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Speaker 1: Welcome to How I Work, a show about the technics

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Speaker 1: used by leading innovators to get so much out of

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Speaker 1: their day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an

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Speaker 1: organizational psychologist the founder of innovation consultancy Inventium, and I'm

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Speaker 1: obsessed with finding ways to optimize my work day. Before

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Speaker 1: I get into today's episode, I have an exciting program

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Speaker 1: launching on October twenty one, which you can be part

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Speaker 1: of from wherever in the world you're listening to this podcast.

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Speaker 1: From the program is called our Workday Reinvention Program, which

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Speaker 1: is something I've been working on at Inventium for the

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Speaker 1: last two years. So it's a six week program designed

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Speaker 1: to reinvent the way that you work. The program contains

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Speaker 1: a whole bunch of science backed ways to have a

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Speaker 1: more productive, fulfilling, and happier work life, and we've gotten

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Speaker 1: some amazing results from the program so far. Not only

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Speaker 1: have we increased people's productivity by around twenty two percent,

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Speaker 1: which is nearly one day per week's worth of extra time,

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Speaker 1: but we've also increased people's engagement, energy levels, job satisfaction,

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Speaker 1: and even general well being at work by up to

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Speaker 1: twenty eight percent and that's just within six weeks. So

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Speaker 1: if you're a listener of How I Work, go to

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Speaker 1: bitley bit dot ly Forward slash Workday program. That's Bitley

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Speaker 1: Forward slash work Day program, and listeners of How I

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Speaker 1: Work can get a seventy five dollars discount on the

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Speaker 1: cost of the program.

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Speaker 2: Just end to the code how I Work.

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Speaker 1: That's one word how I Work at check out and

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Speaker 1: get that discount and I'll link to all that in

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Speaker 1: the show notes too.

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Speaker 2: So the program starts on October.

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Speaker 1: Twenty one, and if you're a listener of the show,

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Speaker 1: I think that you'll absolutely love this program and get

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Speaker 1: a stack of value from it. So today's episode is

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Speaker 1: a best of episode because I'm taking a couple of

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Speaker 1: weeks off this podcast, so I thought I would pick

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Speaker 1: out some of my favorite episodes from the year and

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Speaker 1: replay them.

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Speaker 2: So for this episode.

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Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen, a friend of mine who essentially

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Speaker 1: been on this podcast, Jason Fox, said to me that

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Speaker 1: I had to read a book called Deep Work by

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Speaker 1: cal Newport. The premise of the book is that the

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Speaker 1: best way to get more meaningful work done is by

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Speaker 1: working deeply in a state of high concentration without distractions

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Speaker 1: on a single task he had given all the digital

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Speaker 1: distractions and interruptions that exist in the average workplace, Caw

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Speaker 1: argues that many of us have lost this ability and

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Speaker 1: spend the majority of our day doing shallow work, which

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Speaker 1: is non cognitively demanding work such as responding to email

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Speaker 1: an instant messenger. Now, for me, as soon as I

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Speaker 1: started reading Deep Work, I realized I had a big problem.

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Speaker 1: I was running my days on shallow work and fitting

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Speaker 1: bits of deep work in amongst it, which was not

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Speaker 1: a great strategy given I am a classic knowledge worker

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Speaker 1: in that people pay me and invent him for our

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Speaker 1: ideas and thinking. So since reading Deep Work, I've become

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Speaker 1: a huge cal Newport fan, and his latest book, Digital Minimalism,

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Speaker 1: is equally brilliant, which looks at the impact of technology

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Speaker 1: in our personal lives. The book even prompted me to

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Speaker 1: embark on a thirty day digital d clutter, which I'll

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Speaker 1: maybe talk about more in another episode.

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Speaker 2: But despite being someone who.

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Speaker 1: I feel has a pretty healthy relationship with technology, Digital

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Speaker 1: Minimalism definitely mean let me see my relationship with technology

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Speaker 1: in a very different light.

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Speaker 2: Now, on that note, it's.

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Speaker 1: Probably a good time to actually introduce my guest today,

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Speaker 1: Cal Newport. Cal is a computer science professor at Georgetown University.

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Speaker 2: He's the author of six books.

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Speaker 1: Including most recently the New York Times bestseller Digital Minimalism

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Speaker 1: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Cal's work

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Speaker 1: has been published in over twenty languages and has been

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Speaker 1: featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The

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Speaker 1: New York At, the Washington Post.

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Speaker 2: And The Economist. It is probably an.

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Speaker 1: Understatement to say that I was excited for this chat

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Speaker 1: because I am a complete and out of fangirl of Cal's,

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Speaker 1: and it's fair to say that his work has had

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Speaker 1: an enormous impact on how I work. So we cover

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Speaker 1: a bunch of different aspects on the way he approaches

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Speaker 1: his work, ranging from his different deep work routines through

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Speaker 1: to how we build solitude and boredom into his days.

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Speaker 1: So on that note, over to Cal to hear about

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Speaker 1: how he works.

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Speaker 2: Cal, Welcome to the show.

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Speaker 3: It's my pleasure.

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Speaker 2: I want to start by.

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Speaker 1: Talking about deep work because I've heard you talk about

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Speaker 1: the benefits of creating a deep work ritual, and I

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Speaker 1: was wondering if you could describe what your deep work

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Speaker 1: ritual currently looks like in your own life.

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Speaker 3: Well, so I differentiate between the types of deep work,

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Speaker 3: which is actually an innovation that came after my original

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Speaker 3: book came out. This is sort of an evolution of

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Speaker 3: some of the ideas from the book because I realized

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Speaker 3: there's different types of deep activities that benefit from different

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Speaker 3: types of rituals. So, for example, when I'm writing, I

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Speaker 3: have a ritual built around writing that's quite specific. I

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Speaker 3: actually have in my house. I had a custom library

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Speaker 3: table built that was reminiscent of the tables at the

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Speaker 3: university library where I used to work as an undergraduate,

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Speaker 3: with sort of brass library lamps next to the dark

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Speaker 3: wood bookcases. And I have a ritual for writing where

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Speaker 3: I clear off that whole desk and I just have

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Speaker 3: those bright lights shining right down on the custom desk.

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Speaker 3: It's just me and my computer. But that's very different,

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Speaker 3: for example, than when I'm trying to solve a theoretical

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Speaker 3: computer science proof, where the rituals I use almost always

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Speaker 3: involve various walking routes around my town. And so I

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Speaker 3: really differentiate now what the ritual is the best match

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Speaker 3: the character of the cognitive effort.

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Speaker 1: That's fascinating how and I love the sound of this

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Speaker 1: custom made library table as well.

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Speaker 2: That's really cool.

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Speaker 1: How how did you like how did your deep work

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Speaker 1: routine evolve to that? In terms of getting to the

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Speaker 1: insight that you need different rituals for different types of

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Speaker 1: deep work.

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Speaker 3: I think what was bothering me at some point is

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Speaker 3: that I realized that the rituals I had built were

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Speaker 3: centered on only one type of deep work, and then

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Speaker 3: when I was getting to other types, I was feeling

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Speaker 3: either I wasn't really counting it as deep work or

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Speaker 3: I was feeling frustrated. And so my memory was I

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Speaker 3: really had my deep work rituals built around solving proofs

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Speaker 3: because that was at the core of my job as

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Speaker 3: a professor, and so a lot of what I needed

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Speaker 3: to do, for example, for writing, like reading hard things

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Speaker 3: or taking notes or actually sitting down and writing chapters

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Speaker 3: wasn't being captured by the same rituals I would use

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Speaker 3: to solve proofs. And I was just getting really frustrated,

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Speaker 3: and I would say, Wow, you know, I didn't do

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Speaker 3: any deep work this week, and I said, wait a second,

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Speaker 3: actually I did.

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Speaker 1: No.

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Speaker 3: I just was too narrow in my definition, and so

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Speaker 3: I think it was just reacting to that frustration in

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Speaker 3: my own life that I realized, Oh, I have to

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Speaker 3: be more broad when thinking about what deep work means. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And how do you know if you're actually doing

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Speaker 1: deep work, like if the activity that you are working

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Speaker 1: on constitutes deep work, Like I've heard you have conversations

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Speaker 1: I think on other podcasts where you discuss the difference

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Speaker 1: between being in flow versus doing deep work, which has

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Speaker 1: had Is that something you're able to elaborate on.

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Speaker 3: Well, it's an important distinction. I think the right way

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Speaker 3: to think about it is under the category of different

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Speaker 3: types of deep work. Some of what's under that category

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Speaker 3: might induce a flow state, some of it might not,

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Speaker 3: so they're not the same thing, but they're also not

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Speaker 3: completely different. So the type of deep work that creates

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Speaker 3: a flow state tends to be where you're applying a

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Speaker 3: well honed skill to something cognoally demanding. But you really

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Speaker 3: might get into a flow of you know, I'm writing

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Speaker 3: and I'm in a flow, or I'm sort of making

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Speaker 3: I'm thinking through a proof and I'm starting to make

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Speaker 3: progress on it. I just feel completely engaged. But another

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Speaker 3: type of important deep work is when you're trying to

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Speaker 3: learn something new or improve a skill, which requires a

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Speaker 3: deliberate practice. You're stretching yourself, paste your comfortable because you're

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Speaker 3: const trained really hardless, say, to try to learn a

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Speaker 3: new idea that you've never known before, to learn a

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Speaker 3: new tool. That is by definition actually kind of the

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Speaker 3: opposite of a flow state, when you're in a state

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Speaker 3: of deliberate practice. The Anders ericson, who really helped innovate

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Speaker 3: the research and deliberate practice, is very clear that it's unpleasant.

