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Speaker 1: I read a lot of books, but it's rare to

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Speaker 1: read one that fundamentally changes the way you work. For me,

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Speaker 1: that book was Deep Work by Cal Newport. I read

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Speaker 1: it back in twenty seventeen, and in case you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar with Cal, he's a computer science professor at Georgetown

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Speaker 1: University and also a best selling author. Deep Work completely

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Speaker 1: changed the way I approached my work and made me

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Speaker 1: infinitely more productive and happier at work too. So you

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Speaker 1: could probably imagine that when I heard that Cal has

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Speaker 1: just released his latest book, A World Without Email, to

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Speaker 1: say I was excited to read it was an understatement.

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Speaker 1: I immediately reached out to get Cal back on the show,

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Speaker 1: and I'm so excited to share this chat. If you're

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Speaker 1: keen to dramatically reduce the amount of time you spend

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Speaker 1: in your inbox and to not just try to do

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Speaker 1: this with standard productivity hacks like batch checking, then I

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Speaker 1: think you're gonna love this chat with Cal. My name

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Speaker 1: is doctor Ramantha In. I'm an organizational psychologist and the

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Speaker 1: founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how

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Speaker 1: I work a show about how to help you do

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Speaker 1: your best work. So given it's been about two years

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Speaker 1: since I first had Cal on the show. I was

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Speaker 1: very kenny to hear about new work rituals or habits

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Speaker 1: or processes that he'd been implementing since we last spoke.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the ideas that has clarified

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Speaker 2: in my mind, it's one of the big ideas in

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Speaker 2: the new book, is that when you're thinking about your

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Speaker 2: work and knowledge work, you should really think about yourself

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Speaker 2: as implementing a bunch of different separate processes the things

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Speaker 2: you do regularly in knowledge work, and you want to

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Speaker 2: think about how you implement these. And I've always thought

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Speaker 2: about process oriented workflows, but the big insight I've had

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Speaker 2: working on the new book is one of the main

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Speaker 2: things you want to optimize when you're thinking about these

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Speaker 2: different work processes is reducing unscheduled messaging. So how much

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Speaker 2: unscheduled messages do I have to receive to accomplish this

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Speaker 2: process or that process? And so a lot of my

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Speaker 2: new rituals, a lot of my new processes are seeing

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Speaker 2: to this light of how do I reduce the number

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Speaker 2: of unscheduled messages required to get this thing done or

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Speaker 2: to make progress on this regularly occurring obligation, and so

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Speaker 2: you'll see things in my life now, like when it

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Speaker 2: comes to doing publicity tour with like my US based

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Speaker 2: publicist for my book tour, we created a system using

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Speaker 2: a shared document where opportunities going to the document, questions

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Speaker 2: of me are put in the document. I checked the

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Speaker 2: document twice a week. I would come in and say, okay,

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Speaker 2: I'll do this one. Here's when I can do it.

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Speaker 2: I signed up for this one, and we found a

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Speaker 2: way for my US publicy for example, just give one

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Speaker 2: example among many of booking interviews without emailing back and forth.

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Speaker 2: And so I think a lot of my new rituals

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Speaker 2: in the last two years are really built around this

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Speaker 2: idea of how do I reduce unscheduled messaging to get

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Speaker 2: things done.

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Speaker 1: What did your US publicists think about that? Notion't because

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Speaker 1: that must be very novel for them.

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean the fact that we were publicizing a

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Speaker 2: book about this certainly helps, right, So I could say, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that's what it says in the book. But in general,

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Speaker 2: what I find with more structured collaboration processes is that

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Speaker 2: we often think what people really want is accessibility, but

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Speaker 2: it's not really true. What people want is clarity, and

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Speaker 2: if there's not clarity about how a certain collaboration happens,

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Speaker 2: then the default is people want just accessibility, because if

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Speaker 2: they don't know or trust that you're going to answer

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Speaker 2: something or keep track of something, or do something they

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Speaker 2: ask you to do, then what they'll want in its

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Speaker 2: stead is just okay, can you just answer my message

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Speaker 2: right away because I have to keep track of this

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Speaker 2: to I hear back from you. Once there's something more

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Speaker 2: structured in its place, people are just as happy. The

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Speaker 2: main thing that you really want to avoid, or I

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Speaker 2: found that people want to avoid, is just lack of clarity.

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Speaker 2: If there's no clarity, then I just want you to

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Speaker 2: answer right away, because otherwise I don't trust something that's

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Speaker 2: going to get done. If there is clarity, Oh, it

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Speaker 2: goes into this document. You check the document twice a week.

