Speaker 1: Today's episode is another my Favorite Tip episode, where I
Speaker 1: go back to interviews from the past and I dig
Speaker 1: out the thing that was my favorite tip, like the
Speaker 1: thing that I got out of the interview that really
Speaker 1: impacted or resonated with me. The extract that I have
Speaker 1: for you on today's show is from my chat with
Speaker 1: Jake Nap. This is the second time I've had Jake
Speaker 1: on the show. I loved our first interview so much
Speaker 1: that I was keen to check back in with him
Speaker 1: during COVID to see how he was going and how
Speaker 1: the way he approacious work had changed. So if you
Speaker 1: haven't come across Jake before, Jake spent the last ten
Speaker 1: years at Google and Google Ventures, where he created the
Speaker 1: design sprint, which is a method for building and testing
Speaker 1: a prototype in five days. He then went on and
Speaker 1: wrote a book about the process called Sprint, which was
Speaker 1: a New York Times bestseller, and he also wrote another
Speaker 1: book called Make Time, which I have referred to on
Speaker 1: a few episodes previously. I personally loved Make Time, which
Speaker 1: is all about strategies to help make time for doing
Speaker 1: your most important work and really getting the most out
Speaker 1: of each day. So in this extract from my second
Speaker 1: chat with Jake, we talk about email and why email
Speaker 1: is so addictive and what Jake is doing to help
Speaker 1: win the battle against email. So on that note, let's
Speaker 1: head to Jake.
Speaker 2: One of the one of the biggest struggles is email
Speaker 2: for sure. And you know they're if I, you know,
Speaker 2: if I try to like come up with the biggest
Speaker 2: struggles of the moment for me, in this moment of
Speaker 2: pandemic time, there they're like exaggerated versions of the struggles
Speaker 2: that I have all times. There are the struggles of
Speaker 2: like focus. I am not a naturally like focused person,
Speaker 2: and I have to I have to I have to
Speaker 2: have tools and methods and barriers to help me create
Speaker 2: that that focus. That's been even more true. I've been
Speaker 2: even more distracted and and you know, emotionally bouncing around
Speaker 2: during this time. That challenge is is exaggerated. The challenges
Speaker 2: of you know, kind of like like like we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, just having the sort of confidence or that
Speaker 2: sort of sense of like self worth or like this
Speaker 2: is the right thing to do. They can really put
Speaker 2: the wind in your sales when you have it. That's
Speaker 2: that's always a challenge in it more so now. But
Speaker 2: email it's a funny one, right, Like it's very you know,
Speaker 2: tactical and like simple. Those other ones are like almost philosophical,
Speaker 2: and email just feels like awesome. But email is the
Speaker 2: for for many of us, certainly for me, it's like
Speaker 2: it is the place where a lot of like distraction
Speaker 2: and nebulousness lives, and like it's the heart of this
Speaker 2: this problem where I you know, if if you don't
Speaker 2: have clarity about what you what's most important to you.
Speaker 2: If I don't have clarity about what's most important to me,
Speaker 2: and I don't have clarity of purpose about like what
Speaker 2: the thing is I should do and I'm certain I
Speaker 2: should do it, and I'm going to do it. Like
Speaker 2: if I don't have just blistering clarity about what that
Speaker 2: thing is, then I go into my email inbox and
Speaker 2: like there's a million things in there for me to do.
Speaker 2: They all come with like a little like micro version
Speaker 2: of what you describe when somebody says like thank you
Speaker 2: for the you know, the talk or whatever, and that
Speaker 2: like is so rewarding. Like every email has like a
Speaker 2: little piece of that, Like somebody asked me something and
Speaker 2: I can like do something for them in return, and
Speaker 2: like email, just it creates this like really these really
Speaker 2: like small rewards and these really small feelings of productivity
Speaker 2: that in the big picture, they come at this cost
Speaker 2: of like the big clarity about the bigger thing that
Speaker 2: I might be trying to do. Like it's it's very
Speaker 2: rare that the most important work I do happens in email.