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Speaker 3: You don't lose track of time when you're trying to

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Speaker 3: learn something new. You actually are quite aware of every

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Speaker 3: minute because it's hard. But that's also deep work, and

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Speaker 3: so it's just a broad umbrella. Some deep work you

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Speaker 3: feel great, you lose track of time. Some you're white

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Speaker 3: knuckling it because it's really hard. But the fulfillment you're

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Speaker 3: going to get is afterwards, when you're knowing that you

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Speaker 3: did something, you did something difficult.

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Speaker 1: I wanted to ask when I read Deep Work a

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Speaker 1: couple of years ago, I remember being struck by the

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Speaker 1: insight that I had somehow let shallow work take over

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Speaker 1: my life, and I simply tried to fit in bits

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Speaker 1: of deep work in amongst it. I'm sure I'm not

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Speaker 1: alone in reaching that insight, and I've since completely trans

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Speaker 1: the way I work and get so much more out

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Speaker 1: of my days. And I want to know for you,

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Speaker 1: have you always been a naturally deep worker or was

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Speaker 1: this something you had to build or create into the

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Speaker 1: way you work.

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Speaker 3: I had always been a natural deep worker, in part

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Speaker 3: because of the field in which I worked, and so

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Speaker 3: training as a theoretical computer scientist, my world was a

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Speaker 3: world in which concentration was just openly considered to be

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Speaker 3: the most important skill. This is what you were judged on,

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Speaker 3: this is what you were rewarded for. No one could

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Speaker 3: care less about busyness. Busyness was actually probably a sign

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Speaker 3: that you weren't a very good theoretician. People had pride

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Speaker 3: in the number of hours they could spend staring at

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Speaker 3: a whiteboard, and so in this sort of esoteric field

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Speaker 3: I was in, deep work was at the core of it,

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Speaker 3: and so I really understood it. The insight that really

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Speaker 3: surprised me, however, is when I discovered that deep work

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Speaker 3: is just as important in almost every other knowledge for

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Speaker 3: you as well, and so for me, the process of

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Speaker 3: coming to write that book deep Work was sparked by

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Speaker 3: the process of saying, Okay, well, for me, concentration is

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Speaker 3: really important, but what's important in other fields? And keep

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Speaker 3: coming up with the same answer, the sort of discovery

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Speaker 3: that this thing that I thought was pretty narrow that

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Speaker 3: applied to only a small number of rarefied jobs, turned

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Speaker 3: out to be core to almost everything in the knowledge economy.

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Speaker 1: I'm curious about the idea that's interesting for you that

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Speaker 1: you have always been a deep worker, and I would

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Speaker 1: imagine that a lot of people that have read deep

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Speaker 1: work probably we're probably stuck in a similar work routine

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Speaker 1: to where I was, where the majority of my day

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Speaker 1: was shallow work, even though I am a knowledge worker.

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Speaker 1: What have you seen to be the most effective ways

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Speaker 1: for people to break the shallow work cabin Well.

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Speaker 3: The first step is just the vocabulary. So if you

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Speaker 3: don't differentiate between what is deep work and what is

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Speaker 3: shallow work, it's very, very easy to just get into

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Speaker 3: a world of busyness. Right. If you don't differentiate between

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Speaker 3: these two activities, then the only metric you have is

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Speaker 3: am I working harder? Am I not? And this is

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Speaker 3: the trap that a lot of people fell into in

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Speaker 3: the last ten or fifteen year in this age of

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Speaker 3: sort of very low friction communication and internet accessibility, is

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Speaker 3: that it just work is work, and either you're working

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Speaker 3: a lot or not. It was very easy to be

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Speaker 3: very busy and think that that was good. But once

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Speaker 3: you have the terminology of deep work and shallow work

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Speaker 3: and realize that in most jobs, at most levels, deep

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Speaker 3: work is what moves the needle right. Deep work is

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Speaker 3: what gets you promoted. Deep work is what gets you

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Speaker 3: more revenue as a company. Deep work is what actually

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Speaker 3: produces value in the knowledge context, and shallow work just

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Speaker 3: supports them. Once you make that distinction, then suddenly you

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Speaker 3: become incredibly uncomfortable if you notice that you're doing almost

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Speaker 3: no deep work, because in knowledge work, the main manufacturing

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Speaker 3: process is mine's concentrating to produce information with more value.

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Speaker 3: If you are not doing that, there's something probably problematic.

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Speaker 3: You're not producing value, talked about producing value, doing logistics

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Speaker 3: about producing value, you're planning about producing value. And so

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Speaker 3: step one is getting the vocabulary right. Once you have

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Speaker 3: the vocabulary right, people get a hunger for well, I

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Speaker 3: want to do the deep work, and so something as

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Speaker 3: simple as just well, let me keep track of how

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Speaker 3: much I'm doing can be incredibly powerful because if deep

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Speaker 3: work is the main activity that actually creates new value

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Speaker 3: in almost any position, at almost any level, and you

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Speaker 3: see that you're doing two hours of a week, then suddenly,

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Speaker 3: instead of thinking Wow, aren't I great, I'm really hustling,

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Speaker 3: you look at this and say, what in the world

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Speaker 3: is going on? This is sort of a degenerate setup

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Speaker 3: I've ended up in. I'm spending almost no time actually

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Speaker 3: trying to produce things that are valuable and that can

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Speaker 3: give you the big spark you need to make big

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Speaker 3: changes because it's not easy. It's not easy to push

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Speaker 3: back against the cold the business. So you need something

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Speaker 3: like that to really help break you up.

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Speaker 2: Have you found that just that inside alone is enough

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Speaker 2: to spark behavior change.

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Speaker 3: Well, it sparks the hunger. I've been at that point.

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Speaker 3: It's helpful. It's helpful to have some meals to serve,

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Speaker 3: to say, cate that hunger, and let me mention two

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Speaker 3: things real quick that in the aftermath of deep work

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Speaker 3: coming out readers have reported to be very important for

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Speaker 3: you know, are at least very useful in practice for

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Speaker 3: satiating a new hunger for deep work. One is scheduling

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Speaker 3: deep work in advance on your calendar, treating it and

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Speaker 3: protecting it like any other meeting or appointment. So once

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Speaker 3: it's on there, that time is taken up. You have

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Speaker 3: to plan around it. If someone tries to schedule something

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Speaker 3: during that time, you say, I already have a thing.

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Speaker 3: People are used to the social conventions, run meetings, and appointments.

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Speaker 3: If someone tries to get in touch with you during

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Speaker 3: one of these blocks and they're upset because hey, why

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Speaker 3: don't you get back to me, you can say, well,

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Speaker 3: I had a thing from twelve to two, like you

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Speaker 3: really do. Treat it like you're going to the dentist

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Speaker 3: or in a meeting right where you can't be reached.

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Speaker 3: That's really helpful. So then in advance people can start

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Speaker 3: putting this time and locking it in and then forcing

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Speaker 3: themselves to work around the anchor time to try to

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Speaker 3: fit in the other shallow work. That's useful. The other

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Speaker 3: thing that's useful I've been hearing from readers is having

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Speaker 3: a conversation with your supervisor, or if you work for yourself,

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Speaker 3: sort of have this conversation with yourself where you say,

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Speaker 3: this is what deep work is, this is what shallow

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Speaker 3: work is. Both are important for the organization. What's the

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Speaker 3: ratio I should be shooting for in a typical forty

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Speaker 3: hour work week. How many of those hours should be

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Speaker 3: deep work for shallow work? And the answer will be

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Speaker 3: different for different jobs, right, But you get an answer,

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Speaker 3: and then you work backwards and say, Okay, what changes

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Speaker 3: might we have to make so that we can accomplish

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Speaker 3: this goal that we decided together was going to optimize

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Speaker 3: the value I produce for the company. So it's a

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Speaker 3: way of approaching deep work with the people you work

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Speaker 3: with that is positive, saying how can we use this

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Speaker 3: idea and agree on how to do it together to

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Speaker 3: make more value, as opposed to what most people do,

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Speaker 3: which is negative, which is stop bothering me, I don't

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Speaker 3: want to answer an email. Stop scheduling me in meetings, right,

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Speaker 3: which just tends to make people defensive. So those two

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Speaker 3: things scheduling deep work like meetings and appointments and two

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Speaker 3: agreeing on a deep to shallow work ratio are things

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Speaker 3: I've been hearing from readers to be really effective for

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Speaker 3: getting more of this in to your life.

