Speaker 1: Trying to call Jordan Calhoun, the editor in chief of
Speaker 1: Life Hacker, isn't easy. Trust me, I've tried. Jordan simply
Speaker 1: doesn't take chances when it comes to his attention and
Speaker 1: his productivity. He wants his devices to be productivity tools,
Speaker 1: not a means for other people to distract him. So
Speaker 1: what is Jordan's step by step process for ensuring his
Speaker 1: phone and computer only command his attention when he wants
Speaker 1: them to. My name is doctor Amantha Immer. I'm an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. On today is
Speaker 1: my favorite Tip episode, we go back to an interview
Speaker 1: from the past, and I've pick out my favorite tip
Speaker 1: from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Jordan
Speaker 1: about what he has done to stop technology and various
Speaker 1: hijacking his attention.
Speaker 2: I go the nuclear route, which your mileage may vary.
Speaker 2: You may not want to do this depending on the
Speaker 2: type of person you are and how important notifications are
Speaker 2: to you. But when it comes to things that infringe
Speaker 2: on my attention, I turn them off. Whenever I download
Speaker 2: a new app, whenever I begin a new service, whenever
Speaker 2: I sign up for a new thing that has access
Speaker 2: to my inbox, I turn off all notifications, and then
Speaker 2: I actively turn on only the ones that I feel
Speaker 2: that I need because these apps and services everything wants
Speaker 2: your attention on their terms. That app that you download,
Speaker 2: that service that you use, is going to want to
Speaker 2: tell you, hey, this is this is when we want
Speaker 2: your attention. This is when we think you should pay
Speaker 2: attention to us. I feel that once I have a
Speaker 2: certain level of control over my life and my schedule
Speaker 2: and my calendar, then it should be up to me
Speaker 2: to decide when I want notifications for things, so I
Speaker 2: automatically turn them off by default, even for my phone, Amantha,
Speaker 2: like my phone automatically blocks numbers that I don't recognize.
Speaker 2: I so hate unwanted interruptions that I try to block
Speaker 2: them at every chance that I get, And I trust
Speaker 2: myself to be able to organize my calendar and organize
Speaker 2: my schedule in a way that works for me, and
Speaker 2: only choose those notifications that I really really need.
Speaker 1: You mentioned blocking phone numbers, and I know when my
Speaker 1: producer did a pre interview with you before. What we're
Speaker 1: doing right now we had to send our phone number
Speaker 1: ahead of time so that we wouldn't be blocked. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me about what you are doing with numbers
Speaker 1: on your phone?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So again this is a nuclear option. This might
Speaker 2: not be advisable for everyone. I'll tell you sort of
Speaker 2: the good and the bad of it. The good of it, obviously,
Speaker 2: is that I do not get spam call. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you have a similar problem.
Speaker 1: Oh, so many, sign many.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so many bot calls, and they're only projected
Speaker 2: to increase, Like the volume of bot calls has increased
Speaker 2: I don't know, a thousand times in the past, like
Speaker 2: a handful of years, and it's only going to get worse.
Speaker 2: So you're just going to get so many spam calls,
Speaker 2: so many telemarketers that are just gonna, you know, make
Speaker 2: you look at your phone and check who's calling and
Speaker 2: think for a moment that it might be someone important
Speaker 2: or your mother calling you, and it's really not right.
Speaker 2: It's just going to be a robot. It's going to
Speaker 2: be a recording. So the good part is that I
Speaker 2: don't have that problem. I do not get telemarketers. I
Speaker 2: do not get spam calls. I do not get calls from,
Speaker 2: you know, people who I didn't explicitly give my number two.
Speaker 2: That's the great part. The downside of it is, you know,
Speaker 2: if my dentist wants to call me and it's a
Speaker 2: new dentist to confirm my appointment, they're not going to
Speaker 2: be able to They're gonna have to send me an email,
Speaker 2: or they're gonna have to send me a text message.
Speaker 2: I have to be really strategic about either warning people, hey,
Speaker 2: let me say your phone numbers so that I have it.
Speaker 2: I have to like be on top of that myself,
Speaker 2: or knowing that they have an alternative means of connecting
Speaker 2: with me, whether that's email or whatever else.
Speaker 1: Now I want to ask about email as well, because
Speaker 1: I imagine you're getting even more unsolicited emails from people
Speaker 1: such as myself. I was, you know, quite chuffed that
Speaker 1: I got through, Jordan. How are you managing your emails
Speaker 1: with regard to this problem.
Speaker 2: So I have my personal email and my professional email,
Speaker 2: and I treat them sort of differently. Well, in some
Speaker 2: ways I treat them the same. I am an inbox
Speaker 2: zero person across all of my inboxes, so I try
Speaker 2: to empty out my inbox and archive things because I
Speaker 2: sort of use my email as a to do list,
Speaker 2: or the only things that are in my inbox are
Speaker 2: things that are actionable, like things that actually need to
Speaker 2: be done. For my professional email, I am really really strict,
Speaker 2: and that's mostly because my professional email is public, and
Speaker 2: that means that anyone can email me, and I get
Speaker 2: a lot of emails from every PR person and every
Speaker 2: publicist under the sun advertising everything that you could possibly imagine,
Speaker 2: asking if I'm willing to cover it. So if your
Speaker 2: email address is public out there, then you might want
Speaker 2: to follow again my very admittedly strict sort of guidelines,
Speaker 2: which is that everyone whether they're you know, a PR person, whoever,
Speaker 2: is reaching out. And I will again preface this by
Speaker 2: saying this is a little bit extreme, but I basically
Speaker 2: block every email that I get after they've emailed me once,
Speaker 2: like you sort of get a one shot policy. So
Speaker 2: if I get an email from someone about something that
Speaker 2: I'm not interested in, I you know, either I can
Speaker 2: respond and tell them I'm not interested if I feel
Speaker 2: that it deserves a personal response, but if it's just
Speaker 2: a mass piece our email about something, and I block
Speaker 2: them and I move on and I'll never have to
Speaker 2: worry And the reason I do that, Amantha, is because
Speaker 2: because they'll always follow up. They'll always follow up two
Speaker 2: or three or four times. And if you know that
Speaker 2: you're not going to respond affirmatively to this person, you
Speaker 2: might not want to respond at all because they're just
Speaker 2: you know, it's basically spam. Then why are you Why
Speaker 2: would I leave myself open to the follow up? Like
Speaker 2: I either need to respond to tell them I'm not
Speaker 2: interested or block them. And that's the decision that I
Speaker 2: make with every email that comes into my inbox, like
Speaker 2: do I want to give them another chance? I'll be honest,
Speaker 2: ninety nine percent of them. Because I get so much
Speaker 2: in my inbox, like ninety nine percent of it, I
Speaker 2: just automatically block and just continue living my life.
Speaker 1: I love Jordan's ruthless approach to blocking emails, and it's
Speaker 1: something that I've adopted in my own life now. So
Speaker 1: I get a lot of pictures from people about being
Speaker 1: on this podcast, and inevitably they follow up three or
Speaker 1: four times, sometimes more. And as strange as it feels,
Speaker 1: blocking people, my goodness has freed up a lot of
Speaker 1: space in my inbox and also in my head. If
Speaker 1: you're looking for more tips, to improve the way that
Speaker 1: you work. I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains
Speaker 1: three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better,
Speaker 1: ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to
Speaker 1: interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at
Speaker 1: Howiwork dot com. That's how I work dot co. How
Speaker 1: I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from
Speaker 1: Dead Set Studios and thank you to Matt Nimba who
Speaker 1: does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See
Speaker 1: you next time.