family, and so digital minimalism was about, Okay,
Speaker 3: what's going on with this unease in our personal relationship
Speaker 3: with tech, so outside of work, outside of things like
Speaker 3: email and slack, and what can we do about it?
Speaker 3: And so getting back to your question. So that's one
Speaker 3: of the ideas I talked about in digital minimalism is
Speaker 3: that when you kill every moment that you could potentially
Speaker 3: be alone with your thoughts by looking at a screen.
Speaker 3: So every time you're in line, every time you're waiting
Speaker 3: for the subway, when you know someone gets up at
Speaker 3: dinner and goes to your bathroom and you're waiting for
Speaker 3: them to come back. If at every single moment like
Speaker 3: that you look at a screen, what you do is
Speaker 3: you put yourself into a state calls solitude deprivation, where
Speaker 3: you're never alone with your own thoughts. And we know
Speaker 3: that this is actually really unhealthy and it's probably going
Speaker 3: to make you anxious. It's also probably going to retard
Speaker 3: your ability to have sort of self development or professional
Speaker 3: insights or breakthroughs. We really do need regular time spent
Speaker 3: alone with our thoughts, which is why I recommend that
Speaker 3: you get that in your life. And so what's the
Speaker 3: easiest way to do that is my suggestion is most days,
Speaker 3: do at least one or two things without your phone.
Speaker 3: And that simple thing I go on one errand and
Speaker 3: I do whatever one thing around the house each day
Speaker 3: where there's no earbuds and no phone. Something as simple
Speaker 3: as that can have a major impact on your cognitive health,
Speaker 3: anxiety levels, and happiness.
Speaker 1: What does that look like in your life in terms
Speaker 1: of incorporating, you know, moments of solitude and space to
Speaker 1: be bored.
Speaker 3: Well, I reject this idea, which is actually quite recent,
Speaker 3: that you need to have a phone with you all
Speaker 3: the time. You know, this notion that the phone's always there,
Speaker 3: you're always looking at it. We're used to it, but
Speaker 3: it's quite arbitrary, it's quite contrived, and it's quite recent,
Speaker 3: And so I spend large parts of my day without
Speaker 3: a phone handy, so I do locks exercise. When I'm
Speaker 3: at home, I typically my phone will be in my
Speaker 3: bag somewhere, So I don't accept this premise that I'm
Speaker 3: like in an emergency room doctor that needs to be
Speaker 3: accessible at all times on a communication device. And so
Speaker 3: once you change your mindset to one where it's I
Speaker 3: use my phone to do various things, but it's not
Speaker 3: something I always have with me, you just naturally get
Speaker 3: lots of solitude. So throughout my day there's just lots
Speaker 3: of times with just me alone with my thoughts because
Speaker 3: I don't have easy distraction nearby. And so something as
Speaker 3: simple as that, I think if the phone as a
Speaker 3: tool you occasionally use, not a constant companion, can really
Speaker 3: make a big difference in terms of getting more solitude.
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting idea leaving your phone at home
Speaker 1: or in the glove books. And I must say, like
Speaker 1: during the month of match my husband and I, but
Speaker 1: it's right digital minimalism before the month started, and we
Speaker 1: use that month as digital declutter month, And something that
Speaker 1: we both consume a lot of is podcasts. And I
Speaker 1: really became aware of this habit where in any moment
Speaker 1: where I could have been experiencing solitude, Like I generally
Speaker 1: spend the hours of six to seven am either walking
Speaker 1: or at the gym or exercising or moving in some way.
Speaker 1: Podcasts and my AirPods would be glued in my ears.
Speaker 1: But one of the changes I made in the last
Speaker 1: month is actually going, well, what if I just spent
Speaker 1: that hour in silence and it just made things completely different.
Speaker 1: I found that some of my best ideas were coming
Speaker 1: to me at that point where I was previously just
Speaker 1: consuming stimulus.
Speaker 2: How do you delineate.
Speaker 1: Between these moments where there's no input going in other
Speaker 1: than your own thoughts versus feeling like it's okay to
Speaker 1: have some stimulus going in, Like I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: you're a podcast list or I know that you're a
Speaker 1: big reader, But how do you kind of delineate that time?