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Speaker 2: That's great.

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Speaker 1: I love that question to ask your boss, And I

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Speaker 1: must say, I personally have had great success with just

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Speaker 1: blocking out deep work in the diary. Generally, almost every

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Speaker 1: morning in my diary just has a do not book

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Speaker 1: sign over it, which I've personally found very effective and

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Speaker 1: funnily enough, the thing that I found hardest to apply

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Speaker 1: from Deep Work was you write a bit about having

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Speaker 1: a ritual to end your day and shut down your

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Speaker 1: work day, and I've never been able to make that stick.

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Speaker 1: But I'm wondering if you could describe how your workday ends,

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Speaker 1: because I've found that quite fascinating and I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: if it's changed since writing the book.

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Speaker 3: No, it's more or less still the same. So the

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Speaker 3: idea of a work shutdown ritual is that when you're

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Speaker 3: done with work, you want to go through the potential

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Speaker 3: open loops, right, So make sure that anything that is

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Speaker 3: on your mind but not actually in a system where

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Speaker 3: it's going to be dealt with and scheduled, gets into

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Speaker 3: a system where's cann be dealt with scheduled. Get everything

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Speaker 3: out of your mind. I used to, depending on what's

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Speaker 3: going on in the week, I'll often at this point

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Speaker 3: check my calendar, check my task, check my plan, make

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Speaker 3: sure that okay, I'm on track. I've got a plan

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Speaker 3: for the week. I know what I'm doing, I'm on

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Speaker 3: track to get things done. I'm not missing anything, so

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Speaker 3: that there's no open loops, no concern. Make your last

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Speaker 3: look at the inbox. There's nothing lurking there that's an emergency, right,

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Speaker 3: and then you shut it down. So you and I

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Speaker 3: recommend having at first a phrase you say whatever you

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Speaker 3: want it to be. The idea being that once you've

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Speaker 3: done the shutdown and you've said whatever the phrase is,

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Speaker 3: if later in the evening your mind starts to bother

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Speaker 3: you right and say, you know, like maybe we're missing something,

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Speaker 3: maybe we should go back and think some more about this,

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Speaker 3: you can say, you know what I said the phrase.

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Speaker 3: I wouldn't have said the phrase if I hadn't checked

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Speaker 3: on everything and made sure that I trusted our plan.

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Speaker 3: So there must be a plan I trust. I don't

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Speaker 3: have to think about it anymore. And what people experience

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Speaker 3: is when they do this shutdown routine and that kind

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Speaker 3: of pushback on the ruminations. After a couple of weeks,

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Speaker 3: that to ruminate and think about work after work is

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Speaker 3: over starts to really diminish, which allows them to have

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Speaker 3: a much more sort of present and relaxed evening.

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Speaker 1: It's so true, it's so true, it's funny in my

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Speaker 1: own life, I just I can't seem to crack that.

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Speaker 1: I always am struggling to resist the temptation to hop

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Speaker 1: back onto my computer after my daughter's in bed, And

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Speaker 1: I wanted to.

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Speaker 2: Ask, like, did becoming a parent.

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Speaker 1: Which obviously happened for you quite a few years ago,

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Speaker 1: did that change the way that you approach your work

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Speaker 1: and particularly deep work habits.

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Speaker 3: Well, in some sense, my deep work habits made it

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Speaker 3: easier to make the transition to being a parent because

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Speaker 3: the way I used to work, you know, I trained

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Speaker 3: myself that I have work hours, and I want to

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Speaker 3: get the most of those work hours, and I'm going

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Speaker 3: to structure the day. It's going to be intense, depth,

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Speaker 3: really organized, shallow, have a shutdown when it comes time

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Speaker 3: to be the shutdown period. For whatever reason that that

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Speaker 3: was really appealing to me. I used to plan as

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Speaker 3: a grad student. I'd plan my day on my wife's

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Speaker 3: work schedule, so I was like, I want to use

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Speaker 3: every minute that she's at work to get as much done.

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Speaker 3: But then I don't want to be one of the

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Speaker 3: grad students who sort of was lazy during the day

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Speaker 3: and then has to be on campus all night. I

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Speaker 3: want to be home with her and doing other sort

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Speaker 3: of things. So I have this tight schedule. When I'm working,

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Speaker 3: work really hard. When i'm done, be done. So then

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Speaker 3: once we had kids, that kind of worked really well.

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Speaker 3: So I was like, Okay, when I'm at the office,

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Speaker 3: I'll work really hard. But then I was already used

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Speaker 3: to the idea that when I'm done, I can shut

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Speaker 3: down completely. And now shutting down completely wasn't just well,

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Speaker 3: it's just kind of relaxing when I'm home doing what

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Speaker 3: I want to do. Of course, now it's kind of

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Speaker 3: you know, it keeps things off my mind when I'm

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Speaker 3: home running around doing childcare. But it fits really well.

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Speaker 3: And so this notion if I want to work deeply,

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Speaker 3: really intensely, keep the shallow work incredibly organized and contained,

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Speaker 3: and when I'm done, when i'm done, incredibly compatible with

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Speaker 3: being a parent.

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Speaker 1: It all sounds very logical. Work when you work and

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Speaker 1: don't work when you're not at work. Something I want

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Speaker 1: to shift on to, which you write about in digital

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Speaker 1: minimalism is the value of of solitude and boredom. I

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Speaker 1: guess which you know, Like again, like when I was

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Speaker 1: reflecting when I was reading the book and reflecting on

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Speaker 1: my own life, It's quite scary to think about how

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Speaker 1: infrequently I was feeling bored and how infrequently I would

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Speaker 1: imagine a lot of people experience boredom because there's just

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Speaker 1: constant inputs, and I'm curious to know how, And you

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Speaker 1: write a bit about this in the book. How do

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Speaker 1: you experience solitude and boredom? How do you create those

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Speaker 1: states in your own world?

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Speaker 3: Well, so, just to provide a little bit of background,

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Speaker 3: some context on the shift from Deep Work to digital

407
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Speaker 3: minimalism before getting to the specific question. Basically, Deep Work

408
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Speaker 3: was this book that was about focus in the workplace

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Speaker 3: and how technologies had unintentionally made that more difficult. And

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Speaker 3: so one of the big reactions I got the Deep

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Speaker 3: Work was, Okay, maybe this is true, like what you're

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Speaker 3: saying about tech and what doing in the workplace, but

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Speaker 3: what about tech and our life outside of work, Because

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Speaker 3: people in the last couple of years in particular, were

415
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Speaker 3: really beginning to feel that their life outside of work

416
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Speaker 3: was being taken over by screens in a way that

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Speaker 3: was making them uneasy, right, And it wasn't that Okay,

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Speaker 3: I hate what I'm doing when I look at the screen.

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Speaker 3: It was the fact that they were looking at the

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Speaker 3: screen so much. It was almost like they were losing

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Speaker 3: their autonomy, that their whole life was getting eaten up

422
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Speaker 3: by just glance after glance after glance at the screens

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Speaker 3: was making them anxious, making them unhappy. I was keeping

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Speaker 3: away from friends and family, and so digital minimalism was about, Okay,

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Speaker 3: what's going on with this unease in our personal relationship

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Speaker 3: with tech, so outside of work, outside of things like

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Speaker 3: email and slack, and what can we do about it?

428
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Speaker 3: And so getting back to your question. So that's one

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Speaker 3: of the ideas I talked about in digital minimalism is

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Speaker 3: that when you kill every moment that you could potentially

431
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Speaker 3: be alone with your thoughts by looking at a screen.

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Speaker 3: So every time you're in line, every time you're waiting

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Speaker 3: for the subway, when you know someone gets up at

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Speaker 3: dinner and goes to your bathroom and you're waiting for

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Speaker 3: them to come back, If at every single moment like

436
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Speaker 3: that you look at a screen, what you do is

437
00:21:03,320 --> 00:21:06,440
Speaker 3: you put yourself into a state called solitude deprivation, where

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00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:08,080
Speaker 3: you're never alone with your own thoughts. And we know

439
00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:09,919
Speaker 3: that this is actually really unhealthy, and it's probably going

440
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:12,919
Speaker 3: to make you anxious. It's also probably going to retard

441
00:21:12,960 --> 00:21:15,800
Speaker 3: your ability to have sort of self development or professional

442
00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:18,440
Speaker 3: insights or breakthroughs. We really do need regular time spent

443
00:21:18,520 --> 00:21:20,480
Speaker 3: alone with our thoughts, which is why I recommend that

444
00:21:21,560 --> 00:21:23,119
Speaker 3: you get that in your life. And so what's the

445
00:21:23,160 --> 00:21:28,000
Speaker 3: easiest way to do that is my suggestion is most days,

446
00:21:28,280 --> 00:21:31,040
Speaker 3: do at least one or two things without your phone.

