Speaker 1: Hello there, it's Amantha. I'm currently on a Christmas break,
Speaker 1: so I've handpicked a bunch of my favorite episodes from
Speaker 1: the last year to share with you. Okay, on with
Speaker 1: today's best of episode. I read a lot of books,
Speaker 1: but it's rare to read one that fundamentally changes the
Speaker 1: way you work. For me, that book was Deep Work
Speaker 1: by Cal Newport. I read it back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and in case you're not familiar with Cal, he's a
Speaker 1: computer science professor at Georgetown University and also a best
Speaker 1: selling author. Deep Work completely changed the way I approached
Speaker 1: my work and made me infinitely more productive and happier
Speaker 1: at work too, So you could probably imagine that when
Speaker 1: I heard that Cal has just released his latest book,
Speaker 1: A World Without Email, to say I was excited to
Speaker 1: read it was an understatement. I immediately reached out to
Speaker 1: get Cal back on the show, and I'm so excited
Speaker 1: to share this chat. If you're keen to dramatically reduce
Speaker 1: the amount of time you spend in your inbox, and
Speaker 1: to not just try to do this with standard productivity
Speaker 1: hacks like batch checking, then I think you're gonna love
Speaker 1: this chat with Cal. My name is Doctor Ramanatha Inbo.
Speaker 1: I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science
Speaker 1: consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work, a show
Speaker 1: about how to help you do your best work. So,
Speaker 1: given it's been about two years since I first had
Speaker 1: Cal on the show, I was very keen to hear
Speaker 1: about new work rituals or habits or processes that he'd
Speaker 1: been implementing since we last spoke.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the ideas that has clarified
Speaker 2: in my mind, It's one of the big ideas in
Speaker 2: the new book, is that when you're thinking about your
Speaker 2: work and knowledge work, you should really think about yourself
Speaker 2: as implementing a bunch of different separate processes the things
Speaker 2: you do regularly in knowledge work, and you want to
Speaker 2: think about how you implement these. And I've always thought
Speaker 2: about process oriented workflows. But the big insight I've had
Speaker 2: working on the new book is one of the main
Speaker 2: things you want to optimize when you're thinking about these
Speaker 2: different work processes is reducing unscheduled messaging. So how much
Speaker 2: unscheduled messages do I have to receive to accomplish this
Speaker 2: process or that process? And so a lot of my
Speaker 2: new rituals. A lot of my new processes are seeing
Speaker 2: to this light of how do I reduce the number
Speaker 2: of unscheduled messages required to get this thing done or
Speaker 2: to make progress on this regularly occurring obligation. And so
Speaker 2: you'll see things in my life now, like when it
Speaker 2: comes to doing publicity tour with like my US based
Speaker 2: publicist for my book tour, we created a system using
Speaker 2: a shared document where opportunities going to the document, questions
Speaker 2: of me are put in the document. I checked the
Speaker 2: document twice a week. I would come in and say, okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do this one. Here's when I can do it.
Speaker 2: I signed up for this one, and we found a
Speaker 2: way for my US public see for example, just give
Speaker 2: one example among many of booking interviews without emailing back
Speaker 2: and forth. And so I think a lot of my
Speaker 2: new rituals in the last two years are really built
Speaker 2: around this idea of how do I reduce unscheduled messaging
Speaker 2: to get things done?
Speaker 1: What did your US publicists think about that notion? Because
Speaker 1: that must be very novel for them.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the fact that we were publicizing a
Speaker 2: book about this certainly helps, right, So I could say, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what it says in the book, But in general,
Speaker 2: what I find with more structured collaboration processes is that
Speaker 2: we often think what people really want is accessibility, but
Speaker 2: it's not really true. What people want is clarity. And
Speaker 2: if there's not clarity about how a certain collaboration happens,
Speaker 2: then the default is people want just accessibility, because if
Speaker 2: they don't know or trust that you're going to answer
Speaker 2: something or keep track of something, or do something they
Speaker 2: ask you to do, then what they'll want in the
Speaker 2: in its stead is just okay, can you just answer
Speaker 2: my message right away because I have to keep track
Speaker 2: of this till I hear back from you. Once there's
Speaker 2: something more structured in its place, people are just as happy.
Speaker 2: The main thing that you really want to avoid, or
Speaker 2: I found that people want to avoid, is just lack
Speaker 2: of clarity. If there's no clarity, then I just want
Speaker 2: you to answer right away, because otherwise I don't trust
Speaker 2: something it's going to get done. If there is clarity, Oh,
Speaker 2: it goes into this document. You checked the document twice
Speaker 2: a week. Great, I get how that works. Good people
Speaker 2: tend to be pretty happy with it, and I think
Speaker 2: that's a there was a key understanding for me is
Speaker 2: that you're not taking something away from people by placing
Speaker 2: more structure about your interaction. You might actually be making
Speaker 2: that interaction much more positive for that person.
Speaker 1: Now, in your new book, A World Without Email, which
Speaker 1: I was just saying before we hit record, I loved,
Speaker 1: I devoured it. I had such high expectations for it,
Speaker 1: and it still exceeded those expectations. So thank you for
Speaker 1: running such a brilliant book. But one of the things
Speaker 1: I appreciated is that you talk a lot about your
Speaker 1: own processes in the book, and I want to dig
Speaker 1: into some of those. So I want to start with
Speaker 1: how you designed your workflow in Trello for your role
Speaker 1: as the director of graduate Studies. And I was wondering
Speaker 1: if if you could explain what that looks like exactly
Speaker 1: and how you went about that design process well.
Speaker 2: And this was certainly a role that had the threat
Speaker 2: of generating lots and lots of unscheduled messaging. It's an
Speaker 2: administrative role where I was both responsive to students, right,
Speaker 2: so the grad students in our department would come to me,
Speaker 2: did questions about anything. We're talking about complex logistical issues,
Speaker 2: visa issues, grade issues, graduation requirement issues, steps required to
Speaker 2: make sure that they defend their dissertation properly the right
Speaker 2: things or filing. All of these things fell under my purview.
Speaker 2: And then there was a lot of university facing back
Speaker 2: and forth, what is our budget for the grad program
Speaker 2: this year? What is happening with this particular student's tuition credits?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So it was a very complex logistical job that we
Speaker 2: sort of rotate through. So I came at it with
Speaker 2: the mindset it was a great case study. I came
Speaker 2: at it with the mindset that I lay out in
Speaker 2: that book, A World Without Email, which was break us
Speaker 2: down in the processes, what are the component things that
Speaker 2: make up this job that happened again and again and
Speaker 2: for each actually answer the question how do I want
Speaker 2: to implement it? And that's where I came up with
Speaker 2: using some of these different tools. So Trello certainly played
Speaker 2: a big role. Everything that I was responsible for doing,
Speaker 2: everything I was waiting to hear back from someone on
Speaker 2: everything I needed to think about more and figure out
Speaker 2: what it meant. Went onto a Trello board. I had
Speaker 2: columns for different categories of these tasks. Some was not
Speaker 2: urgent but need to think about it. Some was Okay,
Speaker 2: it needs to be done really soon. A really key
Speaker 2: column on here was waiting to hear back from someone.
Speaker 2: So if I had sent a note to someone, can
Speaker 2: you explain this to me? I need an answer to
Speaker 2: a question, I would be able to keep track of that. Okay, oh,
Speaker 2: here it is. I see that. That's something I'm waiting
Speaker 2: to hear back from people. What I'm working on this week.
Speaker 2: That trailer board became a repository of most of the
Speaker 2: obligations they went onto that board, and then a few
Speaker 2: times a week I would use that board, go at it,
Speaker 2: look at it, organize it, and figure out, Okay, what
Speaker 2: do I need to be working on in the next
Speaker 2: few days. And so a lot of this was trying
Speaker 2: to get stuff immediately out of my inbox and into
Speaker 2: a system where I could see things all together. I
Speaker 2: could batch things, I could dispatch things in one big conversation,
Speaker 2: I could take things off my plate. It really gave
Speaker 2: me just a visual lay of the land of everything
Speaker 2: that was on my plate relevant to that role.
Speaker 1: And so you're still in your inbox because I was curious,
Speaker 1: what role does email then play for you in your life?