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean it's a good question, because I do
Speaker 3: like podcasts. I am a big reader. I try to
Speaker 3: get rid of the idea that it's a default activity.
Speaker 3: It's something I guess I think of as I look
Speaker 3: forward to our schedule, right, So instead of being a
Speaker 3: default activity, I guess I'm more active about putting aside
Speaker 3: when am I going to get input? What input is
Speaker 3: it going to be? So if I know, for example,
Speaker 3: I have a lot of yard work to do, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'll say, great, I'm going to listen to this
Speaker 3: particular podcast and it's gonna be good. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: I say, oh, I have a walk coming up, and say,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm walking my kid to school and I'm
Speaker 3: going to walk home alone. I usually won't listen to
Speaker 3: a podcast. Then I've just become used to. I really
Speaker 3: like that solitude. And so it's not that there's a
Speaker 3: hard and fast rule, but I plan when I'm going
Speaker 3: to do stimuli, and you know, I have to think
Speaker 3: about it right and say do I want to listen
Speaker 3: to something or not? Do I want the silence or
Speaker 3: is there something I think this might be a good
Speaker 3: chance to listen to something. Same thing with my commutes
Speaker 3: when I come to campus. Probably about half the time
Speaker 3: I think, the other half the time I listen. And
Speaker 3: you know, I don't have a precise heuristic that says
Speaker 3: this is when I do this and this is when
Speaker 3: I do the other. But I just keep in mind
Speaker 3: that both are possibilities and that it's worth thinking about
Speaker 3: in any given moment, which one I want to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nice being delivered about it.
Speaker 1: I feel like for so many people it's just a
Speaker 1: habit to put in earphones and just start listening when
Speaker 1: there's no other stimulus that could be coming their way.
Speaker 1: And on the topic of habits, I think this was
Speaker 1: a blog maybe that you wrote a few months ago
Speaker 1: around habits versus workflows, which I found really interesting because
Speaker 1: I think in the productivity space there's such an emphasis
Speaker 1: on different hacks and quick fixes, whereas you write about
Speaker 1: the importance of actually reviewing your workflow, and I was
Speaker 1: wondering if you could like expand a bit on what
Speaker 1: you meant by that concept and maybe gives some examples
Speaker 1: of what are the different workflows that you have in
Speaker 1: your own working life.
Speaker 3: I think this is a key distinction and to understand
Speaker 3: some of the issues we have in workplace productivity and
Speaker 3: how we might eventually solve them. So to me, a
Speaker 3: habit is something you put in place for how you
Speaker 3: interact with your work. So maybe when you check your email,
Speaker 3: or your methods you use for organizing your email, or
Speaker 3: maybe your personal planning like how you plan out your
Speaker 3: day or keep track of what you need to get done,
Speaker 3: whereas workflow is the underlying either explicit or implicit system
Speaker 3: that specifies how work gets done, so how obligations are assigned,
Speaker 3: executed and tracked. A lot of times we think about habits,
Speaker 3: but it's actually the underlying workflow that's causing the problem.
Speaker 3: So the key place, I think, the key example where
Speaker 3: this distinction comes up is when it comes to email overload.
Speaker 3: So to me, the big problem with email is this
Speaker 3: underlying workflow that says the way that we work in
Speaker 3: our organization is that we maintain this sort of ad hoc,
Speaker 3: ongoing unstructure conversation using email inboxes, and it's very flexible,
Speaker 3: it's very convenient if we all just kind of keep hey,
Speaker 3: you get that what's going on over here, and that
Speaker 3: this is how we're going to work. Is how we're
Speaker 3: going to pass tasks off to each other, how we're
Speaker 3: going to follow up on things. It's how we're going
Speaker 3: to communicate with people. It's just we're going to have
Speaker 3: this ongoing, unstructured conversation. Now, you can have a lot
Speaker 3: of habits on top of that workflow to try to tainment,
Speaker 3: So maybe you don't check email all the time. And
Speaker 3: maybe you have some nice folder system for organizing emails
Speaker 3: moving to a to do list, But until you change
Speaker 3: that underlying workflow, there's nothing just going to solve the
Speaker 3: need in such an environment to check email a lot,
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time doing email. And so, like
Speaker 3: when I'm out there talking about the problem of email overload,
Speaker 3: people really want to just focus on the habits. They think, well,
Speaker 3: we could just change some norms about how often we
Speaker 3: check email, or you know, batch it, or let people
Speaker 3: know that we're not going to respond right away, that
Speaker 3: we can we can solve all the problems we're having.