447
00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 3: And that simple thing I go on one errand and

448
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:38,840
Speaker 3: I do whatever, one thing around the house each day

449
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,040
Speaker 3: where there's no earbuds and no phone. Something as simple

450
00:21:42,080 --> 00:21:44,840
Speaker 3: as that can have a major impact on your cognitive health,

451
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:46,280
Speaker 3: anxiety levels, and happiness.

452
00:21:46,680 --> 00:21:49,400
Speaker 1: What does that look like in your life in terms

453
00:21:49,440 --> 00:21:54,520
Speaker 1: of incorporating moments of solitude and space to be bored.

454
00:21:55,040 --> 00:21:58,040
Speaker 3: Well, I reject this idea, which is actually quite recent,

455
00:21:58,160 --> 00:21:59,679
Speaker 3: that you need to have a phone with you all

456
00:21:59,680 --> 00:22:03,160
Speaker 3: the time. You know, the phone's always there, you're always

457
00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:05,919
Speaker 3: looking at it. We're used to it, but it's quite arbitrary,

458
00:22:05,920 --> 00:22:08,560
Speaker 3: it's quite contrived, and it's quite recent. And so I

459
00:22:08,600 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 3: spend large parts of my day without a phone handy,

460
00:22:11,600 --> 00:22:14,760
Speaker 3: so I do locks exercise when I'm at home, I

461
00:22:14,800 --> 00:22:17,600
Speaker 3: typically my phone will be in my bag somewhere, so

462
00:22:17,680 --> 00:22:20,719
Speaker 3: I don't accept this premise that I'm like in an

463
00:22:20,760 --> 00:22:24,120
Speaker 3: emergency room doctor that needs to be accessible at all

464
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:28,680
Speaker 3: times on a communication device. And so once you change

465
00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:31,440
Speaker 3: your mindset to one where it's I use my phone

466
00:22:31,480 --> 00:22:33,040
Speaker 3: to do various things, but it's not something I always

467
00:22:33,080 --> 00:22:35,520
Speaker 3: have with me, you just naturally get lots of solitude.

468
00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:37,639
Speaker 3: So throughout my day there's just lots of times with

469
00:22:37,760 --> 00:22:39,639
Speaker 3: just me alone with my thoughts because I don't have

470
00:22:39,760 --> 00:22:42,480
Speaker 3: easy distraction nearby. And so something as simple as that,

471
00:22:43,119 --> 00:22:45,160
Speaker 3: I think if the phone as a tool you occasionally use,

472
00:22:45,320 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 3: not a constant companion, can really make a big difference

473
00:22:48,359 --> 00:22:49,840
Speaker 3: in terms of getting more solitude.

474
00:22:50,080 --> 00:22:54,120
Speaker 1: It's such an interesting idea leaving your phone at home

475
00:22:54,640 --> 00:22:57,080
Speaker 1: or in the glove books. And I must say, like

476
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:00,360
Speaker 1: during the month of match, my husband and I both

477
00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:03,320
Speaker 1: read Digital Minimalism before the month started, and we used

478
00:23:03,320 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 1: that month as a digital declutter month, and something that

479
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:08,879
Speaker 1: we both consume a.

480
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:10,240
Speaker 2: Lot of is podcasts.

481
00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:13,560
Speaker 1: And I really became aware of this habit where in

482
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:18,239
Speaker 1: any moment where I could have been experiencing solitude, like

483
00:23:18,520 --> 00:23:21,560
Speaker 1: I generally spend the hours of six to seven am,

484
00:23:21,800 --> 00:23:24,840
Speaker 1: either walking or at the gym, or exercising or moving

485
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:29,119
Speaker 1: in some way. Podcasts and my AirPods would be glued

486
00:23:29,119 --> 00:23:31,480
Speaker 1: in my ears. But one of the changes I made

487
00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: in the last month is actually going, well, what if

488
00:23:34,800 --> 00:23:38,720
Speaker 1: I just spent that hour in silence and it just

489
00:23:38,760 --> 00:23:42,040
Speaker 1: made things completely different. I found that some of my

490
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:44,359
Speaker 1: best ideas were coming to me at that point, where

491
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:47,480
Speaker 1: I was previously just consuming stimulus.

492
00:23:47,760 --> 00:23:49,320
Speaker 2: How do you delineate.

493
00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: Between these moments where there's no input going in other

494
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,960
Speaker 1: than your own thoughts versus feeling like it's okay to

495
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:58,080
Speaker 1: have some stimulus going in, Like I'm not sure if

496
00:23:58,080 --> 00:23:59,639
Speaker 1: you're a podcast list er. I know that you're a

497
00:23:59,640 --> 00:24:03,840
Speaker 1: big green, but how do you kind of delineate that time?

498
00:24:03,880 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 2: I guess.

499
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:08,919
Speaker 3: I mean it's a good question because I do like podcasts.

500
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:11,600
Speaker 3: I am a big reader. I try to get rid

501
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,840
Speaker 3: of the idea that it's a default activity. It's something

502
00:24:14,840 --> 00:24:16,800
Speaker 3: I guess I think of as I look forward to

503
00:24:16,840 --> 00:24:19,639
Speaker 3: our schedule, right, So instead of being a default activity,

504
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 3: I guess I'm more active about putting aside when am

505
00:24:22,800 --> 00:24:24,600
Speaker 3: I going to get input? What input is it going

506
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,680
Speaker 3: to be? So if I know, for example, I have

507
00:24:27,880 --> 00:24:30,680
Speaker 3: a lot of yard work to do. Yeah, maybe I'll say, great,

508
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 3: I'm going to listen to this particular podcast and it's

509
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:34,199
Speaker 3: going to be good. On the other hand, I say, oh,

510
00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:36,119
Speaker 3: I have a walk coming up, and say, you know,

511
00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:38,639
Speaker 3: I'm walking my kid to school and I'm going to

512
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:41,360
Speaker 3: walk home alone. I usually won't listen to a podcast.

513
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 3: Then I just become used to. I really like that solitude.

514
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:46,280
Speaker 3: And so it's not that there's a hard and fast rule,

515
00:24:46,600 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 3: but I plan when I'm going to do stimuli, and

516
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:51,879
Speaker 3: you know, I have to think about it right and

517
00:24:51,920 --> 00:24:54,080
Speaker 3: say do I want to listen to something or not?

518
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:56,359
Speaker 3: Do I want the silence or is there something I

519
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:58,200
Speaker 3: think this might be a good chance to listen to something.

520
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 3: Same thing with my commutes when I come to campus.

521
00:25:01,040 --> 00:25:03,640
Speaker 3: Probably about half the time I think and the other

522
00:25:03,640 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 3: half the time I listen. And you know, I don't

523
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 3: have a precise heuristic that says this is when I

524
00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:11,440
Speaker 3: do this and this is when I do the other.

525
00:25:11,520 --> 00:25:14,439
Speaker 3: But I just keep in mind that both are possibilities

526
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:16,920
Speaker 3: and that it's worth thinking about in any given moment

527
00:25:16,960 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 3: which one I want to do.

528
00:25:18,400 --> 00:25:20,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's nice being delivered about it.

529
00:25:20,080 --> 00:25:22,159
Speaker 1: I feel like for so many people, it's just a

530
00:25:22,600 --> 00:25:27,280
Speaker 1: habit to put in earphones and just start listening when

531
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:29,919
Speaker 1: there's no other stimulus that could be coming their way.

532
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:34,480
Speaker 1: And on the topic of habits, I think this was

533
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:36,320
Speaker 1: a blog maybe that you wrote a few months ago

534
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:40,359
Speaker 1: around habits versus workflows, which I found really interesting because

535
00:25:40,359 --> 00:25:43,959
Speaker 1: I think in the productivity space there's such an emphasis

536
00:25:44,000 --> 00:25:47,879
Speaker 1: on different hacks and quick fixes, whereas you write about

537
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 1: the importance of actually reviewing your workflow, and I was

538
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 1: wondering if you could like expand a bit on what

539
00:25:54,960 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 1: you meant by that concept and maybe gives some examples

540
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,040
Speaker 1: of what are the different workflows that you have in

541
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:02,080
Speaker 1: your own working life.

542
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:06,119
Speaker 3: I think this is a key distinction to understand some

543
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:08,840
Speaker 3: of the issues we have in workplace productivity and how

544
00:26:08,880 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 3: we might eventually solve them. So to me, a habit

545
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 3: is something you put in place for how you interact

546
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 3: with your work, so maybe when you check your email,

547
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:25,359
Speaker 3: or your methods you use for organizing your email, or

548
00:26:25,359 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 3: maybe your personal planning, like how you plan out your

549
00:26:27,640 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 3: day or keep track of what you need to get done.

550
00:26:30,480 --> 00:26:35,439
Speaker 3: Whereas workflow is the underlying either explicit or implicit system

551
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 3: that specifies how work gets done, so how obligations are assigned, executed,

552
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 3: and tracked. A lot of times we think about habits,

553
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:48,040
Speaker 3: but it's actually the underlying workflow that's causing the problem.

554
00:26:48,240 --> 00:26:50,600
Speaker 3: So the key place, I think, the key example where

555
00:26:50,600 --> 00:26:53,639
Speaker 3: this distinction comes up is when it comes to email overload.