Speaker 1: Because of these processes and workflows, that you've adopted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thing that I worry about is unscheduled messages,
Speaker 2: not messages in general. I mean communication has to happen
Speaker 2: to do collaborative work. The thing that I villainize in
Speaker 2: my book is this notion of what I call the
Speaker 2: hyperactive high mind, where you work most things out. It's
Speaker 2: a common workflow where you work most things out with
Speaker 2: these unscheduled back and forth digital conversations. That's a real
Speaker 2: productivity killer. It's what I'm trying to avoid because once
Speaker 2: you're using these ongoing, unstructured ad hoc back and forth
Speaker 2: digital conversations as the main way that you get things done,
Speaker 2: if you're doing more than a couple things, it means
Speaker 2: you have to constantly be tending these communications and inboxes
Speaker 2: because you're trying to keep up with lots of these
Speaker 2: ongoing asynchronous conversations. So I don't mind email as a tool.
Speaker 2: What I do mind is the hyperactive hive mind. So
Speaker 2: everything I'm trying to do is to get away from
Speaker 2: having a sort of back and forth unscheduled conversation happening digitally.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Finding the broadcast information emails great. If someone wants to
Speaker 2: put something on my plate. I'm happy for it to
Speaker 2: come via email. If I need to set something up
Speaker 2: with someone, I'm happy to send that via email. But
Speaker 2: the thing to really avoid is just what do you
Speaker 2: think about this question? Mark?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: When should we meet and let's go back and forth?
Speaker 2: What do do you know anything about what's going on
Speaker 2: over here with Bob? Can we get some sort of
Speaker 2: solutions that's sort of back and forth, asynchronous back and
Speaker 2: forth conversation. That is the real killer of productivity. So
Speaker 2: that's what I was always trying to minimize.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh gosh, and I know I can relate to that.
Speaker 1: And it was so funny. As I was in the
Speaker 1: process of reading your book, I kind of read it
Speaker 1: over about a two or three day period. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about my inbox and there's a particular new product
Speaker 1: that I'm working on with a colleague, and I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, I think I've got about six or seven
Speaker 1: emails about different parts of that product that we're trying
Speaker 1: to develop sitting in my inbox, and it was doing
Speaker 1: my head in and I was procrastinating on responding. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, I need to organize exactly what does she
Speaker 1: need me to do and how long will it all take?
Speaker 1: And the book really resonated with me because I think
Speaker 1: that there are just so many instances where that happens.
Speaker 1: So given that, like in a typical day, how often
Speaker 1: would you be in your inbox? Given email does play
Speaker 1: a role, but it's a much smaller role than people
Speaker 1: think that it should play in their lives.
Speaker 2: Well, first I'll just note, you know, speaking to your situation,
Speaker 2: that would be a perfect example where the right thing
Speaker 2: to do here, or a much more effective thing to
Speaker 2: do there would be you have some sort of shared
Speaker 2: system where all of the information, question task and ideas
Speaker 2: around that product is all stored and everyone can see it,
Speaker 2: and then they highly structured as twice a week, twenty
Speaker 2: minute conversation. That's on the books. It's real time. What
Speaker 2: are you working on, What happened to the thing you
Speaker 2: were doing? What do you need for me to get
Speaker 2: the next thing done? We're all on the same page. Good,
Speaker 2: We'll talk in two days, no emails, forty minutes of
Speaker 2: talking in a week, and you could be super productive.
Speaker 2: But going back to my life, well, first of all,
Speaker 2: I don't have a inbox singular. I think I have
Speaker 2: something like six maybe seven different inboxes I'm not a
Speaker 2: big believer in just having a single catch all email
Speaker 2: addresses associated with your name. We have different roles, we
Speaker 2: have different types of work we work on. Not all
Speaker 2: of this should be, let's say, combined together, right in
Speaker 2: one inbox. I have many different types of inboxes for
Speaker 2: many different roles within my life as a writer and
Speaker 2: a computer scientist. How and when I check them depends
Speaker 2: on the day, depends on the season, right. So I'll
Speaker 2: go some days where I'm just locked in working on
Speaker 2: something hard, no email gets checked. I have other days where, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm spending a lot of time in some of these
Speaker 2: inboxes catching up on various announcements or questions that have
Speaker 2: been sent in Those days will be pretty heavy email.
Speaker 2: It just depends on what's going on that day. But
Speaker 2: the key thing is I time block plan. I give
Speaker 2: every minute of my day a job. I don't go
Speaker 2: through my day reactively. So when it is I'm going
Speaker 2: to check various email inboxes is figured out in advance.
Speaker 2: It's never a default activity. It's never something I fall
Speaker 2: back on to you say, Okay, what should I do next?
Speaker 2: I prefer to make those decisions much more intentionally.
Speaker 1: Do you time block, like literally every chunk of time
Speaker 1: of your working day, let's say between nine to five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so if you use something like my
Speaker 2: time block Planner product, it's literally a grid and there's
Speaker 2: different columns in the grid. You start in the first column,
Speaker 2: you mark off the hours, so all the hours of
Speaker 2: your workday are there and have boxes for them, right,
Speaker 2: and you draw boxes. You're blocking off every I'm in
Speaker 2: a meeting here for these thirty minutes, I'm working on this.
Speaker 2: For the next two hours, I'm working on this. You
Speaker 2: really are planning. There is no gaps. Every minute of
Speaker 2: your day gets a plan, and if you fall off
Speaker 2: your plan, which happens, you move over to the next column,
Speaker 2: fix the plan for the time that remains. And then
Speaker 2: if you fall off that plan, you move over to
Speaker 2: the next column and you can fix your plan for
Speaker 2: the time that remains. But at any moment, the idea
Speaker 2: is that what you're doing with the time that remains
Speaker 2: in the day is something that you've given some thought to.
Speaker 2: You're never in a time block planning approach. You're never reactive.
Speaker 2: You never let the incoming determine what you're going to
Speaker 2: work on that day, because that will one hundred percent
Speaker 2: hijack all your time away from the things that really matter.
Speaker 1: And I'm imagining that you would time blocking your lunch
Speaker 1: or breaks as well.
Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, here's why I'm going to take lunch. Here,
Speaker 2: We're gonna take a break. One of the reasons why
Speaker 2: people who time block get a bit of a productivity
Speaker 2: boost is that they time block their breaks. It's a
Speaker 2: subtle psychological thing. But if you don't plan when your
Speaker 2: breaks are going to come, then any moment is potentially
Speaker 2: a time you could take a break. So what happens
Speaker 2: is you are all throughout the day having to have
Speaker 2: this argument with your mind, should we take a break now,
Speaker 2: should we jump on the email now? Should we look
Speaker 2: on social media now? And if there's no pre plan
Speaker 2: about when you're going to take those breaks, you're constantly
Speaker 2: having this argument. You're going to lose that argument more
Speaker 2: often than you win it, and you end up fragmenting
Speaker 2: your attention way more so. Even just knowing here's my
Speaker 2: checking email, here's why I'm just going to zone out
Speaker 2: for thirty minutes and look on social media. Knowing when
Speaker 2: that is has the advantage of in the other time,
Speaker 2: you don't even have to have the debate.
Speaker 1: Now you describe the personal caanban in your book, can
Speaker 1: you talk about how you use it in your own life.
Speaker 2: So I have one of these taskboards for each of
Speaker 2: the different roles in my life. So when I was
Speaker 2: a director of graduate studies, that was one board. I
Speaker 2: have one board for writing. I have another board for
Speaker 2: my computer science research, and I have another board for
Speaker 2: I call it like professor. It's class related things and
Speaker 2: university administration related things, right, so I sort of separate
Speaker 2: those from research. So for each of those roles, I
Speaker 2: have a board where I keep track of all the
Speaker 2: things that I need to be doing and their status.