Speaker 3: But often the underline issue is that there's this workflow
Speaker 3: that depends on ongoing email communication you get anything done,
Speaker 3: and so if you want really systemic change, you have
Speaker 3: to replace that with something better. And so I think
Speaker 3: organizations have to think about this, and I think individuals
Speaker 3: can think about this in their own life as well.
Speaker 3: To what extent are you rearranging the deck chairs on
Speaker 3: the sinking Titanic when you're building more complicated systems for
Speaker 3: an underlying workflow that's just inevitably going to keep you
Speaker 3: overwhelmed or not doing what's important And so I like
Speaker 3: that distinction. There's the underlying decisions about how tasks and
Speaker 3: obligations are identified as sign tracked, and executed, and then
Speaker 3: there's what you do on top of that to help
Speaker 3: sort of interact with those workflows. And those are two
Speaker 3: different things.
Speaker 1: And what are some workflows that are true for your
Speaker 1: own working life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting question because often when I'm talking
Speaker 3: about workflows and habits, it's relevant primarily at the level
Speaker 3: of organizations, right, And so this is the difference between
Speaker 3: two software development teams, one that just people are on
Speaker 3: slack all day and the other where they use an
Speaker 3: agile methodology like scrum. It's really explicit about here's who's
Speaker 3: working on what. We put it on this board, we
Speaker 3: can see its status. We have synchronous meetings. We do
Speaker 3: them twice a day. This is how you know, we
Speaker 3: assign things. They have a really structured workflow. Because of
Speaker 3: that structured workflow, they don't need to be on slack
Speaker 3: all day. But without that structured workflow, they need to
Speaker 3: be on slack because how else are tasked going to
Speaker 3: get passed around or things checked on? In terms of
Speaker 3: like in your individual life, I mean, one way to
Speaker 3: think about it, I suppose is in terms of processes
Speaker 3: or systems that you use for identifying tasks and making
Speaker 3: sure they get done or assigning them. And so sometimes
Speaker 3: these can be pretty subtle, but a concrete example is
Speaker 3: like on my book tour which I'm on now for
Speaker 3: digital minimalism, there's a lot of bookings that have to happen,
Speaker 3: and so I thought about the underlying workflow of well,
Speaker 3: what's the what's the right way to actually sort of
Speaker 3: get things identified and scheduled and information to me? And
Speaker 3: we built a system with the publicity team where I
Speaker 3: could identify time when I'm available. They then had access
Speaker 3: to those parts of my calendar. They could then book
Speaker 3: things directly on the calendar with all the information I
Speaker 3: need I could if I book something else, that time
Speaker 3: would get blocked off. And we rebuilt the workflow that
Speaker 3: minimized back and forth communication required to accomplish the goal
Speaker 3: of getting the proper things like this interview scheduled, for example.
Speaker 3: And so that might be an example of working on
Speaker 3: the underlying workflow as opposed to just the upper level
Speaker 3: habits of like how often do I check my emails
Speaker 3: about when things are being scheduled?
Speaker 1: And do you have I guess on top of your workflows,
Speaker 1: what are some of the most useful habits or productivity
Speaker 1: systems or weekly rituals that you do to keep your
Speaker 1: weak organized and flowing.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a big believer in both weekly and daily planning.
Speaker 3: I think you need to spend time to understand the
Speaker 3: contours of your week. What's happening on each day, what
Speaker 3: day is really crowded, what days have open space, so
Speaker 3: that you can start moving things around at that scale
Speaker 3: and recognize, hey, Monday is pretty open, that's probably gonna
Speaker 3: be a good time to make a lot of progress
Speaker 3: on this hard thing, even though that hard thing's not
Speaker 3: due till Friday. But you're seeing on the calendar that
Speaker 3: Wednesday and Thursday have a lot of meetings, right, And
Speaker 3: so looking at the whole week and trying to plan
Speaker 3: out what's going to happen when I think that's important.