556
00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 3: So to me, the big problem with email is this

557
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,159
Speaker 3: underlying workflow that says. The way that we work in

558
00:26:59,200 --> 00:27:02,920
Speaker 3: our organization is that we maintain this sort of ad hoc,

559
00:27:03,040 --> 00:27:07,399
Speaker 3: ongoing unstructured conversation using email inboxes, and it's very flexible,

560
00:27:07,440 --> 00:27:09,360
Speaker 3: it's very convenient if we all just kind of keep hey,

561
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:11,159
Speaker 3: you get that what's going on over here, and that

562
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 3: this is how we're going to work. Is how we're

563
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 3: going to pass tasks off to each others, how we're

564
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 3: going to follow up on things. It's how we're going

565
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 3: to communicate with people. It's just we're going to have

566
00:27:19,119 --> 00:27:22,040
Speaker 3: this ongoing unstructured conversation. Now, you can have a lot

567
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 3: of habits on top of that workflow to try to

568
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 3: tain it. So maybe you don't check email all the time,

569
00:27:26,640 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 3: and maybe you have some nice folder system for organizing

570
00:27:29,840 --> 00:27:32,679
Speaker 3: emails moving to a to do list, but until you

571
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:35,639
Speaker 3: change that underlying workflow. There's nothing just going to solve

572
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 3: the need in such an environment to check email a lot,

573
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 3: spend a lot of time doing email. And so like

574
00:27:42,080 --> 00:27:44,440
Speaker 3: when I'm out there talking about the problem of email overload,

575
00:27:44,680 --> 00:27:46,919
Speaker 3: people really want to just focus on the habits. They think, well,

576
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,320
Speaker 3: we could just change some norms about how often we

577
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 3: check email, or you know, batch it, or let people

578
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:54,840
Speaker 3: know that we're not going to respond right away, that

579
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:57,320
Speaker 3: we can we can solve all the problems we're having.

580
00:27:57,440 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 3: But often the underline issue is that there's this workflow

581
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: that depends on ongoing email communication you get anything done,

582
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 3: and so if you want really systemic change, you have

583
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:08,640
Speaker 3: to replace that with something better. And so I think

584
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:11,080
Speaker 3: organizations have to think about this, and I think individuals

585
00:28:11,119 --> 00:28:12,920
Speaker 3: can think about this in their own life as well.

586
00:28:13,960 --> 00:28:16,879
Speaker 3: To what extent are you rearranging the deck chairs on

587
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:20,680
Speaker 3: the sinking Titanic when you're building more complicated systems for

588
00:28:20,760 --> 00:28:23,119
Speaker 3: an underlying workflow that's just inevialy going to keep you

589
00:28:23,160 --> 00:28:26,439
Speaker 3: overwhelmed or not doing what's important. And so I like

590
00:28:26,480 --> 00:28:31,040
Speaker 3: that distinction. There's the underlying decisions about how tasks and

591
00:28:31,119 --> 00:28:34,920
Speaker 3: obligations are identified as sign tracked and executed. And then

592
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:37,200
Speaker 3: there's what you do on top of that to help

593
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 3: sort of interact with those workflows. And those are two

594
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 3: different things.

595
00:28:41,080 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: And what are some workflows that are true for your

596
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:48,080
Speaker 1: own working life?

597
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting question because often when I'm talking

598
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 3: about workflows and habits, it's relevant primarily at the level

599
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:59,400
Speaker 3: of organizations, right, And so this is the difference between

600
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:02,720
Speaker 3: two soware development teams, one that just people are on

601
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:05,520
Speaker 3: slack all day and the other where they use an

602
00:29:05,520 --> 00:29:09,720
Speaker 3: agile methodology like scrum. It's really explicit about here's who's

603
00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 3: working on what. We put it on this board, we

604
00:29:11,360 --> 00:29:13,320
Speaker 3: can see it status. We have synchronous meetings, we do

605
00:29:13,360 --> 00:29:15,480
Speaker 3: them twice a day. This is how you know, we

606
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,280
Speaker 3: assign things. They have a really structured workflow. Because of

607
00:29:18,320 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 3: that structured workflow, they don't need to be on slack

608
00:29:20,680 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 3: all day. But without that structured workflow, they need to

609
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:24,520
Speaker 3: be on slack because how else are tasked going to

610
00:29:24,520 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 3: get passed around or things checked on? In terms of

611
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:29,160
Speaker 3: like in your individual life. I mean, one way to

612
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 3: think about it, I suppose, is in terms of processes

613
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:37,880
Speaker 3: or systems that you use for identifying tasks and making

614
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 3: sure they get done or assigning them and so sometimes

615
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:43,880
Speaker 3: these can be pretty subtle, but a concrete example is

616
00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:47,080
Speaker 3: like on my book tour which I'm which I'm on

617
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,440
Speaker 3: now for digital minimalism, there's a lot of bookings that

618
00:29:50,520 --> 00:29:53,160
Speaker 3: have to happen, and so I thought about the underlying

619
00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 3: workflow of well, what's the what's the right way to

620
00:29:57,320 --> 00:30:01,680
Speaker 3: actually sort of get things identified, scheduled and information to me?

621
00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 3: And we built a system with the publicity team where

622
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:09,120
Speaker 3: I could identify time when I'm available. They then had

623
00:30:09,160 --> 00:30:12,080
Speaker 3: access to those parts of my calendar. They could then

624
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:14,800
Speaker 3: book things directly on the calendar with all the information

625
00:30:14,960 --> 00:30:17,960
Speaker 3: I need I could if I book something else, that

626
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:20,760
Speaker 3: time would get blocked off, And we rebuilt the workflow

627
00:30:20,800 --> 00:30:25,640
Speaker 3: that minimized back and forth communication required to accomplished a

628
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 3: goal of getting the proper things like this interview scheduled,

629
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 3: for example. And so that might be an example of

630
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 3: working on the underlying workflow as opposed to just the

631
00:30:33,440 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 3: upper level habits of like how often do I check

632
00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:37,520
Speaker 3: my emails about when things are being scheduled?

633
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: And do you have I guess on top of your workflows?

634
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:46,920
Speaker 1: What are some of the most useful habits or productivity

635
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: systems or weekly rituals that you do to keep your

636
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: weak organized and flowing.

637
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 2: Well.

638
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a big believer in both weekly and daily planning.

639
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 3: I think you need to spend time to understand the

640
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:04,360
Speaker 3: contours of your week, what's happening on each day, what

641
00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 3: day is really crowded, what days have open space, so

642
00:31:07,400 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 3: that you can start moving things around at that scale

643
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:13,520
Speaker 3: and recognize, hey, Monday is pretty open, that's probably gonna

644
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 3: be a good time to make a lot of progress

645
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:16,440
Speaker 3: on this hard thing, even though that hard thing's not

646
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:18,440
Speaker 3: due till Friday. But you're seeing on the calendar that

647
00:31:18,440 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 3: Wednesday and Thursday have a lot of meetings, right, And

648
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:22,920
Speaker 3: so looking at the whole week and trying to plan

649
00:31:22,960 --> 00:31:26,000
Speaker 3: out what's going to happen when, I think that's important.

650
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:29,520
Speaker 3: Believer in time blocking on a particular day, Give your

651
00:31:29,560 --> 00:31:32,640
Speaker 3: time a job. Here's the hours I have available. What

652
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:34,040
Speaker 3: am I doing with this hour? What am I doing

653
00:31:34,040 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 3: with this thirty minutes? What am I doing with this

654
00:31:35,360 --> 00:31:37,719
Speaker 3: three hour block? Give your time a job. As opposed

655
00:31:37,760 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 3: to just approaching your day with a generic to do list,

656
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:43,479
Speaker 3: you're much more effective at getting things out of your

657
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 3: day if again, you look at the free hours of

658
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,200
Speaker 3: the day and reconfigure them, move them around and figure

659
00:31:48,200 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 3: out how can I get the most out of this?

660
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:53,840
Speaker 3: And then I often am a believer in ad hoc

661
00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:57,280
Speaker 3: systems and rituals that match what's going on at the time.

662
00:31:57,800 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 3: And so if you have, let's say a big event

663
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 3: coming up, do you have to do a lot of

664
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:04,480
Speaker 3: planning for you might just say here's what I'm doing.

665
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:08,440
Speaker 3: It's thirty minutes after launch every single day, thirty minutes

666
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 3: every single day just checking in, moving things, seeing what's

667
00:32:10,600 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 3: going on or whatever. Right, But this idea of having

668
00:32:13,320 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 3: temporary systems that you put into place to help you

669
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 3: make a lot of progress on important, non permanent things

670
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:21,959
Speaker 3: in a way that doesn't have you just completely an

671
00:32:21,960 --> 00:32:24,760
Speaker 3: ad hoc looking at a tasklic type mode. So if

672
00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 3: you do weekly planning, daily time blocking, build temporary systems

673
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:33,200
Speaker 3: and rituals as needed for temporary but large obligations, that

674
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:35,640
Speaker 3: usually combines to help you get a pretty effective use

675
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 3: of the time available.