Speaker 2: And youre look, well, I can load it up. I
Speaker 2: have it right here, so let me load it up
Speaker 2: on my computer. Depending on the board, I have different columns,
Speaker 2: but I'm looking right now. For example, on my writer board,
Speaker 2: I have a column called two process. So sometimes you're like, Okay,
Speaker 2: here's something I need to work on, but I can't
Speaker 2: even right now figure out what that means. Right, Like
Speaker 2: I need to figure out a book launch campaign, Like
Speaker 2: we need to get started on the book launch campaign,
Speaker 2: and I don't even know what that means other than
Speaker 2: we need to do this soon. So the two process
Speaker 2: means here's things that need to be thought through and
Speaker 2: figured out like what activities they actually relate to. Then
Speaker 2: I have two different I call them back burner columns,
Speaker 2: So these are things that they're not urgent, but the
Speaker 2: things I want to do at some point probably, And
Speaker 2: I have a couple of these different columns are just
Speaker 2: kind of categorizing by whether it's related to book writing
Speaker 2: or whether it's related to sort of more my book
Speaker 2: business activities. I have a waiting to hear back column,
Speaker 2: So to me, it's a huge mental relief to know
Speaker 2: that if I am waiting to hear back from someone
Speaker 2: about something, that it's written down somewhere, I don't have
Speaker 2: to keep track of that in my head. Then I
Speaker 2: have a column for this week, so I'll move cards
Speaker 2: over to this week when I do my weekly plan. Okay,
Speaker 2: these are the things that I want to actually get
Speaker 2: done this week. I look at these boards detail at
Speaker 2: the beginning of each week, I move things over to
Speaker 2: the column for what I want to execute this week,
Speaker 2: and then each day, as I make my plan, I
Speaker 2: look at these boards, but really focus in on the
Speaker 2: this week column and say, okay, which of these things
Speaker 2: am I going to try to fit in today? And
Speaker 2: so I have a board like this for all my
Speaker 2: different roles.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about a column in your
Speaker 1: board that is called to discuss. Can you talk a
Speaker 1: bit more about the two discuss columns? I found that
Speaker 1: quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Oh, that was critical for my director of Graduate Study
Speaker 2: set up because there was a couple people in that
Speaker 2: role that I had to talk two weekly. So there's
Speaker 2: my department chair and there's lots of issues that the
Speaker 2: department chair is the right person to talk to in
Speaker 2: that role. And then also there's a program administrator, the
Speaker 2: graduate program administrator with whom I worked, and so we
Speaker 2: would meet a couple times a week usually, and so
Speaker 2: it was sort of a two man job. And what
Speaker 2: I had with this to Discuss column is I realized
Speaker 2: I could save a ton of communication if every time
Speaker 2: I had something I need to ask my department chair
Speaker 2: or ask my program administrator instead of just shooting off
Speaker 2: an email in that moment, which in the moment would
Speaker 2: give me a little bit of relief. But every one
Speaker 2: of those is a new unscheduled message that's out there
Speaker 2: and a new unscheduled response that's going to come back,
Speaker 2: and perhaps even a long back and forth chain of
Speaker 2: unscheduled messages, which I learned doing the research for my
Speaker 2: book is Productivity Poison. I would put it under the
Speaker 2: two discussed column, and I actually had one for each
Speaker 2: of those two different people. Then whenever I had my
Speaker 2: next meeting with them, I'd be like, Okay, hold on,
Speaker 2: I got a lot of things to go through here,
Speaker 2: and the bam bam bam, bam bam, go through all
Speaker 2: the things in that list, and we just resolve them
Speaker 2: so quick because there's a real time back and forth.
Speaker 2: Bam bam, bam, bam bam. Probably saved many dozens of
Speaker 2: unscheduled emails per week by just waiting until I got
Speaker 2: to those next meetings. So that was a great That
Speaker 2: was a great productivity saver for that particular role.
Speaker 1: Would you ever come across things that you're like, no,
Speaker 1: that this is an urgent thing to discuss, or do
Speaker 1: you think that people may be listening going well, when
Speaker 1: I fire off an email to someone, I need a
Speaker 1: response now, do you think that maybe just overestimating what
Speaker 1: is urgent and what is not actually that urgent.
Speaker 2: I mean, often when people think they need a response now.
Speaker 2: It's because they don't want to keep track of it.
Speaker 2: They say, Okay, I want a response now because I
Speaker 2: don't know if you're going to answer or not, and
Speaker 2: I can't. I'm not organized enough to keep track of
Speaker 2: Like have I heard back from cal about this? So
Speaker 2: I just I'm going to send you this email and
Speaker 2: just get a response right away so I can take
Speaker 2: this off the things I need to worry about. That's
Speaker 2: usually why people need immediate responses. It's a function of disorganization,
Speaker 2: not an actual function of urgency. Structure solves this problem.
Speaker 2: Base Camp, for example, Jason Freed's company, their subject matter
Speaker 2: experts have office hours. If you have a question for me,
Speaker 2: wait till my office hours, come to my office hours,
Speaker 2: ask me in my office hours. They worried that people
Speaker 2: want it. Put up with the delay. I mean some
Speaker 2: of these people only did office hours once a week,
Speaker 2: so you could have up to seven days you had
Speaker 2: to wait before you could ask someone a question. There
Speaker 2: are very few complaints because it turned out urgency was
Speaker 2: It's not really a big issue here. It's just clarity.
Speaker 2: So if they know, oh, this is how I ask
Speaker 2: questions on Monday mornings, I go there and ask you
Speaker 2: this question. Okay, so I'll just have to wait till
Speaker 2: Monday and then I'll ask you.
Speaker 1: Let me.
Speaker 2: People are fine. So again I come back to this
Speaker 2: a lot clarity trump successibility. We need an urgent response,
Speaker 2: typically not because this actually needs a response right now,
Speaker 2: but because I don't want to keep track of it.
Speaker 1: I do love that idea of applying the academic idea
Speaker 1: of office hours to a company, and I loved what
Speaker 1: base Camp for doing. Now I want to talk about outsourcing,
Speaker 1: because you do write a bit about that in the
Speaker 1: book What have you outsourced in your own work life?
Speaker 2: I mean outsourcing. It's difficult, right, There's two different responses
Speaker 2: to a common problem. The common problem here is that
Speaker 2: the average knowledge worker does too much. And not only
Speaker 2: they do too much, but we've created this productivity paradox
Speaker 2: where modern technology made a lot of logistical or administrative
Speaker 2: tasks just easy enough that anyone could do them, and
Speaker 2: so we just put them on the plate, not of
Speaker 2: support staff, but just of the people who are also
Speaker 2: doing the frontline work. Right because when you have email,
Speaker 2: now you don't need someone to type thing. Do you
Speaker 2: have a work process or you don't need a typeis
Speaker 2: you you know, we we've moved things onto the plate
Speaker 2: of the frontline worker. So now the frontline worker has
Speaker 2: way too much work and way too administrative work probably
Speaker 2: on their plate to actually get a good return from
Speaker 2: the brain power. So this is a real issue. It's
Speaker 2: it's the it's called the diminishment of intellectual specializations, a
Speaker 2: technical term net net. It probably makes us less profitable. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you save money by not having support staff, but you
Speaker 2: lose money because you have to hire more expensive frontline
Speaker 2: workers to get the same amount of work done. You
Speaker 2: end up usually worse off. So how can we deal
Speaker 2: with this problem? If let's say you're a solopreneur or a freelancer,
Speaker 2: so you don't you know, you don't have support staff
Speaker 2: and a company that you can you can put work
Speaker 2: off to. Well, there's there's two responses here. One is
Speaker 2: to outsource things, right, this has to be done, but
Speaker 2: let me it is paying someone else to do this
Speaker 2: is going to be net net better because I can
Speaker 2: produce more valuable things. But the other option is to
Speaker 2: just minimize the amount of things on your plate in
Speaker 2: the first place. And so, I mean I heard someone
Speaker 2: say once I kind of like this idea. Once you
Speaker 2: get to the level where you think you need a
Speaker 2: personal assistant, your right response should be I need to
Speaker 2: do less, not I need to hire a personal assistant.