Speaker 3: Believer in time blocking on a particular day. Give your
Speaker 3: time a job. Here's the hours I have available. What
Speaker 3: am I doing with this hour? What am I doing
Speaker 3: with this thirty minutes? What am I doing with this
Speaker 3: three hour block? Give your time a job, as opposed
Speaker 3: to just approaching your day with a generic to do list,
Speaker 3: You're much more effective at getting things out of your
Speaker 3: day if again, you look at the free hours of
Speaker 3: the day and reconfigure them, move them around, and figure
Speaker 3: out how can I get the most out of this?
Speaker 3: And then I often am a believer in ad hoc
Speaker 3: systems and rituals that match what's going on at the time.
Speaker 3: And so if you have, let's say, a big event
Speaker 3: coming up, do you have to do a lot of
Speaker 3: planning for you might just say here's I'm doing. It's
Speaker 3: thirty minutes after launch every single day, thirty minutes every
Speaker 3: single day just checking in, moving things, seeing what's going
Speaker 3: on or whatever. Right, But this idea of having temporary
Speaker 3: systems that you put into place to help you make
Speaker 3: a lot of progress on important, non permanent things in
Speaker 3: a way that doesn't have you just completely an ad
Speaker 3: hoc looking at a tasklic type mode. So if you
Speaker 3: do weekly planning, daily time blocking, build temporary systems and
Speaker 3: rituals as needed for temporary but large obligations, that usually
Speaker 3: combines to help you get a pretty effective use of
Speaker 3: the time available.
Speaker 1: And can I ask with time blocking because it's something
Speaker 1: I've experimented with myself, and I feel like the cognitive
Speaker 1: biases that either cause you to overestimate or underestimate how
Speaker 1: long something takes, I've found can be my downfall with
Speaker 1: time blocking. Where let's just say I've completely overestimated how
Speaker 1: long something will take, but I've set aside three hours.
Speaker 1: I finished it in an hour and a half, and
Speaker 1: then like, what, like, how does that work.
Speaker 2: In your world?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I should say at the bigger point
Speaker 3: is that one of the nice things about time blocking
Speaker 3: is that it's practiced to make you better at estimating
Speaker 3: how long things take because there is some pain to
Speaker 3: when you get it wrong. It requires some extra effort,
Speaker 3: and so you have to try to get it right,
Speaker 3: and you get a lot of feedback. So you see,
Speaker 3: consistently not giving myself enough time for this type of activity,
Speaker 3: you get that feedback or I'm always giving myself too
Speaker 3: much time, So that gets better. But then what do
Speaker 3: you do in the moment? Well, if you don't give
Speaker 3: yourself enough time, then you know if you keep going
Speaker 3: till you finish what needs to get done, and then
Speaker 3: you just adjust your schedule for the rest of the day,
Speaker 3: which is fine. And one of the ways that people
Speaker 3: get time blocking wrong is they think that it's a
Speaker 3: game where you win the gold medal if you never
Speaker 3: have to change your schedule. But there's actually no prize
Speaker 3: you get for getting your schedule exactly right and never
Speaker 3: having to change it. You probably might have to change
Speaker 3: it three, four or five times. The goal is not
Speaker 3: to have a perfect schedule. It's to always have some
Speaker 3: intention about what you're doing with the time that remains
Speaker 3: of the day. Same thing if you underschedule, so you
Speaker 3: have a couple options here. You could add something new,
Speaker 3: or you could take advantage of that time just to relax,
Speaker 3: or to do something that's going to dogative rest like
Speaker 3: that's actually kind of a nice scenario. But the point
Speaker 3: I always make about time blocking is that, regardless of
Speaker 3: what you do, having a good understanding of how long
Speaker 3: things take is crucial because if you don't, regardless you're
Speaker 3: time blocking or not, you're just going to keep getting
Speaker 3: yourself in the trouble and you're going to keep having
Speaker 3: colliding deadlines, You're going to keep having late nights, you're
Speaker 3: going to keep having these sort of stressful moments when
Speaker 3: you realize, ah, a lot still needs to get done
Speaker 3: and I'm not there, And time blocking trains you to
Speaker 3: better appreciate how long things take and then otherwise just
Speaker 3: be comfortable with the fact that you might have to
Speaker 3: change your schedule several times throughout the day and that
Speaker 3: that's not negative, that's actually how the system works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the idea of actually taking a break.