676
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:39,560
Speaker 1: And can I ask with time blocking because it's something

677
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 1: I've experimented with myself, and I feel like the cognitive

678
00:32:44,280 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: biases that either cause you to overestimate or underestimate how

679
00:32:48,000 --> 00:32:51,280
Speaker 1: long something takes. I've found can be my downfall with

680
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:55,520
Speaker 1: time blocking, where let's just say I've completely overestimated how

681
00:32:55,560 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: long something will take, but I've set aside three hours.

682
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: I finished it in an hour and a half, and

683
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 1: then like, what, like, how does that work in your world? Right?

684
00:33:04,840 --> 00:33:07,000
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I should say at the the bigger

685
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 3: point is that one of the nice things about time

686
00:33:09,360 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 3: blocking is that it's practiced to make you better at

687
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 3: estimating how long things take, because there is some pain

688
00:33:15,120 --> 00:33:17,440
Speaker 3: to when you get it wrong. It requires some extra

689
00:33:17,480 --> 00:33:20,120
Speaker 3: effort and so you have to try to get it right,

690
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:22,240
Speaker 3: and you get a lot of feedback. So you see,

691
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:26,600
Speaker 3: consistently not giving myself enough time for this type of activity,

692
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:29,120
Speaker 3: you get that feedback or I'm always giving myself too

693
00:33:29,200 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 3: much time, So that gets better. But then what do

694
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:33,960
Speaker 3: you do in the moment? Well, if you don't give

695
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 3: yourself enough time, then you know, if you keep going

696
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:38,680
Speaker 3: till you finish what needs to get done, and then

697
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 3: you just adjust your schedule for the rest of the day,

698
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 3: which is fine. And one of the ways that people

699
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 3: get time blocking wrong is they think that it's a

700
00:33:45,680 --> 00:33:47,520
Speaker 3: game where you win the gold medal if you never

701
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 3: have to change your schedule. But there's actually no prize

702
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:52,640
Speaker 3: you get for getting your schedule exactly right and never

703
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 3: having to change it. You probably might have to change

704
00:33:55,360 --> 00:33:57,240
Speaker 3: it three, four or five times. The goal is not

705
00:33:57,320 --> 00:33:59,760
Speaker 3: to have a perfect schedule. It's to always have some

706
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 3: about what you're doing with the time that remains of

707
00:34:02,960 --> 00:34:06,479
Speaker 3: the day. Same thing if you under schedule, so you

708
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:08,399
Speaker 3: have a couple options here. You could add something new,

709
00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:12,000
Speaker 3: or you could take advantage of that time just to relax,

710
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 3: or to do something that's going to help you dogative rest.

711
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:18,440
Speaker 3: Like that's actually kind of a nice scenario. But the

712
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 3: point I always make about time blocking is that, regardless

713
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 3: of what you do, having a good understanding of how

714
00:34:23,800 --> 00:34:26,440
Speaker 3: long things take is crucial because if you don't, regardless

715
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 3: of you're time blocking or not, you're just going to keepetting

716
00:34:28,160 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 3: yourself in the trouble and you're going to keep having

717
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:33,359
Speaker 3: colliding deadlines, You're going to keep having late nights, you're

718
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:35,839
Speaker 3: going to keep having these sort of stressful moments when

719
00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:38,120
Speaker 3: you realize, ah, a lot still needs to get done

720
00:34:38,719 --> 00:34:41,239
Speaker 3: and I'm not there. And time blocking trains you to

721
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 3: better appreciate how long things take, and then otherwise just

722
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:45,920
Speaker 3: be comfortable with the fact that you might have to

723
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:47,960
Speaker 3: change your schedule several times throughout the day and that

724
00:34:47,960 --> 00:34:51,200
Speaker 3: that's not negative, that's actually how the system works.

725
00:34:51,920 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I like the idea of actually taking a break,

726
00:34:55,280 --> 00:34:59,160
Speaker 1: And I've heard you talk about the concept of deep breaks,

727
00:34:59,280 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: because I feel like people don't really think that much

728
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 1: about what constitutes a break, what they do in a break,

729
00:35:04,560 --> 00:35:07,680
Speaker 1: how long a break goes for. So can you describe

730
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:12,520
Speaker 1: this concept of deep breaks and what they involve.

731
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,399
Speaker 3: So, if you're doing like deep work and you're taking

732
00:35:16,400 --> 00:35:18,080
Speaker 3: a break and you're going to return the deep work,

733
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 3: you should be careful about the break. And so you

734
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 3: want to avoid, for example, in a break, exposing yourself

735
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,759
Speaker 3: to other but similar type of work, because now you're

736
00:35:28,760 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 3: going to contact shift, and so you want to be

737
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:34,759
Speaker 3: really careful. If you're writing an article, you don't want

738
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:37,040
Speaker 3: to during a break maybe read or think about a

739
00:35:37,040 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 3: related article. It's just too close and now you're kind

740
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 3: of contact shifting to that other article, and it's going

741
00:35:41,600 --> 00:35:43,400
Speaker 3: to be hard to come back. You also want to

742
00:35:43,440 --> 00:35:46,600
Speaker 3: avoid open loops, exposing yourself the loops that you can't

743
00:35:46,640 --> 00:35:49,960
Speaker 3: close during the break. And so this is what's dangerous

744
00:35:49,960 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 3: about looking at email. For example, in a fifteen minute break,

745
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 3: you're going to see a lot of things that you

746
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:56,680
Speaker 3: can't get to, a lot of emails you can't quite answer.

747
00:35:57,040 --> 00:36:01,279
Speaker 3: Open loops really eat at our attention and reduce our

748
00:36:01,560 --> 00:36:03,839
Speaker 3: cognitive capacity going forward. So a deep break you want

749
00:36:03,880 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 3: to avoid looking at similar type of work or open loops.

750
00:36:07,120 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 3: And so you can look at stuff, for example, that's

751
00:36:09,120 --> 00:36:11,680
Speaker 3: completely unrelated to work. You know, you can read an

752
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 3: article about your local sports team is probably not gonna

753
00:36:15,239 --> 00:36:16,800
Speaker 3: be a big deal. You can go for a walk,

754
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 3: you can read a book, a chapter from a book,

755
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:22,680
Speaker 3: or a magazine article that's completely unrelated to your work.

756
00:36:22,920 --> 00:36:25,400
Speaker 3: These type of things are fine. You can talk to

757
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:28,759
Speaker 3: people you know, non work related conversations. All that's fine.

758
00:36:28,760 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 3: Those would be deep breaks. But you don't want to

759
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:33,040
Speaker 3: do something similar. You don't want to expose yourself to

760
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 3: open loops.

761
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: I find that really helpful because I feel like email

762
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: is the thing that often fills spare time because it

763
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:42,879
Speaker 1: can take as long or as little as you want.

764
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,360
Speaker 2: And how what does email.

765
00:36:44,960 --> 00:36:49,120
Speaker 1: Look like in your life? Like, how how frequently do

766
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: you check it? How long do you spend in there?

767
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: What would like your I guess your email system look

768
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:56,879
Speaker 1: like in a typical way.

769
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:00,800
Speaker 3: Well, there's two elements to it. So one is controlling

770
00:37:00,840 --> 00:37:04,080
Speaker 3: what comes in. And so if you look at, for example,

771
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:08,400
Speaker 3: my author website and you go to the contact page,

772
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 3: I don't give people a general purpose email address. I

773
00:37:11,120 --> 00:37:12,360
Speaker 3: don't just say hey, i'd love to hear from you.

774
00:37:12,440 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 3: Here's my email address. Instead, there's very specific addresses for

775
00:37:16,120 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 3: very particular purposes, and then I give expectations around them,

776
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 3: like okay, if you're interested in speaking, well you can

777
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:24,759
Speaker 3: you can talk to my speaking age of Thus the

778
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:27,520
Speaker 3: address publicity. Here's like a publicist you can talk to.

779
00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:29,239
Speaker 3: If you want to send me links or articles which

780
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:31,360
Speaker 3: I really like, you can send them to this address.

781
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:33,640
Speaker 3: But I don't answer a look at it, but I

782
00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:36,160
Speaker 3: don't answer, and I don't give an option, for example,

783
00:37:36,239 --> 00:37:37,920
Speaker 3: for and if you just have like questions for me,

784
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:39,680
Speaker 3: or want to talk to me or ask me to

785
00:37:39,719 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 3: get involved in a business or whatever, there's just no

786
00:37:41,719 --> 00:37:44,960
Speaker 3: option for that. Now you would worry that might make

787
00:37:45,000 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 3: readers upset because you're sort of cutting off accessibility, But

788
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 3: I found that didn't happen people are okay with clarity.

789
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:53,919
Speaker 3: They don't really need accessibility as long as it's clear.

