Speaker 1: If you're a bit of a productivity buff, you probably
Speaker 1: have some clever hacks for reducing time spent reading or
Speaker 1: sending emails. Maybe you use Superhuman like I do, or
Speaker 1: maybe you're a big proponent of inbox zero. Either way,
Speaker 1: you're probably not looking for So how I work episode
Speaker 1: that suggests you spend more time on email? But this
Speaker 1: is different. The goal of true productivity, after all, is
Speaker 1: to get more meaningful work done in less time. So
Speaker 1: what if using some work tools at home could enable
Speaker 1: you to make more intelligent decisions in less time. That's
Speaker 1: exactly what Brown University economics professor Emily Oster and her
Speaker 1: partner and sometimes even her kids do when they send
Speaker 1: emails to each other. So how can using email in
Speaker 1: your personal life actually help strengthen relationships and lead to
Speaker 1: better decisions. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him.
Speaker 1: And this is how I work, a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. On today is
Speaker 1: my Favorite Tip episode. We go back to an interview
Speaker 1: from the past, and I pick out my favorite tip
Speaker 1: from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Emily
Speaker 1: Osta about why she sends fairly regular emails to all
Speaker 1: members of her family. Now, I've heard that when you're
Speaker 1: talking about like different matters relating to your kids, you
Speaker 1: will do quite a bit of email discussion with your husband.
Speaker 2: Is that right? That is right? Yeah, we do a
Speaker 2: lot of our interaction over email. I love a good email.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why you decide to do that
Speaker 1: via email than some other communication channel, like face to
Speaker 1: face at the dinner table.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, the kids are at the dinner
Speaker 3: channeling about that. But I yeah, so I think that
Speaker 3: that we try pretty hard to do to do much
Speaker 3: of this interaction over email. And I think part of
Speaker 3: you know, or over some like to get even more extreme,
Speaker 3: like in an Assana task or over something like that.
Speaker 2: And I think that the reason is that that you
Speaker 2: can be much more direct and concrete and understanding is
Speaker 2: just much clearer when it is written down and it
Speaker 2: sets expectations in a way that everybody can see, like
Speaker 2: can see what is written, can see what we agreed on,
Speaker 2: can sort of like see all of the information together.
Speaker 2: It's also an efficient way to be able to go
Speaker 2: back and back and forth between sort of learning something
Speaker 2: and asking questions and learning more. So give you an example,
Speaker 2: there was like a period of time when one of
Speaker 2: my kids had a tick on them, like there's like
Speaker 2: a bug and tick on them, and there's like a
Speaker 2: question about there's a concern about mime disease where I live,
Speaker 2: which is a thing that you can get if you
Speaker 2: have a tick bite. And we had to have a
Speaker 2: discussion about whether we wanted to like pre treat him
Speaker 2: with antibiotics for this. And that is a place where
Speaker 2: like having the interaction the about that question over email
Speaker 2: is very productive because I can say here are the facts.
Speaker 2: He can say, well, here's the question that I still have.
Speaker 2: And rather than him saying over the breakfast table, here's
Speaker 2: the question I still have and me being like, okay,
Speaker 2: let me try to remember, like look at that later
Speaker 2: and then get back to you about it. I can
Speaker 2: just see the email, put it aside when I have time,
Speaker 2: come back to it, send it back to him. And
Speaker 2: it's sort of like so sometimes I say, like, your
Speaker 2: computer doesn't get tired of remembering things even though you do,
Speaker 2: and so you've got to like give your computer a
Speaker 2: little mental load.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you do like because of
Speaker 1: your background that helps you like in work or life
Speaker 1: that other people would go, oh, that's really quirky.
Speaker 2: See, we have a lot of these same kinds of
Speaker 2: interactions with our kids where we will sort of interact
Speaker 2: over email with them. And the other day so I
Speaker 2: noticed that they were emailing each other, and you know,
Speaker 2: there's like six and ten, it's like my son opened
Speaker 2: up his computer and he was like emailing with he
Speaker 2: like emailed like, I hope you have a good evening.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't even know where they come up
Speaker 2: with this, where they come up with this stuff, but
Speaker 2: but I think we do, you know, sort of lean
Speaker 2: into the idea that had kind of everybody in the
Speaker 2: in the household can engage in this kind of slightly
Speaker 2: structured decision making.
Speaker 1: That is it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: my chat with Emily. And if you're looking for more
Speaker 1: tips to improve the way that you work, I write
Speaker 1: a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that
Speaker 1: I have discovered that helped me work better, ranging from
Speaker 1: interesting research findings three to gadgets that I'm loving. You
Speaker 1: can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's
Speaker 1: how I Work dot C. How I Work is produced
Speaker 1: by Inventi with production support from Dead Set Studios. And
Speaker 1: thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix
Speaker 1: for every episode and makes everything sound so much better
Speaker 1: than it would have otherwise. See you next time.