Speaker 1: And I've heard you talk about the concept of deep breaks,
Speaker 1: because I feel like people don't really think that much
Speaker 1: about what constitutes a break, what they do in a break,
Speaker 1: how long a break goes for. So can you describe
Speaker 1: this concept of deep breaks and what they involve.
Speaker 3: So, if you're doing a deep work and you're taking
Speaker 3: a break and you're going to return the deep work,
Speaker 3: you should be careful about the break. And so you
Speaker 3: want to avoid, for example, in a break, exposing yourself
Speaker 3: to other but similar type of work, because now you're
Speaker 3: going to contact shift and so you want to be
Speaker 3: really careful. If you're writing an article, you don't want
Speaker 3: to during a break maybe read or think about a
Speaker 3: related article. It's just too close and now you're kind
Speaker 3: of context shifting to that other article and it's going
Speaker 3: to be hard to come back. You also want to
Speaker 3: avoid open loops, exposing yourself the loops that you can't
Speaker 3: close during the break. And so this is what's dangerous
Speaker 3: about looking at email. For example, in a fifteen minute break,
Speaker 3: you're going to see a lot of things that you
Speaker 3: can't get to, a lot of emails you can't quite answer.
Speaker 3: Open loops really eat at our attention and reduce our
Speaker 3: cognitive capacity going forward. So a deep break, you want
Speaker 3: to void looking at similar type of work or open loops.
Speaker 3: And so you can look at stuff, for example, that's
Speaker 3: completely unrelated to work. You know, you can read an
Speaker 3: article about your local sports team is probably not gonna
Speaker 3: be a big deal. You can go for a walk,
Speaker 3: you can read a book, a chapter from a book,
Speaker 3: or a magazine article that's completely unrelated to your work.
Speaker 3: These type of things are fine. You can talk to
Speaker 3: people you know, non work related conversations. All that's fine.
Speaker 3: Those would be deep breaks, But you don't want to
Speaker 3: do something similar. You don't want to expose yourself to
Speaker 3: open loops.
Speaker 1: I find that really helpful because I feel like email
Speaker 1: is the thing that often fills spare time because it
Speaker 1: can take as long or as little as you want.
Speaker 1: And how what does email look like in your life,
Speaker 1: like how how frequently do you check it?
Speaker 2: How long do you spend in there?
Speaker 1: What would like your I guess your email system look
Speaker 1: like in a typical way.
Speaker 3: Well, there's two elements to it. So one is controlling
Speaker 3: what comes in. And so if you look at, for example,
Speaker 3: my author website and you go to the contact page,
Speaker 3: I don't give people a general purpose email address. I
Speaker 3: don't just say hey, i'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Here's my email address. Instead, there's very specific addresses for
Speaker 3: very particular purposes, and then I give expectations around them,
Speaker 3: like okay, if you're interested in speaking, well, you can
Speaker 3: you can talk to my speaking age. And thus the
Speaker 3: address publicity, here's like a publicist you can talk to.
Speaker 3: If you want to send me links or articles which
Speaker 3: I really like, you can send them to this address.
Speaker 3: But I don't answer. A look at it, but I
Speaker 3: don't answer, and I don't give an option, for example,
Speaker 3: for and if you just have like questions for me,
Speaker 3: or want to talk to me or ask me to
Speaker 3: get involved in a business or whatever, there's just no
Speaker 3: option for that. Now you would worry that that might
Speaker 3: make readers upset because you're sort of cutting off accessibility,
Speaker 3: but I found that didn't happen. People are okay with clarity.
Speaker 3: They don't really need accessibility as long as it's clear.
Speaker 3: So if they know for a fact, like, okay, there's
Speaker 3: no way for me to really reach you about this,
Speaker 3: and they're okay with it, that's better than them just
Speaker 3: having a generic email address and sending their business pitch
Speaker 3: to you with some expect that you might answer, and
Speaker 3: then being upset that you don't. And so I try
Speaker 3: to cut down on what comes in or expectations on reply.