790
00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,399
Speaker 3: So if they know for a fact, like, okay, there's

791
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:57,840
Speaker 3: no way for me to really reach you about this,

792
00:37:57,880 --> 00:38:00,319
Speaker 3: and they're okay with it, that's better than them having

793
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:02,759
Speaker 3: a generic email address and sending their business pitch to

794
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 3: you with some expectation that you might answer, and then

795
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:07,680
Speaker 3: being upset that you don't. And so I try to

796
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,640
Speaker 3: cut down on what comes in or expectations on reply.

797
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 3: And then in terms of dealing with the email that

798
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,319
Speaker 3: I do get, you know, I schedule when I look

799
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:18,000
Speaker 3: at it, and how often that is just depends on

800
00:38:18,040 --> 00:38:20,319
Speaker 3: what's going on, and so it's not maybe I go

801
00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 3: a day or so without having to without being able

802
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 3: to look at it, and over time people get mad

803
00:38:24,520 --> 00:38:26,440
Speaker 3: at me a lot. But people have learned that I

804
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: don't use email like an ongoing, constant communication or chat service.

805
00:38:31,120 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 3: It's just not something you can use to grab my

806
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,160
Speaker 3: attention real quickly, even if it's really convenient for you.

807
00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:36,799
Speaker 3: That's just not the way I use email. It might

808
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 3: be a day or two till I see it. And

809
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 3: so I always tell my students that when we begin class,

810
00:38:40,520 --> 00:38:42,279
Speaker 3: my colleagues have learned it, my family has sort of

811
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,160
Speaker 3: learned about it, and people adjust and so for me,

812
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:47,439
Speaker 3: some days I don't look at it, other days I do,

813
00:38:48,640 --> 00:38:50,840
Speaker 3: and when I do, I try to take care of

814
00:38:50,880 --> 00:38:52,360
Speaker 3: it in basically one session.

815
00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: I do like the idea of just paying clear and

816
00:38:56,200 --> 00:39:00,719
Speaker 1: setting expectations, and ironically that will lead to list disappointment.

817
00:39:01,640 --> 00:39:03,960
Speaker 1: I want to come back to emails towards the end

818
00:39:03,960 --> 00:39:05,680
Speaker 1: of our chat in a few minutes, but first I

819
00:39:06,000 --> 00:39:08,920
Speaker 1: did want to ask you something that my company, Inventium,

820
00:39:09,320 --> 00:39:11,160
Speaker 1: is working on at the moment with the University of

821
00:39:11,200 --> 00:39:16,040
Speaker 1: New South Wales, is actually looking at strategies like introducing

822
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 1: deep work into an organization along with other different strategies

823
00:39:20,440 --> 00:39:24,399
Speaker 1: for working better and trying to assess the impact on

824
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:27,800
Speaker 1: productivity and other variables. And so I guess a couple

825
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:30,320
Speaker 1: of questions there, because I've heard you talk about it's

826
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:34,319
Speaker 1: actually quite hard to land on a definition of productivity,

827
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 1: like if an organization introduces a workflow that is more

828
00:39:39,239 --> 00:39:43,200
Speaker 1: around prioritizing deep work when we're talking about knowledge workers

829
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 1: over shallow work, like how do we actually measure the

830
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:50,480
Speaker 1: impact of that on productivity? And then what are the

831
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:53,160
Speaker 1: other variables that we would expect it to change, like

832
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 1: you know, ranging from job satisfaction to health and well

833
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: being and stress levels. But I guess, in the context

834
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: of this study, how would you be measuring productivity when

835
00:40:04,440 --> 00:40:06,480
Speaker 1: it comes to the impact that deep work would have.

836
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:09,239
Speaker 3: So I would go back to the economic metric of

837
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:15,280
Speaker 3: productivity actual value produced per hour that you're paying salary,

838
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 3: which I sometimes call true productivity in the book. Because

839
00:40:18,520 --> 00:40:20,320
Speaker 3: what we've done in knowledge work, because knowledge work is

840
00:40:20,360 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 3: a little bit more ambiguous we don't have widgets to

841
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:25,560
Speaker 3: count coming off of an assembly line, is that we

842
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 3: began to use busyness as a proxy for productivity. So

843
00:40:29,640 --> 00:40:32,280
Speaker 3: are you there early in the morning, are you around

844
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:35,440
Speaker 3: a lot? Are you answering emails very quickly? Just in general,

845
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 3: if you're doing something, at least we know you're not

846
00:40:37,200 --> 00:40:40,239
Speaker 3: being lazy or taking advantage. And that's the sort of

847
00:40:40,239 --> 00:40:43,239
Speaker 3: metric we put into place. But what really matters is

848
00:40:43,239 --> 00:40:47,399
Speaker 3: is the activity producing concrete value for the organization, such

849
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 3: as dollars coming in in a for profit organization. And

850
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:54,840
Speaker 3: it's there that I think that we're finding that we

851
00:40:54,840 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 3: should be a little bit concerned. Like if you look

852
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,040
Speaker 3: at the US for example, we are our labor department

853
00:40:59,360 --> 00:41:04,040
Speaker 3: tracks this productivity right, revenue per sort of employment hour,

854
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:06,160
Speaker 3: and they break it out for the non industrial sector,

855
00:41:06,200 --> 00:41:09,840
Speaker 3: so particularly for they call it non industrial productivity metrics,

856
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:13,920
Speaker 3: so not counting manufacturing, but mainly just knowledge work. That

857
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:16,400
Speaker 3: metric has been stagnant for a long time. I mean

858
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 3: throughout this last decade period where we invested billions to

859
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 3: make communication as fast and flexible and easy as possible.

860
00:41:23,640 --> 00:41:26,040
Speaker 3: It's never been easier for you to get information or

861
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:28,760
Speaker 3: to contact someone and get a quick response ever before

862
00:41:28,760 --> 00:41:30,839
Speaker 3: in the history of work. It doesn't show up at

863
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 3: all in the economic metrics, and I think that's something

864
00:41:34,560 --> 00:41:36,480
Speaker 3: they should have us really worried, right, And I think

865
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:38,960
Speaker 3: in large part of it is because it turns out

866
00:41:39,080 --> 00:41:43,799
Speaker 3: that all this communication information gathering has an impact on

867
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:45,839
Speaker 3: our brains functioning. It makes it hard for the brain

868
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:48,040
Speaker 3: to do the actual job of thinking and producing value.

869
00:41:48,040 --> 00:41:50,839
Speaker 3: And so if I was measuring productivity, you know, from

870
00:41:51,000 --> 00:41:53,600
Speaker 3: a study perspective, I want to know about how much

871
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 3: dollars are we paying in salary, what are we getting

872
00:41:56,600 --> 00:41:59,880
Speaker 3: back in terms of revenue coming in like sort of

873
00:41:59,880 --> 00:42:02,560
Speaker 3: the these baseline numbers, and just as an aside, there's

874
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 3: this really interesting study from the nineties where an economist

875
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:10,080
Speaker 3: from Georgia Tech was watching personal computers enter the desk

876
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:13,760
Speaker 3: like the workforce, like the front office workforce in fortune

877
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,240
Speaker 3: five hundred companies in the US. Right, So what happened

878
00:42:16,239 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 3: when you got these productivity enhancing computers on everyone's desk?

879
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:24,239
Speaker 3: And he measured the numbers very carefully in the way

880
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 3: I'm talking about. His name was Peter G. Sassone, and

881
00:42:27,280 --> 00:42:29,239
Speaker 3: what he found. I think this is really interesting, is

882
00:42:29,280 --> 00:42:31,919
Speaker 3: that the organization said, hey, look, this is great. These

883
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 3: computers make certain things that we used to have dedicated

884
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:40,439
Speaker 3: support staff do, like typing and sending letters or whatever. Right,

885
00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 3: it makes some of these things easy enough that we

886
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,880
Speaker 3: no longer have to hire dedicated people just to do

887
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,799
Speaker 3: these administrative tasks. Is the higher level they called the

888
00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:51,799
Speaker 3: managers in this study, but sort of, the higher trained

889
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:54,040
Speaker 3: employees can now do it themselves. And so we're going

890
00:42:54,120 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 3: to save all this money by firing all the typists,

891
00:42:57,520 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 3: and we don't need everyone to have secretaries anymore because

892
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 3: you can send emails and do word processing. What ended

893
00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 3: up happening, however, is that he calls us the diminishment

894
00:43:05,440 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 3: of intellectual specialization. Now you take the people who were

895
00:43:08,920 --> 00:43:11,719
Speaker 3: actually producing the things to brought value into the organizations,

896
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 3: and all this administrative work fell onto their plate. It

897
00:43:14,600 --> 00:43:17,600
Speaker 3: then took more of those people to produce the same

898
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 3: amount of work, but their salaries are much higher than

899
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 3: the support staff that they fired. And what with sasone

900
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:26,399
Speaker 3: crunched all the numbers, he figured out that you were

901
00:43:26,440 --> 00:43:30,360
Speaker 3: actually about twenty percent less effective in the sense that

902
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,440
Speaker 3: you could cut your payroll by twenty percent to produce

903
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:36,560
Speaker 3: the same amount of work by bringing back support staff

904
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:38,879
Speaker 3: and allowing people just to focus at the higher level

905
00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:40,640
Speaker 3: on just their work, and you wouldn't need as many

906
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:43,279
Speaker 3: of these expensive high level employees. That's the type of

907
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 3: study I think we need to have in mind who

908
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:47,920
Speaker 3: are thinking about productivity when you get to the dollars

909
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:50,759
Speaker 3: and cents bottom line, I think a lot of what

910
00:43:50,840 --> 00:43:55,480
Speaker 3: we're doing with this constant communication, hyper convenient business is

911
00:43:55,520 --> 00:43:58,200
Speaker 3: having a huge economic impact. So that's a long answer

912
00:43:58,280 --> 00:43:59,759
Speaker 3: to a short question, but it's something that I feel

913
00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:01,960
Speaker 3: really strongly about, and I'm glad that the University of

914
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:04,280
Speaker 3: South Wales is thinking about some studies along these lines.