Speaker 2: Yet every day email is the easiest on ramp to
Speaker 2: a feeling of productivity, and yet it's like it's fool's gold,
Speaker 2: Like I get in there and if I can spend
Speaker 2: all day every day in email, and the weird thing
Speaker 2: about the pandemic is I'm getting way fewer emails than
Speaker 2: usual because, like I said, my work is really like
Speaker 2: totally you know, turned upside down because of events and
Speaker 2: in person stuff is canceled or postponed, so my email
Speaker 2: volume is way way lower. And yet even still I
Speaker 2: could spend I could spend a full day every day
Speaker 2: in email, and I could, you know. It's it's actually
Speaker 2: like when I have less clarity about is this the
Speaker 2: right thing to do, or less confidence that I'm going
Speaker 2: to have thirty or sixty or one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: minutes of uninterrupted time because like my son can't get
Speaker 2: on Zoom or like whatever, you know, first class like
Speaker 2: with with that, like that feeling of instability that comes
Speaker 2: with the present moment. Even though there's less email, it's
Speaker 2: like more of a challenge to not succumb to it
Speaker 2: and just to be totally like you know, honest, even
Speaker 2: though it doesn't it doesn't make me look good as
Speaker 2: like this sort of you know, a marketer of a
Speaker 2: of a great time management tool. I've had to hire
Speaker 2: someone to help me with with the email stuff and
Speaker 2: to and to really kind of force me to stay
Speaker 2: out of it and stay out of my email and
Speaker 2: focus on the other projects that I want to do.
Speaker 1: So how do you use that person then? Like what's
Speaker 1: their job? So to speak?
Speaker 2: So I thought about this for a long time because
Speaker 2: you know, I do have a weird situation with email.
Speaker 2: John Saratski, my co author, has a good way of
Speaker 2: putting this because we both you know, we both worked
Speaker 2: in companies for a long time and then we both
Speaker 2: kind of quit our jobs sort of around the same
Speaker 2: time and went into this thing where where each of
Speaker 2: us is like working on our own. So, as John
Speaker 2: puts it, like if you if you work in a
Speaker 2: company like some number of the emails in your inbox
Speaker 2: you don't really have to do anything about them because
Speaker 2: they're not to you, Like they're too a group of people,
Speaker 2: and if you don't comment on them, somebody else will
Speaker 2: will deal with it, or somebody you know, or it's
Speaker 2: just kind of an fyi. But when you are self employed,
Speaker 2: like a lot of the emails, a much higher percentage
Speaker 2: of the emails in your inbox are like they're meant
Speaker 2: for you, and you're sort of supposed to do something
Speaker 2: with them. And and being in this situation like the
Speaker 2: with these these books, like it's great to be an author,
Speaker 2: and if people read your books, it's like it's so cool,
Speaker 2: it's what you want and stuff. But I also really
Speaker 2: want if anybody emails me it has questions or comments
Speaker 2: about things, I really want to talk to them about it,
Speaker 2: you know, like that's so cool. And yet if I
Speaker 2: talk to them all the time, I won't do anything else,
Speaker 2: and there won't be any more books, you know, and
Speaker 2: there won't be any more there won't be any remote
Speaker 2: sprint guide, there won't be that other stuff won't happen.
Speaker 2: And so to that required us like like like make time,
Speaker 2: we sort of wrote with it was we started writing
Speaker 2: while we were still working at Google Ventures. It's it's
Speaker 2: written with this context of like here's how you how
Speaker 2: we did this, like in our jobs at Google or
Speaker 2: in our you know, our jobs and these big companies,
Speaker 2: and we kind of have to like refigure out how
Speaker 2: it works when you're a one person business. And so
Speaker 2: I thought about for a long as as I started
Speaker 2: to realize that the business side of you know, Jake Napp, Inc.
Speaker 2: Basically was was going to overwhelm my ability to do
Speaker 2: these sort of focused more maybe creative projects or just
Speaker 2: any kind of focused work because of the volume of
Speaker 2: things that needed to happen, I thought, well, I need
Speaker 2: to hire like a you know, an assistant of some kind.