Speaker 3: And then in terms of dealing with the email that
Speaker 3: I do get, you know, I schedule when I look
Speaker 3: at it, and how often that is just depends on
Speaker 3: what's going on, and so it's not maybe I go
Speaker 3: a day or so without having to without being able
Speaker 3: to look at it, and over time people get mad
Speaker 3: at me a lot. But people have learned that I
Speaker 3: don't use email like an ongoing, constant communication or chat service.
Speaker 3: It's just not something you can use to grab my
Speaker 3: attention real quickly, even if it's really convenient for you.
Speaker 3: That's just not the way I use email. It might
Speaker 3: be a day or two till I see it, and
Speaker 3: so I always tell my students that when we begin class,
Speaker 3: my colleagues have learned it, my family has sort of
Speaker 3: learned about it, and people adjust. And so for me,
Speaker 3: some days I don't look at it, other days I do,
Speaker 3: and when I do, I try to take care of
Speaker 3: it in basically one session.
Speaker 1: I do like the idea of just being clear and
Speaker 1: setting expectations, and ironically that will lead to less disappointment.
Speaker 2: I want to come back.
Speaker 1: To emails toward the end of about chat in a
Speaker 1: few minutes, but first I did want to ask you
Speaker 1: something that my company, Inventium is working on at the
Speaker 1: moment with the University of New South Wales, is actually
Speaker 1: looking at strategies like introducing deep work into an organization
Speaker 1: along with other different strategies for working better and trying
Speaker 1: to assess the impact on productivity and other variables. And
Speaker 1: so I guess a couple of questions there, because I've
Speaker 1: heard you talk about it's actually quite hard to land
Speaker 1: on a definition of productivity, like if an organization introduces
Speaker 1: a workflow that is more around prioritizing deep work when
Speaker 1: we're talking about knowledge workers over shallow work, like how
Speaker 1: do we actually measure the impact of that on productivity,
Speaker 1: and then what are the other variables that we would
Speaker 1: expect it to change, like you know, ranging from job
Speaker 1: satisfaction to health and well being and stress levels. But
Speaker 1: I guess, in the context of this study, how would
Speaker 1: you be measuring productivity when it comes to the impact
Speaker 1: that deep work would have.
Speaker 3: So I would go back to the economic metric of
Speaker 3: productivity actual value produced per hour that you're paying salary,
Speaker 3: which I sometimes call true productivity in the book because
Speaker 3: what we've done in knowledge work because knowledge work is
Speaker 3: a little bit more ambiguous we don't have widgets to
Speaker 3: count coming off of an assembly line, is that we
Speaker 3: began to use busyness as a proxy for productivity. So
Speaker 3: are you there early in the morning, are you around
Speaker 3: a lot? Are you answering emails very quickly? Just in general,
Speaker 3: if you're doing something, at least we know you're not
Speaker 3: being lazy or taking advantage. And that's the sort of
Speaker 3: metric we put into place. But what really matters is
Speaker 3: is the activity producing concrete value for the organization, such
Speaker 3: as dollars coming in in a for profit organization. And
Speaker 3: it's there that I think that we're finding that we
Speaker 3: should be a little bit concerned. Like if you look
Speaker 3: at the US, for example, our labor department tracks this
Speaker 3: productivity right, revenue per sort of employment hour, and they
Speaker 3: break it out for the non industrial sector, so particularly
Speaker 3: for they call it non industrial productivity metrics, so not
Speaker 3: counting manufacturing, but mainly just knowledge work. That metric has
Speaker 3: been stagnant for a long time. I mean throughout this
Speaker 3: last decade period where we invested billions to make communication
Speaker 3: as fast and flexible and easy as possible. It's never
Speaker 3: been easier for you to get information or to contact
Speaker 3: someone and get a quick response ever before in the
Speaker 3: history of work. It doesn't show up at all in
Speaker 3: the economic metrics, and I think that's something they should
Speaker 3: have us really worried, right, And I think in large
Speaker 3: part of it is because it turns out that all
Speaker 3: this communication information gathering has an impact on our brains functioning.