Speaker 2: So in my life I've I've felt a tension between
Speaker 2: those two things. I've gone through periods where I've had
Speaker 2: assistant types handling more, and I've gone through periods where
Speaker 2: I've just tried to minimize take things off my plate,
Speaker 2: and usually taking things off my plate just not doing them,
Speaker 2: bypassing those opportunities, not doing this particular type of work
Speaker 2: that often work better now. The one exception is that
Speaker 2: there's certain things, especially in my business life as opposed
Speaker 2: to my CS life, that are technical and need to
Speaker 2: be done. And for technical things, I do have people
Speaker 2: you know that are better at me. There's I have
Speaker 2: a web person on retainer so that the three dozen
Speaker 2: small issues involving my various websites and technology that comes
Speaker 2: up each week, I can just send those immediately to
Speaker 2: that person that's really worth the money. I have some
Speaker 2: similar people who helped me with my podcast that's really
Speaker 2: worth you know, that's really worth the money. So I
Speaker 2: really evolve on this up and down, depending on how
Speaker 2: busy I am. But that's the key tension I feel.
Speaker 2: Should I do less or do I need help?
Speaker 1: What's an example of something that you did take off
Speaker 1: your place?
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, okay, these are yeah, good question. So
Speaker 2: like with my podcast, for example, I simplified the production
Speaker 2: to the point where there's I didn't need, for example,
Speaker 2: a producer or a production company that I had to
Speaker 2: work with the sort of get the files edited and
Speaker 2: put together. I said, I'd rather just create a simpler
Speaker 2: format for my podcast where I could just record it
Speaker 2: and edit on the fly and it's ready to go.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So now I do have someone that does the ads
Speaker 2: for the podcast, though, because that's really annoying. You have
Speaker 2: to actually deal with advertisers. You actually have to talk
Speaker 2: to people, You actually have to sign contracts and so
Speaker 2: there I'll happily hire someone. But I didn't have a producer.
Speaker 2: I took that out even though that's the standard thing
Speaker 2: to do, and it wasn't a money issue, it was
Speaker 2: a complexity issue. Now you have another person you're dealing with,
Speaker 2: you have to get things to them in advance, You
Speaker 2: have to explain things. There's more overhead working back and forth,
Speaker 2: and so as an examp where I simplified something so
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have to worry about that. There's many different
Speaker 2: types of opportunities to come my way that I just
Speaker 2: blanket don't do. I don't consult, I don't do advice calls.
Speaker 2: I do very limited speaking because again there's a lot
Speaker 2: of overhead involved with that. Now I could hire people
Speaker 2: to help me with that overhead, but I'd rather just
Speaker 2: not have the overhead in the first place. I had
Speaker 2: someone who was helping me emails that had their own
Speaker 2: email address, an assistant that could communicate on my behalf.
Speaker 2: But I found it simpler to actually just close up
Speaker 2: the incoming channel, so less emails came through and there's
Speaker 2: just less for me to answer. So, you know, this
Speaker 2: type of thing shows up pretty often actually in my
Speaker 2: work life, where I actually try to constrain things or
Speaker 2: simplify things as opposed to hire someone to handle something complex.
Speaker 1: Do you still use a virtual assistant like you write
Speaker 1: about in the book.
Speaker 2: No, I don't work with her anymore. Yeah, I just
Speaker 2: I Instead I simplified things. I simplify things even further
Speaker 2: so there's less emails to deal with, and then I
Speaker 2: ended up with more subject matter experts. So you know,
Speaker 2: I have my web person who can do a lot
Speaker 2: of my internet stuff, and that took a lot off
Speaker 2: my plate. And I had my publicist at the publisher
Speaker 2: really could handle a lot of the publicity related things,
Speaker 2: so I didn't really need the assistant to help with that,
Speaker 2: and projects that I was using her for I just
Speaker 2: stopped doing. So I was taking that original piece of advice, Hey,
Speaker 2: when you need an assistant, maybe you need to do less.
Speaker 2: I took that to heart and it's been okay, it's
Speaker 2: worked pretty well.
Speaker 1: I want to know what your process was for actually
Speaker 1: writing the book. What were some of the workflows that
Speaker 1: you had to actually create this book when you were
Speaker 1: doing the researching and the actual writing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question. People often ask me about
Speaker 2: my writings, and one of the reasons why it's a
Speaker 2: little bit hard for me to answer is just I've
Speaker 2: always been writing books. I mean my entire adult life.
Speaker 2: I signed my first book deal right after I turn
Speaker 2: twenty one. There's really no period in my life where
Speaker 2: I'm not writing books at the same time as whatever
Speaker 2: else is going on. Right, So it's almost like asking
Speaker 2: a fish about water. I'm just very used to this
Speaker 2: idea that one of the things that I'm always scheduling
Speaker 2: time for week in and week out is reading, thinking, writing,
Speaker 2: you know, and if I'm not actively working on a
Speaker 2: book manuscript, I'm writing articles for magazines, I'm writing longer essays.
Speaker 2: So I just am always putting aside a non trivial
Speaker 2: amount of time to work on my book. Now, the
Speaker 2: particular systems I use, it's really not that complicated. When
Speaker 2: I read books, I mark them up physically with a pencil,
Speaker 2: so it's really easy to go back. I have a
Speaker 2: particular format I use, really easy to go back and
Speaker 2: find notes. I use online note taking systems typically, ever,
Speaker 2: note I've experimented with a few others that actually capture
Speaker 2: my various research I'm doing for a book. And then
Speaker 2: at some point when I'm ready to write, I go
Speaker 2: chapter by chapter and I pull in the sources I
Speaker 2: think irrelevant, I look through my notes, I go for
Speaker 2: a bunch of thinking thinking walks, and I just start writing.
Speaker 2: So the tech behind my workflow is relatively straightforward, But
Speaker 2: the scheduling is just something I'm so used to now
Speaker 2: I'd be very uncomfortable, you know, if I wasn't putting
Speaker 2: aside regular time. It's just always in my mind, when
Speaker 2: can I get time to write? When can I get
Speaker 2: time to think? And I'm always fighting for that.
Speaker 1: Do you tend to do your writing at similar times
Speaker 1: during the day or is it literally just when you
Speaker 1: can find time.
Speaker 2: I'm all over the place in my book deep Work,
Speaker 2: I call it the journalistic method of deep work. I'm
Speaker 2: just used to looking for good opportunities to write. Oh
Speaker 2: my wife's taking the kids to this thing. Great, that's
Speaker 2: a period I can write. I don't I don't have
Speaker 2: any meetings this morning. Let me write in the morning.
Speaker 2: Oh here's a clear afternoon. Why don't I go to
Speaker 2: the coffee shop and write. It's something I'm always looking
Speaker 2: for good writing times, and I'll schedule times too. Of course,
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the week, I'll try to set
Speaker 2: aside my writing times, but I always have an eye
Speaker 2: for that. I'm alway looking out for what would be
Speaker 2: good times. I tend to write in the morning. That
Speaker 2: tends to be my mess time. Writing is the one
Speaker 2: thing I will do on the weekend. I don't do
Speaker 2: normal work on the weekends. I'm a nine to five guy.
Speaker 2: But the one exception is book writing. I will do
Speaker 2: book writing on a weekend morning because I find it
Speaker 2: quiet and a good time to concentrate. So I do
Speaker 2: have those preferences. It's typically in the morning, but I'll
Speaker 2: do many different locations and it can be quite flexible.
Speaker 1: I remember when I last had you on the show,
Speaker 1: imagery that stuck with me was around the different rituals
Speaker 1: that you had for different types of deep work. And
Speaker 1: I remember you describing your writing with the custom made
Speaker 1: kind of library desk that you have in your house.
Speaker 1: Is that something that you still do different rituals for
Speaker 1: different types of deep work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I temporarily lost access to that library table
Speaker 2: that I had custom built because of the COVID pandemic.
Speaker 2: We converted my study into homeschool into a classroom for
Speaker 2: the kids because our kids' school is closed for basically
Speaker 2: a year. So I then leased, which i'm talking to
Speaker 2: you from now. I lease some office space in town,
Speaker 2: and I had a moving company. We took all my
Speaker 2: books that because I used my books and my library,
Speaker 2: I mean I use them all the time. I use
Speaker 2: it like a real library. I had all my books shipped.