Speaker 2: And I started to talk to people who had crossed
Speaker 2: that threshold of when they decided I need to hire
Speaker 2: an assistant and how they decided to do that, And
Speaker 2: it took me a long time to figure out that
Speaker 2: what worked for them probably wouldn't work for me because
Speaker 2: for people who cross that threshold running a business with
Speaker 2: other people, the needs that they have are different from
Speaker 2: my needs. So it's the main thing I need help
Speaker 2: with is I need help with kind of a system
Speaker 2: for dealing with a community of people who who I
Speaker 2: want to interact with and I want to you know,
Speaker 2: talk to and stuff. But I can't let it become
Speaker 2: everything I do. And I need a system for dealing
Speaker 2: with the things that come to me that are like
Speaker 2: you know, business or you know, people want me to
Speaker 2: come do a keynote or teach a boot camp or something.
Speaker 2: And I need a system for I need coaching, honestly,
Speaker 2: for the creative work. And it's hard to admit when
Speaker 2: you have written a book is supposed to be like
Speaker 2: an advice book about you know, attention management and time.
Speaker 2: It's hard to admit that you need help with that
Speaker 2: very thing. But it's in a new arena for me
Speaker 2: and I and I when I finally admitted it, and
Speaker 2: I went to a friend who I had worked with
Speaker 2: at like Google, and she's she's brilliant. It's great coach,
Speaker 2: and she's able in just a few hours. You know,
Speaker 2: she's not sort of a full time assistant. She used
Speaker 2: to be a few hours of kind of coaching and
Speaker 2: looking at my inbox and saying, look, here's how you
Speaker 2: need to organize it, and saying, like, if people you
Speaker 2: know in your email like you need to put an
Speaker 2: out of office responder and I need here's what needs
Speaker 2: to say. And that's been huge. That's been that's been
Speaker 2: really huge, and in my sort of peculiar situation, has
Speaker 2: been exactly what I needed.
Speaker 1: And has that helped you stay out of your inbox
Speaker 1: more like almost to help resist that temptation?
Speaker 2: It does. Yeah, it's It was a really big deal
Speaker 2: to me. I got an email, so I was like
Speaker 2: emailing a friend who's a writer, and I got he
Speaker 2: had this out of office you know, auto responder that
Speaker 2: said I'm out of email until May. Like this was
Speaker 2: in maybe February or something. I got this email from
Speaker 2: him and I was like, wow, what that's so cool?
Speaker 2: And it said it said I'm off, I'm out of
Speaker 2: email till May, working on a writing project and if
Speaker 2: it's urgent, text me or send an email to and
Speaker 2: he has an assistant and he works with email the
Speaker 2: assistant And I emailed it to my friend who's coaching me,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what do you think we should do?
Speaker 2: What do you think about this? And she's like you
Speaker 2: need to do that, Like you're not going to I
Speaker 2: wanted to write it after by May actually have my
Speaker 2: book and she's like, that's what you need to do,
Speaker 2: otherwise it's not going to happen. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I could do it for you know, a week
Speaker 2: or two weeks. I could say I was offline. She's like,
Speaker 2: come on, like you need to do the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So that was really hard to take that step to
Speaker 2: write that auto responder, you know, and this is probably
Speaker 2: a tactic I should add to the new tactics. To
Speaker 2: write that auto responder was tough, but once I did it,
Speaker 2: it was very freeing to like the first few hours,
Speaker 2: you know, to know that emails were coming in and
Speaker 2: people were getting that that bounced back to them. I
Speaker 2: was like, oh god, what are people going to say?
Speaker 2: But people were like fine with it, like nobody. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a common challenge that we see again and
Speaker 2: again as you talk to people about make time, which
Speaker 2: is like we had we all have this expectation that
Speaker 2: other people are like much more keenly interested in our
Speaker 2: response time and much more judgmental of us than they
Speaker 2: actually are. And and if we the really that judgment
Speaker 2: comes from side ourselves, like that mean for me, that's
Speaker 2: one hundred percent true. The expectation is actually generated by
Speaker 2: me that I'm this kind of person who gets back
Speaker 2: to you and out of respect for you.