Speaker 3: It makes it hard for the brain to do the
Speaker 3: actual job of thinking and producing value. And so if
Speaker 3: I was measuring productivity, you know, from a study perspective,
Speaker 3: I want to know about how much dollars are we
Speaker 3: paying in salary, what are we getting back in terms
Speaker 3: of revenue coming in, Like sort of these these baseline numbers.
Speaker 3: And just as an aside, there's this really interesting study
Speaker 3: from the nine We're an economist from Georgia Tech was
Speaker 3: watching personal computers enter the desk like the workforce, like
Speaker 3: the front office workforce in fortune five hundred companies in
Speaker 3: the US. Right, So what happened when you got these
Speaker 3: productivity enhancing computers on everyone's desk? And he measured the
Speaker 3: numbers very carefully in the way I'm talking about. His
Speaker 3: name was Peter G. Sassone, and what he found. I
Speaker 3: think this is really interesting is that the organization said, hey, look,
Speaker 3: this is great. These computers make certain things that we
Speaker 3: used to have dedicated support staff do, like typing and
Speaker 3: sending letters or whatever. Right, it makes some of these
Speaker 3: things easy enough that we no longer have to hire
Speaker 3: dedicated people just to do these administrative tasks. Is the
Speaker 3: higher level they called the managers in this study, but
Speaker 3: sort of the higher trained employees can now do it themselves.
Speaker 3: And so we're going to save all this money by
Speaker 3: firing all the typists, and we don't need everyone to
Speaker 3: have secretaries anymore because you can send emails and do
Speaker 3: word processing. What ended up happening, however, is that that
Speaker 3: he calls us the diminishment of intellectual specialization. Now you
Speaker 3: take the people who were actually producing the things to
Speaker 3: brought value into the organizations, and all this administrative work
Speaker 3: fell onto their plate. It then took more of those
Speaker 3: people to produce the same amount of work, but their
Speaker 3: salaries are much higher than the support staff that they fired.
Speaker 3: And what with sasone crunched all the numbers, he figured
Speaker 3: out that you were actually about twenty percent less effective
Speaker 3: in the sense that you could cut your payroll by
Speaker 3: twenty percent to produce the same amount of work by
Speaker 3: bringing back support staff and allowing people just to focus
Speaker 3: at the higher level on just their work, and you
Speaker 3: wouldn't need as many of these expensive high level employees.
Speaker 3: That's the type of study I think we need to
Speaker 3: have in mind who are thinking about productivity when you
Speaker 3: get to the dollars and cents bottom line, I think
Speaker 3: a lot of what we're doing with this constant communication,
Speaker 3: hyper convenient business is having a huge economic impact. So
Speaker 3: that's a long answer to a short question, but it's
Speaker 3: something that I feel really strongly about, and I'm glad
Speaker 3: that the University of South Wales is thinking about some
Speaker 3: studies along these lines.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely fascinating what you described.
Speaker 1: I'm also curious, like, what are the variables outside of
Speaker 1: productivity would you expect, like actually dedicating more time to
Speaker 1: deep work to have Like, for example, in my own life,
Speaker 1: I just get so much more fulfillment from my work
Speaker 1: because I'm creating more meaningful output into the world. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious what other variables you would expect a deep
Speaker 1: work routine to impact.