Speaker 2: I mean it's three blocks from my house, but we
Speaker 2: had to have a moving van come and I brought
Speaker 2: all my books to this this new office space I
Speaker 2: leased and I set we set up a library here
Speaker 2: and brought in some new tables, so I have some
Speaker 2: tables that are they're not as nice as my custom
Speaker 2: built table. And brought in my rug and a reading
Speaker 2: a leather reading chair. And so I created a new
Speaker 2: headquarter because I think ritual is important and having environment
Speaker 2: is important. Ritual is important. We should respect intense cognitive
Speaker 2: work is something that we should take very seriously, be
Speaker 2: willing to dedicate money, dedicate time, dedicate overhead to supporting
Speaker 2: these type of efforts.
Speaker 1: Was it easy to, I guess, shift that ritual into
Speaker 1: a new physical location. Was there anything that you did,
Speaker 1: aside from physically get all your stuff into that new
Speaker 1: location to help get into flow more easily in those
Speaker 1: first few sessions.
Speaker 2: No, it's been hard. I think it's definitely hard because
Speaker 2: rituals really important, and so that study I was very
Speaker 2: used to working in. The Other thing I was used
Speaker 2: to doing is I did a lot of work at
Speaker 2: coffee shop. There's a coffee shop near my house, and
Speaker 2: I would go. I do a lot of my writing
Speaker 2: there and it was another ritual. I would do morning writing,
Speaker 2: and I would occasionally do like a happy hour session
Speaker 2: of writing too, where you know, maybe you'd have a
Speaker 2: beer or something and you're doing more brainstorming. And they
Speaker 2: obviously all their seating was closed for the pandemic too,
Speaker 2: So I lost my study and I lost my coffee shop.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't Yeah, it wasn't easy to try to
Speaker 2: shift shift to a new location to try to build
Speaker 2: new habits here. The one thing I could still doing
Speaker 2: was my walking ritual. So I do a lot of
Speaker 2: thinking walking in my town, and that I could still
Speaker 2: do and think, thank goodness I could. And I started
Speaker 2: doing a little bit more work outside as well, even
Speaker 2: when it's cold. I introduced that as a new ritual.
Speaker 2: I'd go for a walk and you would sometimes find me,
Speaker 2: and you know, it'd be cold outside and people be
Speaker 2: in jackets, and I'd be at the park with my
Speaker 2: lap you know, write a New Yorker piece or something
Speaker 2: like that. So I added some more rituals once I
Speaker 2: lost those old places to help jump start that creative impulse.
Speaker 1: Hey, there, it's nearly time for a little ad to break.
Speaker 1: But can I ask a favor of you. If you
Speaker 1: are enjoying how I work and you're not one of
Speaker 1: the several hundred people that has kindly left a review
Speaker 1: for the show, I would be so incredibly grateful if
Speaker 1: you could do so. It's a great way of letting
Speaker 1: other people find out about how I work, and for me,
Speaker 1: it's also really lovely hearing listener feedback. It really does
Speaker 1: bring a smile to my face every time. And up
Speaker 1: next after the break cal we'll be talking about how
Speaker 1: you can dramatically reduce the amount of unscheduled communication at
Speaker 1: your organization now in a world without email. You talk
Speaker 1: about delineating between support versus specialist roles within knowledge workers'
Speaker 1: work life, and I was wondering what does that look
Speaker 1: like for you in terms of how you're petitioning your
Speaker 1: time or days around those two roles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there's two different types of
Speaker 2: work and knowledge work. There's before I referred to it
Speaker 2: as frontline work, but you can think of as specialist work.
Speaker 2: That's the actual application of value to information, the thing
Speaker 2: that actually creates the value for the company, the ad copy,
Speaker 2: the computer code, the new business strategies, right, the things
Speaker 2: that you're selling or the things on which you're receiving funding.
Speaker 2: And then there's all the support work that goes into
Speaker 2: keeping the lights on. You know, the timesheets need to
Speaker 2: be filed, the taxes need to be submitted, the bills
Speaker 2: need to be paid. Right, so there's two different types
Speaker 2: of work. There has been, as I called it before,
Speaker 2: this diminishment of intellectual specialization, where I believe misapplied the
Speaker 2: productivity potential of new technology. So as we went through
Speaker 2: the personal computer revolution and the office network revolution and
Speaker 2: the smartphone revolution, we got all of these quote unquote
Speaker 2: productivity enhancing technology, so ways of implementing certain support activities
Speaker 2: faster and more flexibly and quicker than before. We have
Speaker 2: these computers. A word processor, for example, is much more
Speaker 2: efficient than a typewriter. Right, we misapplied this revolution. In
Speaker 2: my opinion, what we should have done is use this
Speaker 2: revolution to make it cheaper to deploy a support staff,
Speaker 2: because now support staff could do their work faster, they
Speaker 2: can do it more efficiently. Maybe you don't need as
Speaker 2: many support staff to support the same amount of specialist.
Speaker 2: What we did instead is we fired the support staff
Speaker 2: and so now the specialists can also do the support work.
Speaker 2: Net I think that made things worse. Right, It so
Speaker 2: diminishes the unbroken time required to actually produce the things
Speaker 2: to create the frontline value for the organizations that you
Speaker 2: end up having to hire a lot more of the
Speaker 2: frontline workers to get the same amount of work done,
Speaker 2: and it costs more. Like that added salary is more
Speaker 2: than what you saved by firing the support staff. So
Speaker 2: I think we need to go back towards more specialization.
Speaker 2: And this is just a general trend in economics that
Speaker 2: in general, specialization, as long as you can have efficient,
Speaker 2: efficient information flow between the specialist units, is almost always
Speaker 2: more economically productive than trying to be more general purpose.
Speaker 2: There's actually a whole field of economists called transaction theory
Speaker 2: that gets into this notion when thinking about factories and production,
Speaker 2: but it applies to really any type of work. So broadly,
Speaker 2: I think we need more intellectual specialization. People should be
Speaker 2: doing less, We should separate support work more from frontline
Speaker 2: specialist work. Each of those things should be much more
Speaker 2: focused where people can really do what they do really well.
Speaker 2: If you're a support specialist, you should be doing that
Speaker 2: really well and be really well compensated for that. And
Speaker 2: with new technologies, you can probably support a lot of people,
Speaker 2: and if you're a frontline specialist, you should be doing
Speaker 2: much less, but doing those things at a higher level
Speaker 2: of accountability and be well compensated for it. I think
Speaker 2: that is probably the most economically productive way of doing things. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: almost no organization does that right now. So the best
Speaker 2: I can do is in the business I can control,
Speaker 2: I try to minimize the amount of support work that's
Speaker 2: just necessary. So that goes back what we were talking
Speaker 2: about before about simplifying. And in my Georgetown work, I
Speaker 2: really think of myself as it's different roles. It's like
Speaker 2: I have two part time jobs. I'm a professor and
Speaker 2: I am an assistant to a professor, and I treat
Speaker 2: those as two separate jobs. I mean, in a perfect role,
Speaker 2: there would be an actual assistant. I have to play
Speaker 2: both roles, but I really want to separate them, all right.
Speaker 2: I have my part time job. I'm doing professor stuff,
Speaker 2: and when I'm doing that, that's what I'm doing unbroken concentration.
Speaker 2: Let's go, let's produce research, let's teach classes. And when
Speaker 2: I'm doing assistant work is like, okay, let's do this.
Speaker 2: Now we're doing emails and forums and trying to optimize
Speaker 2: processes and get rid of unscheduled messages, and I really
Speaker 2: treat those almost like two different part time jobs.
Speaker 1: Is there an argument for you asking the university to
Speaker 1: just provide an assistant like the what's the logic in going, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm going to play the assistant role of a
Speaker 1: professor as opposed to getting one.
Speaker 2: Well, they won't. So I wrote a whole article about
Speaker 2: this a couple of years ago for a public the
Speaker 2: Chronicle of Higher Education, which is, you know, an industry publication,
Speaker 2: And I wrote an article that was titled is email
Speaker 2: making Professor Stupid? And I really got into this argument
Speaker 2: about we place way too much administrative work on professor's
Speaker 2: plates and it's unchecked. But the issue is it's kind
Speaker 2: of an unresolvable problem. It's a very difficult problem. Universities
Speaker 2: would say they don't have the resources. I don't think
Speaker 2: that's true. I think well supported professors could produce much
Speaker 2: more and be much more effective for the university than
Speaker 2: non supported professors. I also think probably a large fraction
Speaker 2: of the work that falls on professor's plates and universities
Speaker 2: as not necessary. It's just in a university environment, it's
Speaker 2: really more of like a federation. You have all of
Speaker 2: these different units. It's kind of way more democratic than
Speaker 2: a company. Right, there's not a CEO over university with
Speaker 2: a profit motive that can come in and make big changes.