Speaker 1: I want to get back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, and like there's a there's god getting past
Speaker 2: that and realizing where the actual boundary was, what's the
Speaker 2: actual response time that different things need. And granted, it
Speaker 2: helps a ton to have a friend looking in on
Speaker 2: your inbox, but that's something I think. I don't know
Speaker 2: what the right arrangement is, but I have this notion
Speaker 2: that a lot of people, even without you know, an assistant,
Speaker 2: a lot of people could benefit from this notion of
Speaker 2: a friend who will look in on your inbox, or
Speaker 2: a friend who can be the designated contact person. If
Speaker 2: so that you can have an out of office thing
Speaker 2: that says, if it's urgent, contact this person and they'll
Speaker 2: know how to get in touch with me. And if that,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you can maybe you can have like
Speaker 2: an agreement that you do it for each other or something.
Speaker 2: But that's really powerful, like to give people a way
Speaker 2: to escalate if they need it, and then say, normally
Speaker 2: my rule is going to be And for me it's
Speaker 2: been like I'm not going to check, I'm going to
Speaker 2: there's a category of email I'm not going to check
Speaker 2: except for every like few weeks, like it might be
Speaker 2: two to three weeks before I look at those. And
Speaker 2: there's one category I'm going to check every day if
Speaker 2: it's like from certain people who I know have urgent emails.
Speaker 2: I have, like you know, like two VIP sort of people,
Speaker 2: and then there's going to be one kind that I
Speaker 2: check once a week and deal with like business kinds
Speaker 2: of emails, and other than that, I have to promise
Speaker 2: myself I'm not on email. And it's still hard, but
Speaker 2: that makes it doable. And that, man, I'm telling you, Amantha,
Speaker 2: that unlocks for me, like the ability to get in
Speaker 2: to do something that's really hard, and like the sci
Speaker 2: fi writing fiction, there's no I'm you know, nobody's probably
Speaker 2: ever going to read this book. I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's any good, but it's fun to do because it's
Speaker 2: so hard and it's also awful to do. It's also
Speaker 2: like miserable at the time, but I am doing it
Speaker 2: because it's so hard and it I can't I could
Speaker 2: not have a chance of doing that hard thing if
Speaker 2: I couldn't create that that boundary. And because it's so
Speaker 2: hard to maintain on this one, the confidence that the
Speaker 2: work matters. I've needed that extra boost, you know, whereas
Speaker 2: when writing like Sprint or make Time, there was more
Speaker 2: of a signal that people are people would want this,
Speaker 2: you know. The publisher said that, well, we'll publish the book.
Speaker 2: When you're writing fiction, it's different and I've needed more
Speaker 2: to get through it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I just want to I want to read
Speaker 1: out your auto respondent because I've just found it here
Speaker 1: in front of me, and it says HI, between shelter
Speaker 1: in place with the kids at home and stealing heads
Speaker 1: down time for a writing project, I'm slow as heck
Speaker 1: on email right now. If you need something of any
Speaker 1: kind of timeline, please email you're assistant or text me.
Speaker 1: So it's really simple and to the point, and I
Speaker 1: love that. I love your thoughts on email. That is
Speaker 1: it for today's show. If you want to listen to
Speaker 1: the full episode, I link to that in the show notes,
Speaker 1: so you might want to check that out. And if
Speaker 1: you are enjoying how I work, I would be so
Speaker 1: deeply grateful if you just take five seconds out of
Speaker 1: your date to leave a review in Apple podcasts. It
Speaker 1: might be a star rating or a few words, and
Speaker 1: by doing so, it helps other people find the show
Speaker 1: and it also brings a huge smile to my face.
Speaker 1: So thank you to the hundreds of people that have
Speaker 1: left reviews. It is so deeply appreciated. So that is
Speaker 1: it for today's show and I will see you next time.