915
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 2: That is absolutely fascinating. What you described.

916
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:10,840
Speaker 1: I'm also curious, like, what are the variables outside of

917
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:16,160
Speaker 1: productivity would you expect, like actually dedicating more time to

918
00:44:16,280 --> 00:44:19,360
Speaker 1: deep work to have Like, for example, in my own life,

919
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: I just get so much more fulfillment from my work

920
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:26,840
Speaker 1: because I'm creating more meaningful output into the world. So

921
00:44:27,000 --> 00:44:31,280
Speaker 1: I'm curious what other variables you would expect a deep

922
00:44:31,320 --> 00:44:33,719
Speaker 1: work routine to impact.

923
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:39,839
Speaker 3: Well, you should expect more psychological satisfaction and more satisfaction

924
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:44,520
Speaker 3: with work, especially if you pair increased focus on deep

925
00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:50,919
Speaker 3: work with decreased communication responsibilities. So it's true that deep

926
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,160
Speaker 3: work itself is very fulfilling. We like the focus on

927
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:57,600
Speaker 3: one thing and produce something valuable that's very fulfilling, and

928
00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 3: so that makes us happier. The flip side of the

929
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,399
Speaker 3: that is also really negative. So if you're constantly trying

930
00:45:03,440 --> 00:45:06,120
Speaker 3: to deal with tons of communication, each of which is

931
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,279
Speaker 3: someone who needs something from you, and you can't keep

932
00:45:08,360 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 3: up with it because you have hundreds of messages and

933
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 3: it's always piling up and you're always behind. That collides

934
00:45:14,120 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 3: with the sort of ancient paleolithic social wiring in our

935
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:20,960
Speaker 3: brain in a very unnatural way that makes us very

936
00:45:21,040 --> 00:45:24,960
Speaker 3: unhappy and very stressed and very anxious. It's really just

937
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 3: in the way that eating junk food hits our paleolithic

938
00:45:28,440 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 3: you know, food processing system in a bad way. It

939
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 3: makes us really overweight. Our body isn't meant for it.

940
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 3: Our paleolithic social brain is not meant for an inbox

941
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:39,800
Speaker 3: that's always failing and we can't keep up with because

942
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:42,359
Speaker 3: it doesn't know the difference between that email is not

943
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 3: that important and what it was evolved for, which is,

944
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:46,719
Speaker 3: if someone around the tribal fire is trying to get

945
00:45:46,719 --> 00:45:49,680
Speaker 3: your attention, you better listen to them because there's a

946
00:45:49,719 --> 00:45:51,640
Speaker 3: lot at stake if you snub them, right, I mean,

947
00:45:51,680 --> 00:45:55,360
Speaker 3: social dynamics is something we're incredibly cue to, and things

948
00:45:55,440 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 3: like email completely mess around with these finely tuned social dynamics.

949
00:46:00,120 --> 00:46:02,319
Speaker 3: Is why we just feel compulsively like we have to

950
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:05,040
Speaker 3: check it. We feel if a text message comes in

951
00:46:05,080 --> 00:46:07,600
Speaker 3: and we're driving, we still check it, even though it's

952
00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 3: like put in our kids' lives in danger, because to us,

953
00:46:10,080 --> 00:46:12,280
Speaker 3: it's the same as like if someone's tapping your shoulder

954
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:14,319
Speaker 3: at the tribal fire and you ignore them, like you

955
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:15,840
Speaker 3: might get a spear in the back. Right, Like, we

956
00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:19,319
Speaker 3: take that really really seriously. And so the more time

957
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:21,680
Speaker 3: you spend trying to keep up with never ending communication,

958
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:23,919
Speaker 3: the more unhappy you get. The more time you spend

959
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:26,880
Speaker 3: focusing deeply to try to produce valuable things, the happier

960
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:28,520
Speaker 3: we get. So if you can increase the ladder and

961
00:46:28,560 --> 00:46:31,280
Speaker 3: decrease the former, people are going to have a much

962
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 3: more healthy relationship with their work. Your employees are going

963
00:46:34,160 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 3: to be much more protected against burnout, and the positions

964
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:38,879
Speaker 3: are going to be much more sustainable.

965
00:46:39,280 --> 00:46:42,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, and look in the kind of just

966
00:46:42,840 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 1: about out of time, but just in maybe one or

967
00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:48,920
Speaker 1: two minutes, I would just love to I guess you know,

968
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:51,919
Speaker 1: that's a nice segue into the topic of your next book,

969
00:46:51,960 --> 00:46:55,320
Speaker 1: which I believe is about email free organizations.

970
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:56,800
Speaker 2: Is that correct?

971
00:46:57,640 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, the new book, which is should say very much

972
00:47:00,760 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 3: in the early stages, but as of now it's tentatively

973
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 3: titled A World Without Email. It gets into a lot

974
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:10,279
Speaker 3: of these ideas. I mean, I basically argue that we

975
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 3: don't have a good theory right now about how to

976
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,360
Speaker 3: get a lot of value sustainably out of human brains,

977
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:17,399
Speaker 3: and the way we're working is a really terrible way

978
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 3: to work. And we've told ourselves this story that there's

979
00:47:19,800 --> 00:47:21,520
Speaker 3: no other way to work in a modern world than

980
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:23,560
Speaker 3: to just send messages all the time. I can make

981
00:47:23,600 --> 00:47:26,360
Speaker 3: the case that's actually quite arbitrary, and that there's this

982
00:47:26,480 --> 00:47:30,320
Speaker 3: growing movement of organizations who are much more careful about thinking.

983
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:32,720
Speaker 3: We have these brains, we want these brains to produce value.

984
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:34,960
Speaker 3: We don't want these brains to burn out. We're getting

985
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:38,160
Speaker 3: incredibly innovative in answering the question of what's the right

986
00:47:38,200 --> 00:47:39,600
Speaker 3: way to work in a digital world.

987
00:47:41,040 --> 00:47:42,520
Speaker 2: I cannot wait to read that.

988
00:47:42,680 --> 00:47:45,720
Speaker 1: And my final final question, if people want to consume

989
00:47:46,080 --> 00:47:48,960
Speaker 1: more of your work, you're thinking, you're writing cal what's

990
00:47:49,000 --> 00:47:50,360
Speaker 1: the best way for people to do that?

991
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,879
Speaker 3: So, from a book perspective, if you're interested in sort

992
00:47:54,920 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 3: of technology and work and the problems, Deep Work is

993
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 3: a good book. If you're interested in the impact of

994
00:48:00,600 --> 00:48:02,719
Speaker 3: technology and your personal life, you're looking at your phone

995
00:48:02,760 --> 00:48:04,719
Speaker 3: too much, you feel uneasy, you feel like a loss

996
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:08,360
Speaker 3: of autonomy. Digital minimalism is good for you. Online I

997
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 3: don't use social media. I'm not easy to reach, but

998
00:48:11,080 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 3: I do have a blog at calneport dot com that

999
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:16,279
Speaker 3: I've been blogging at for over a decade, and so

1000
00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:18,080
Speaker 3: that's a pretty quick way to sort of dive in

1001
00:48:18,120 --> 00:48:20,279
Speaker 3: and see in more detail some of my ideas.

1002
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:24,399
Speaker 1: Awesome, Cal, it has been an absolute joy talking to you.

1003
00:48:24,440 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time.

1004
00:48:26,560 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 3: Oh it's my pleasure. Thank you.

1005
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,239
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoyed my chat with Cal. If

1006
00:48:31,239 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: you know someone that you think would find equal enjoyment

1007
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,640
Speaker 1: in this episode, why not share it with someone you

1008
00:48:38,719 --> 00:48:40,640
Speaker 1: think could benefit.

1009
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:46,279
Speaker 2: That would be lovely. Spreading this podcast around.

1010
00:48:46,280 --> 00:48:49,399
Speaker 1: Is one of the ways that it grows, so thank

1011
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 1: you in advance if you decide to do that. So

1012
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:53,960
Speaker 1: that is it for today and I will see you

1013
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:54,800
Speaker 1: next time.