Speaker 2: It's very more democratic at universities, and every unit has
Speaker 2: their own objectives and for every unit, getting some of
Speaker 2: your time and attention makes their life easier. And so
Speaker 2: you just have a bunch of these independent units, all
Speaker 2: trying to do their job as well as possible, all
Speaker 2: of them wanting more of your time and attention. Hey,
Speaker 2: if you could just figure out this complex form, it
Speaker 2: makes our life easier. So professor, figure out this complex
Speaker 2: for me. All right, we need this information professor to
Speaker 2: do our COI filings this year, and it's a pain
Speaker 2: for us to try to put this in the right format.
Speaker 2: So we're going to give you a very complicated online
Speaker 2: intranet portal you have to figure out and aren't going
Speaker 2: to understand, because it'd make our life easier if you
Speaker 2: could do that better. Everyone is just trying to pull
Speaker 2: from everyone's time and attention with no one looking down
Speaker 2: at the whole thing saying, oh, our profits are down
Speaker 2: this quarter leave our programmers alone. Like you know, if
Speaker 2: you're in a different type of company, it's a different
Speaker 2: type of feel. So I actually think it's a real
Speaker 2: problem in universities. I think we have significantly significantly diminished
Speaker 2: the cognitive freedom and capacities of the professors, which is
Speaker 2: kind of counterproductive. But as I learned after I published
Speaker 2: that article, it's not easily fixed.
Speaker 1: Us thinking about your university, Georgetown, has anyone at Georgetown
Speaker 1: reached out to you and said, cal can you help
Speaker 1: us fix the problem here at this university.
Speaker 2: I had lunch with the dean after that article, so
Speaker 2: I think they're sympathetic. It's hard, though, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: it is a hard problem. If I had a university
Speaker 2: that I wanted to really increase the reputation of, this
Speaker 2: would be my advice. Make this thing a citadel of concentration.
Speaker 2: If you come here as a professor, you were going
Speaker 2: to think and you were going to teach, and that
Speaker 2: is it. You don't even need an email address, like,
Speaker 2: we will take care of that for you. We're going
Speaker 2: to give you an office. It's esthetically pleasing, like it's
Speaker 2: going to be Cambridge in the nineteen twenties, there's going
Speaker 2: to be a fire going in the fireplace, and you'll
Speaker 2: have brandy in the evening, and the whole thing will
Speaker 2: be set around you producing the best thoughts you can
Speaker 2: with your brain. You would put some of the best
Speaker 2: talent in the country to a school like that, right,
Speaker 2: That's what I would do. It's very hard to go
Speaker 2: back and do that retroactively once you have your huge
Speaker 2: university with fifty different units that each have your own constituencies.
Speaker 2: I mean, famously, one of the hardest things at universities
Speaker 2: is that once something comes into existence, it's very hard
Speaker 2: to get rid of it. It just becomes a permanent
Speaker 2: part of the university landscape. And I see every one
Speaker 2: of these units from an attention capital perspective as a
Speaker 2: different sink for attention capital, because every one of these
Speaker 2: units is going to need some attention capital from other
Speaker 2: people in the university to survive. And so it's like
Speaker 2: you have so much In a different metaphor, you have
Speaker 2: so only so much petroleum, you know, for your motorized army,
Speaker 2: And as you add more and more units, they each
Speaker 2: see a little bit more petroleum, Like you're eventually going
Speaker 2: to run out right, and your frontline units aren't going
Speaker 2: to have much gas left to do their movement right.
Speaker 2: There's only so much concentration, attention capital to go around,
Speaker 2: but it's very hard to go backwards. But that's my model.
Speaker 2: I think the citadel of concentration model is one that
Speaker 2: more schools should follow. I think they'd really be punching
Speaker 2: above their weight class if they did so.
Speaker 1: For organizations that exist already, should we be thinking about
Speaker 1: making workflow changes gradually to reduce what we're relying on
Speaker 1: email for or do we do it all at once?
Speaker 1: What's the ideal way to approach this.
Speaker 2: What I think organizations should do is focus first at
Speaker 2: the team level. So I think that's the appropriate scope
Speaker 2: at which to make these type of changes. If you're
Speaker 2: in a large organization and you try to do workflow
Speaker 2: engineering at the organization level, it's difficult. You're not flexible enough,
Speaker 2: one size fits all solutions aren't going to work, and
Speaker 2: you really run the risk of falling into bureaucracy territory.
Speaker 2: And bureaucracy territory can be just as bad, where you
Speaker 2: feel like there's these arbitrary roles that you had little
Speaker 2: say in and in the end are causing more harmed
Speaker 2: and goods, So you really want to avoid that. So
Speaker 2: I think the team, which a term I use loosely,
Speaker 2: but most organizations have some notion of a team that's
Speaker 2: the right level, so a group of people who consistently
Speaker 2: work together on consistent outcomes. The right thing to do
Speaker 2: right away is say, the hyperactive high mind workflow is
Speaker 2: what we're trying to get away from, where we just
Speaker 2: figure things out back and forth messages. And the other
Speaker 2: thing to do right away is like, let's list out
Speaker 2: all the different things this team does. I call them processes,
Speaker 2: you call them what you want, but here are the
Speaker 2: things we repeatedly do. Our long term goal will then
Speaker 2: be processed by process to figure out how to implement
Speaker 2: it without the high mind, without so many unscheduled messages.
Speaker 2: It may then take a long time to get through
Speaker 2: all those processes. Start with the low hanging fruit. You're
Speaker 2: going to have to go back and tweak things. That
Speaker 2: could be a long term process to get through all
Speaker 2: the different processes, and momentum will build as you get
Speaker 2: better and better at it, so that could take a while,
Speaker 2: but your goal up front should become pretty clear in terms.
Speaker 1: Of loe hanging free let's just imagine a typical professional
Speaker 1: services organization that's full of knowledge workers. Are there processes
Speaker 1: that you find it tend to be lie hanging for it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean there's a couple of things. One, meeting
Speaker 2: scheduling software has to be the standard. There cannot be
Speaker 2: meetings being scheduled with back and forth emails. Well what
Speaker 2: about Tuesday? No Tuesdays not too good? What about Wednesday?
Speaker 2: I might be free in the afternoon. Is it a
Speaker 2: huge productivity sync? We don't realize it. But here's the issue.
Speaker 2: Setting up a meeting via email just back and forth
Speaker 2: might on average generate let's say six messages, right, So
Speaker 2: that's six times someone has to pay attention shift their
Speaker 2: context to that email inbox. But the thing about meeting
Speaker 2: scheduling is that has to happen kind of quick, right,
Speaker 2: Like I don't want to spend a week to set
Speaker 2: up a meeting for you. That meeting might be in
Speaker 2: two days, Right, So I have to check the inbox
Speaker 2: quite a bit each of those messages so that I
Speaker 2: see it pretty soon after it comes. So now six
Speaker 2: messages might actually generate sixty inbox checks in just a
Speaker 2: couple of days. Each one of those inbox checks, breaking
Speaker 2: your concentration and initiating a very cognitively expensive context shift.
Speaker 2: Just one meeting, therefore, can be a scheduling one meeting
Speaker 2: could be a pretty big cognitive disaster. Now multiply that
Speaker 2: over ten or fifteen meetings you're trying to set up.
Speaker 2: That simple thing alone can significantly reduce a team's ability
Speaker 2: to get things done. So everyone should use meeting scheduling software. Great,
Speaker 2: let's do it. You know where my link is, schedule it.
Speaker 2: One email meeting gets scheduled, So I think that's low
Speaker 2: hanging fruit. Office hours are also low hanging fruit. Any
Speaker 2: sort of small questions, what about this? I don't understand this?
Speaker 2: Can we quickly figure out when we want to do that?