Speaker 3: Well. You should expect more psychological satisfaction and more satisfaction
Speaker 3: with work, especially if you pair increased focus on deep
Speaker 3: work with decreased communication responsibilities. So it's true that deep
Speaker 3: work itself is very fulfilling. We like the focus on
Speaker 3: one thing and produce something valuable that's very fulfilling, and
Speaker 3: so that makes us happier. The flip side of that
Speaker 3: is also really negative. So if you're constantly trying to
Speaker 3: deal with tons of communication, each of which is someone
Speaker 3: who needs something from you, and you can't keep up
Speaker 3: with it because you have hundreds of messages and it's
Speaker 3: always piling up and you're always behind. That collides with
Speaker 3: the sort of ancient paleolithic social wiring in our brain
Speaker 3: in a very unnatural way. That makes us very unhappy
Speaker 3: and very stressed and very anxious. It's really just in
Speaker 3: the way that eating junk food hits our paleolithic you know,
Speaker 3: food processing system in a bad way. It makes us
Speaker 3: really overweight. Our body isn't meant for it. Our paleolithic
Speaker 3: social brain is not meant for an inbox that's always
Speaker 3: failing and we can't keep up with because it doesn't
Speaker 3: know the difference between that email is not that important
Speaker 3: and what it was evolved for, which is, if someone
Speaker 3: around the tribal fire is trying to get your attention,
Speaker 3: you better listen to them because there's a lot at
Speaker 3: stake if you snub them, right, I mean, social dynamics
Speaker 3: is something we're incredibly cue to, and things like email
Speaker 3: completely mess around with these finely tuned social dynamics, which
Speaker 3: is why we just feel compulsively like we have to
Speaker 3: check it. We feel if a text message comes in
Speaker 3: and we're driving, we still check it, even though I
Speaker 3: put in our kids' lives in danger, because to us,
Speaker 3: it's the same as like if someone's tapping your shoulder
Speaker 3: at the tribal fire and you ignore them, like you
Speaker 3: might get a spear in the back, right like, we
Speaker 3: take that really, really seriously. And so the more time
Speaker 3: you spend trying to keep up with never ending communication,
Speaker 3: the more unhappy you get. The more time you spend
Speaker 3: focusing deeply to try to produce valuable things, the happier
Speaker 3: we get. So if you can increase the ladder and
Speaker 3: decrease the former, people are going to have a much
Speaker 3: more healthy relationship with their work. Your employees are going
Speaker 3: to be much more protected against burnout, and the positions
Speaker 3: are going to be much more sustainable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, And look in the kind of just
Speaker 1: about out of time, but just in maybe one or
Speaker 1: two minutes, I would just love to I guess you know,
Speaker 1: that's a nice segue into the topic of your next book,
Speaker 1: which I believe is about email free organizations.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the new book, which should say very much in
Speaker 3: the early stages, but as of now it's vely titled
Speaker 3: A World Without Email. It gets into a lot of
Speaker 3: these ideas. I mean, I basically argue that we don't
Speaker 3: have a good theory right now about how to get
Speaker 3: a lot of value sustainably out of human brains, and
Speaker 3: the way we're working is a really terrible way to work.
Speaker 3: And we've told ourselves this story that there's no other
Speaker 3: way to work in a modern world than to just
Speaker 3: send messages all the time. I can make the case
Speaker 3: so that's actually quite arbitrary, and that there's this growing
Speaker 3: movement of organizations who are much more careful about thinking.
Speaker 3: We have these brains, we want these brains to produce value.
Speaker 3: We don't want these brains to burn out. We're getting
Speaker 3: incredibly innovative in answering the question of what's the right
Speaker 3: way to work in a digital world.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to read that.
Speaker 1: And my final final question, if people want to consume
Speaker 1: more of your work, you're thinking, you're writing cal what's
Speaker 1: the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3: So, from a book perspective, if you're interested in sort
Speaker 3: of technology and work and the problems, Deep Work is
Speaker 3: a good book. If you're interested in the impact of
Speaker 3: technology in your personal life, you're looking at your phone
Speaker 3: too much, you feel uneasy, feel like a loss of autonomy.
Speaker 3: Digital minimalism is good for you. Online. I don't use
Speaker 3: social media. I'm not easy to reach, but I do
Speaker 3: have a blog at calneport dot com that I've been
Speaker 3: blogging at for over a decade. And so that's a
Speaker 3: pretty quick way to sort of dive in and see
Speaker 3: in more detail some of my ideas.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Cal, it has been an absolute joy talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Oh it's my pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2: That is it for today's show.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this chat with Cal and know someone
Speaker 1: else that you think would also find it interesting or useful,
Speaker 1: why not share the episode with them. All you need
Speaker 1: to do is click on the little icon that's like
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Speaker 1: That is what the share icon looks like mostly, and
Speaker 1: to share it with them, and hopefully whoever you share it,
Speaker 1: we will enjoy it too. So that is good for
Speaker 1: today's show, and I will see you next time.