Speaker 2: Who's going to take on this? As much as you
Speaker 2: can divert as possible to just come to my next
Speaker 2: office hours. Just come to my next office hours. We
Speaker 2: will talk in real time then, not back and forth messaging.
Speaker 2: That is applicable to almost an industry. So do those
Speaker 2: two things, meeting scheduling software and office hours that can
Speaker 2: handle eighty percent of small questions, discussions and clarifications. Those
Speaker 2: two things alone, for almost any team, will make a
Speaker 2: huge difference with.
Speaker 1: Meeting scheduling software. What are you currently recommending that people
Speaker 1: check out?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a bunch of tools that are relatively equivalent
Speaker 2: right now. I've used a couple. I've used Acuity in
Speaker 2: the past. At the moment, I'm using Calendly. I like
Speaker 2: them both. I mean, maybe Calendly has a slightly slicker interface.
Speaker 2: I think Microsoft Suite has its own meeting scheduling link
Speaker 2: type software built into it. I mean I occasionally get
Speaker 2: links from people that are built out of the Microsoft
Speaker 2: Productivity Suite. People like x dot Ai a lot. It's
Speaker 2: another meeting scheduling tool for group meetings. Doodles pretty good.
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of a default. The other tools
Speaker 2: are getting those, but they're all pretty equivalent. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not a hard thing that you're doing here. You're
Speaker 2: just trying to avoid the back and forth to the
Speaker 2: point it's so important. Let's say you want to set
Speaker 2: up a meeting with someone and for whatever reason, because
Speaker 2: of their personality, you just know that, no matter how
Speaker 2: how much you social engineer it, if you send them
Speaker 2: a link, they're going to be upset because you're at
Speaker 2: a lower station to them to even go through that
Speaker 2: software and manually list out fifteen different times they can
Speaker 2: choose from. That may seem like, WHOA, that's really inefficient.
Speaker 2: That's going to take me ten minutes to list out
Speaker 2: all these times when I could just shoot off a
Speaker 2: message that says how about Wednesday. But spending fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: to list a bunch of times in an email that
Speaker 2: that person can then just grab one that is worth
Speaker 2: it because fifteen minutes concentrated in the one task is
Speaker 2: way less of a cost than six messages you have
Speaker 2: to check your inbox ten times for each. So even
Speaker 2: if you're just literally manually doing implementing the software by
Speaker 2: just listing out a bunch of times laying someone choose it,
Speaker 2: it's still a win, because that's how devastating these unscheduled
Speaker 2: messages are.
Speaker 1: Now. In the book, you talk about thinking about workflows
Speaker 1: and processes with customers and suppliers and potentially just looking
Speaker 1: internal first rather than trying to change things with people
Speaker 1: outside the organization. But let's just say we're starting at
Speaker 1: the team level and there are a lot of processes
Speaker 1: that involve customers or suppliers. Should we be trying to
Speaker 1: change these? Because I know in your book, you give
Speaker 1: examples of how you've avoided doing that. But then it
Speaker 1: was interesting hearing you talk about how you're working with
Speaker 1: your publicist for the book, and you know they are
Speaker 1: an external partner. I guess, so what's your view on that?
Speaker 2: So when you're doing individual work, and this might be
Speaker 2: what you're referencing, So you can always start by trying
Speaker 2: to just optimize your processes from a personal perspective, given
Speaker 2: just what I can control, how can I minimize unscheduled messages?
Speaker 2: And I advise in the book if you're doing that,
Speaker 2: which you should do because, by the way, even if
Speaker 2: you can't control anyone else in your team, just thinking
Speaker 2: that way for your own processes makes a big difference.
Speaker 2: Don't advertise it, right, So that was the argument, don't
Speaker 2: advertise what you're doing, because it's just going to make
Speaker 2: people upset, you know, apologize once they're actually upset. Don't
Speaker 2: give them a reason upset about something they didn't realize
Speaker 2: they should be upset about. When you're working as a
Speaker 2: team on these processes, then of course that's not an
Speaker 2: issue because everyone has buy in when it comes to clients.
Speaker 2: I do think you need to engineer these protocols. I
Speaker 2: do think you need to move away from unscheduled messaging,
Speaker 2: and you do need to tell them what you're doing,
Speaker 2: but maybe just be careful about how you advertise it.
Speaker 2: Never advertise these new protocols from the perspective of making
Speaker 2: your life easier. It always has to come from the
Speaker 2: perspective of making the relationship better, being more structured, being
Speaker 2: more responsive, being able to better serve the client right,
Speaker 2: And I do think that's very important to build. In specific,
Speaker 2: we should be very clear about how we interact with
Speaker 2: each of our clients, how they send questions, how we
Speaker 2: give them updates. Clients love this. It is much more
Speaker 2: important to clients that they have clarity about how they
Speaker 2: interact with you than it is that they have constant accessibility.
Speaker 2: I mean, it is the point that we talked about earlier.
Speaker 2: Ability is something that people demand only when there's nothing
Speaker 2: else to assuage their fears that something's going to be lost.
Speaker 2: So with clients, I think you do need to do
Speaker 2: that work.
Speaker 1: In the book, you talk about the thirty X rule,
Speaker 1: which I loved. Can you describe this.
Speaker 2: It's a standard idea from outsourcing, thinking that you know
Speaker 2: if you're going to do something more than thirty times.
Speaker 2: I think this is a year I have that right,
Speaker 2: then it's worth automating or outsourcing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So if it's something if you're gonna do with that
Speaker 2: much times in the overhead of figuring out how to
Speaker 2: outsource or automate, it is probably worth it. We probably
Speaker 2: don't have to be that specific, but I think the
Speaker 2: general idea there is a useful heuristic. If something's going
Speaker 2: to happen repeatedly, then it's really worse thinking through what's
Speaker 2: our process for this. You know, if something is just
Speaker 2: happening one time, then let's not spend too much time
Speaker 2: trying to figure out the optimal way to get this
Speaker 2: thing done. If it's never going to happen again, it's
Speaker 2: a sort of you know, there's some business emergency and
Speaker 2: we have to go, you know, figure out how to
Speaker 2: solve some issue that's unlikely to come up again. Then
Speaker 2: it's less important that we figure out the optimal way
Speaker 2: to do that. But if this happens every month, let's
Speaker 2: figure out our rules, all right. This information goes into
Speaker 2: a shared doc. We have the shared meeting on the calendar.
Speaker 2: That's when it's worth the overhead of trying to put
Speaker 2: in place a better process.
Speaker 1: Now, when I finished reading A World Without Email, I
Speaker 1: immediately ironically cringe as I say this. I emailed my
Speaker 1: CEO my organization, Inventium, and I said, Mish, you have
Speaker 1: to read this book and we have to apply it.
Speaker 1: And so with that in mind, where a management consultancy,
Speaker 1: we specialize in innovation and productivity, where should we start.
Speaker 1: We are a ten person team, but then we work
Speaker 1: in smaller teams on different projects. Where do we start?
Speaker 2: Cal Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I would say,
Speaker 2: don't cringe about sending the email. The semi provocative title aside,
Speaker 2: the book is really about how to get past the
Speaker 2: hyperactive high mind workflow. I'm happy for email to be around.
Speaker 2: I don't want to leave voicemails. I don't want to
Speaker 2: fax things, So I'm happy. I'm happy that email is here.
Speaker 2: What I don't want is to hyper active high mind.
Speaker 2: I don't want to work everything out with back and
Speaker 2: forth messaging. So there's nothing wrong with that's actually a
Speaker 2: good use of email. I am sending you some information.
Speaker 2: You should look at this. Here's something we should discuss
Speaker 2: next time we meet. I think you might like this
Speaker 2: that's a perfect use for email. The wrong use for
Speaker 2: email would be thoughts, question mark, you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of that message, and then you and your CEO
Speaker 2: trying to figure this out with back and forth messages.
Speaker 2: That would be that would be a worse be a
Speaker 2: worst use of email. So where should you start list
Speaker 2: out the processes? What are the things as a management
Speaker 2: consultancy that we do again and again and again. These
Speaker 2: are the core things we have to do to make
Speaker 2: money and keep the business running. Okay, Now, for each
Speaker 2: of these, we can go one by one and we
Speaker 2: don't have to do this all at once. We can
Speaker 2: start with the low hanging fruit. How do we actually
Speaker 2: want to implement these processes? If we don't have an
Speaker 2: existing answer to that question, the default answer is probably
Speaker 2: the hyperactive hive mind. It's just we just get this
Speaker 2: done by messaging each other. How do we actually want
Speaker 2: to do it? And everyone should have buy in everyone
Speaker 2: involved in this process, Like, Okay, here it is, let's
Speaker 2: write it down somewhere. Here's how we're going to try
Speaker 2: to implement this. We'll check back in two weeks. And
Speaker 2: here there's our escape hat. So if like something bad
Speaker 2: happens and the process isn't working. Here's what we do.
Speaker 2: You call me on my cell. Here's to fall back routine,
Speaker 2: and you try it, and you evolve it, and you
Speaker 2: do this process by process every time, trying to minimize
Speaker 2: unscheduled messages. That's the metric. Right In the industrial sector,
Speaker 2: the metric was how do we minimize the man hours
Speaker 2: required to produce the car. In the brain work sector,
Speaker 2: the metric for these processes is how do we minimize
Speaker 2: the number of unscheduled messages that have to be received
Speaker 2: and replied to an order to get this done. That
Speaker 2: is our equivalent of assembly line speed. And you just
Speaker 2: go process by process, write down what you're doing, try it, adjust,
Speaker 2: get something you like, move on to the next. And
Speaker 2: it's simple. And it's hard, because hey, it's hard to
Speaker 2: get these things right. And sometimes the answer is maybe
Speaker 2: we shouldn't do this process, you know, because it's really
Speaker 2: there's no way to do this without lots of interruptions.
Speaker 2: It's not that valuable to us. I'd rather lose this
Speaker 2: classic client than have to constantly be on beck and call.
Speaker 2: So it's not always easy, but the approach is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1: I read in your book. But you're not a fan
Speaker 1: of auto responders on email, and I've had one for
Speaker 1: a while. And one of the reasons why I have
Speaker 1: one now is that we gosh nearly a year ago,
Speaker 1: we implemented a four day week at Inventium, and my
Speaker 1: auto responder tells people that I'm generally not available on Fridays.
Speaker 1: But you're not a fan of auto responders, So I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you can explain why you're not and if
Speaker 1: you would recommend that maybe I'd just switched that off
Speaker 1: after this interview.
Speaker 2: I would look, if someone complains, you can explain it
Speaker 2: to them. But I think you'll have zero to one
Speaker 2: person complain in the next six months, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. I think when it's about am I away,
Speaker 2: am I here, am I whatever, it's best just to
Speaker 2: have your systems and just execute, and you know, if
Speaker 2: someone gets upset, you can explain to them what's going on.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's necessary to preemptively explain to
Speaker 2: people how you're implementing your system or when you're going
Speaker 2: to be awound or when you're going to be away. Now,
Speaker 2: I think that the fact that we use these auto
Speaker 2: responders and being away one day a week is a
Speaker 2: very mild case. One of my readers sent me a
Speaker 2: much more extreme case recently where someone had to set
Speaker 2: up an auto responder because their power went out or
Speaker 2: something for an hour and it was like, okay, I
Speaker 2: might not have my email back for an hour. When
Speaker 2: you see that, he's like, Okay, you were completely captured
Speaker 2: by the hive mind.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's like going to the car factory and they're building
Speaker 2: the cars with the lights out to try to save
Speaker 2: money on electricity, and they produce one car a day
Speaker 2: and they're missing a wheel, right, Like it's crazy, right,
Speaker 2: you know that you are working in a terrible way.
Speaker 2: You're you're you're you're optimizing in the moment convenience over
Speaker 2: actually producing things. That's valuable. Right, But even in your case,
Speaker 2: it's not crazy to have an auto responder. Stuff's not standard.
Speaker 2: But I usually just say just go for it, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, when most people are sending an email, they're
Speaker 2: just happy that it's off their plate and they're not
Speaker 2: sitting there, you know what I mean, And they're not
Speaker 2: unless it's you know, again, one of these situations where
Speaker 2: it's a client and they don't trust you and they
Speaker 2: need a response right away. But in that case, you
Speaker 2: have a bigger problem. You know you need to solve that.
Speaker 2: You need to solve that problem of we need a
Speaker 2: more structured way of dealing with things. But I bet
Speaker 2: you and you should test this. Take off that auto
Speaker 2: responder and say, I'm ready to apologize fully to anyone
Speaker 2: who says, why did you not answer my Friday email
Speaker 2: on Friday? And I bet you'll have almost no one
Speaker 2: who ever says that to you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to switch it off immediately after this interview. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to know what your next book, what you're
Speaker 1: thinking about for your next book, because I remember when
Speaker 1: we spoke last time you were thinking about and I
Speaker 1: think the title did not change your World Without Email?
Speaker 1: So what are you thinking for your next book?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure yet. The thing about A
Speaker 2: World Without Email is that I started it right after
Speaker 2: deep work, So in twenty sixteen I started working on
Speaker 2: this book. It was the natural follow up. A lot
Speaker 2: of the early interviews in the book were done in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and then I put the book on hold
Speaker 2: the Right Digital Minimalism, which I published in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: because that topic seemed to really, really timely and then
Speaker 2: I came back to finish a world without email. So
Speaker 2: when we last talked, there was no doubt what I
Speaker 2: was working on, because I had been working on that
Speaker 2: book for years by the time we talked this time around.
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure yet. So I have some ideas.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly which direction I'm going to go. Typically,
Speaker 2: the year that I publish a book, I start working
Speaker 2: on the next so that I can distract myself, because
Speaker 2: once a book is out of my hands, I don't
Speaker 2: like that because I can't control it anymore. So I
Speaker 2: like to have something else to occupy me. But this year,
Speaker 2: we had the pandemic, and I put a lot of
Speaker 2: my that same part of my brain. I put a
Speaker 2: lot of that intention into starting a podcast, and so
Speaker 2: I think that that distracted me enough that I didn't
Speaker 2: start a new book yet. So I'm open to ideas. Actually,
Speaker 2: so you let me let me know, let me know
Speaker 2: if I have a couple, but let me know if
Speaker 2: you have a great idea, because I'm still a free
Speaker 2: agent right now.
Speaker 1: I will. And look, my final question for you is
Speaker 1: how can people connect with you? Presumably not over email,
Speaker 1: but how can people connect with you? And get the
Speaker 1: hands on a copy of A World Without Email.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not super easy to get in touch with,
Speaker 2: but I'm not that hard to find out about. I
Speaker 2: guess that's something. So A World Without Email you can
Speaker 2: find any of the places that you buy books if
Speaker 2: you want to get I write this equally essay I've
Speaker 2: been doing since two thousand and seven. You can find
Speaker 2: it at calnwport dot com so you can sign up
Speaker 2: for my email newsletter and I write about these topics
Speaker 2: every week and a big audience that listens to it there.
Speaker 2: I also have a podcast called Deep Questions, and I
Speaker 2: answer it's questions from my readers, and it's about all
Speaker 2: these type of topics. So if if you like this
Speaker 2: type of information, you might enjoy that podcast as well.
Speaker 1: Excellent. I will link to all that in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Cal It's just been an absolute highlight for me. Having
Speaker 1: you back on your work has just influenced me to
Speaker 1: no end in my working life. So thank you for
Speaker 1: your time today and just for everything that you are
Speaker 1: putting out into the world.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I appreciate it, and you know, I don't
Speaker 2: always get a chance to really geek out about the
Speaker 2: specifics of my systems and how I think about organizing
Speaker 2: work because for a lot of people, you know, their
Speaker 2: eyes glass over. So I like being among my tribe,
Speaker 2: that is, the fellow productivity geeks out there, So it's
Speaker 2: always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Cal Hello there. That is eat for
Speaker 1: today's show. If you enjoyed today's episode, why not share
Speaker 1: it with someone else that you think would benefit and
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Speaker 1: they work. How I Work is produced by Inventing with
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Speaker 1: and makes everything sound so much better than it would
Speaker 1: have otherwise. See you next time.