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Speaker 2: I get how that works. Good people tend to be

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Speaker 2: pretty happy with it, and I think that's a there

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Speaker 2: was a key understanding for me is that you're not

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Speaker 2: taking something away from people. By placing more structure about

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Speaker 2: your interaction. You might actually be making that interaction much

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Speaker 2: more positive for that person.

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Speaker 1: Now in your new book, A World Without Email, which

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Speaker 1: I was just saying before we hit record, I loved,

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Speaker 1: I devoured it. I had such high expectations for it,

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Speaker 1: and it still exceeded those expectations. So thank you for

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Speaker 1: running such a brilliant book. But one of the things

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Speaker 1: I appreciated is that you talk a lot about your

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Speaker 1: own processes in the book, and I want to dig

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Speaker 1: into some of those. So I want to start with

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Speaker 1: how you designed your workflow in Trello for your role

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Speaker 1: as the director of graduate studies. And I was wondering

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Speaker 1: if you could explain what that looks like exactly and

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Speaker 1: how you went about that design process well.

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Speaker 2: And this was certainly a role that had the threat

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Speaker 2: of generating lots and lots of unscheduled messaging. It's an

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Speaker 2: administrative role where I was both responsive to students, right,

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Speaker 2: so the grad students in our department would come to me,

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Speaker 2: did questions about anything. We're talking about complex logistical issues,

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Speaker 2: visa issues, grade issues, graduation requirement issues, steps required to

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Speaker 2: make sure that they defend their dissertation properly, the right

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Speaker 2: things or fileding. All of these things fell under my purview.

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Speaker 2: And then there was a lot of university facing back

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Speaker 2: and forth. What is our budget for the grad program

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Speaker 2: this year? What is happening with this particular student's tuition credits?

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Speaker 1: Right?

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Speaker 2: So it was a very complex logistical job that we

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Speaker 2: sort of rotate through. So I came at it with

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Speaker 2: the mindset it was a great case study. I came

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Speaker 2: at it with the mindset that I lay out in

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Speaker 2: that book A World Without Email, which was break us

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Speaker 2: down in the processes. What are the component things that

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Speaker 2: make up this job that happen again and again and

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Speaker 2: for each actually answer the question how do I want

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Speaker 2: to implement it? And that's where I came up with

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Speaker 2: using some of these different tools. So Trello certainly played

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Speaker 2: a big role. Everything that I was responsible for doing.

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Speaker 2: Everything I was waiting to hear back from someone on

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Speaker 2: everything I needed to think about more and figure out

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Speaker 2: what it meant. Went onto a Trello board. I had

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Speaker 2: columns for different categories of these tasks. Some was not

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Speaker 2: urgent but need to think about it, Some was okay,

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Speaker 2: it needs to be done really soon. A really key

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Speaker 2: column on here was waiting to hear back from someone.

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Speaker 2: So if I had sent a note to someone, can

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Speaker 2: you explain this to me? I need an answer to

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Speaker 2: a question I would be able to keep track of that. Okay, oh,

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Speaker 2: here it is, I see that. That's something I'm waiting

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Speaker 2: to hear back from people what I'm working on this week.

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Speaker 2: That trailer board became a repository of most of the

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Speaker 2: obligations They went onto that board, and then a few

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Speaker 2: times a week I would use that board, go at it,

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Speaker 2: look at it, organize it, and figure out, Okay, what

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Speaker 2: do I need to be working on in the next

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Speaker 2: few days. And so a lot of this was trying

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Speaker 2: to get stuff immediately out of my inbox and into

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Speaker 2: a system where I could see things all together. I

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Speaker 2: could batch things, I could dispatch things in one big conversation,

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Speaker 2: I could take things off my plate. They really gave

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Speaker 2: me just a visual lay of the land of everything

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Speaker 2: that was on my plate relevant to that role and.

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Speaker 1: So still in your inbox. Because I was curious, what

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Speaker 1: role does email then play for you in your life

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Speaker 1: because of these processes and workflows that you've adopted.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the thing that I worry about is unscheduled messages,

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Speaker 2: not messages in general. I mean communication has to happen

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Speaker 2: to do collaborative work. The thing that I villainize in

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Speaker 2: my book is this notion of what I call the

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Speaker 2: hyperactive hive mind, where you work most things out. It's

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Speaker 2: a common workflow where you work most things out with

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Speaker 2: these unscheduled back and forth digital conversations. That's a real

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Speaker 2: productivity killer. It's what I'm trying to avoid because once

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Speaker 2: you're using these ongoing, unstructured ad hoc back and forth

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Speaker 2: digital conversations as the main way that you get things done,

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Speaker 2: if you're doing more than a couple things, it means

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Speaker 2: you have to constantly be tending these communication channels and

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Speaker 2: inboxes because you're trying to keep up with lots of

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Speaker 2: these ongoing, asynchronous conversations. So I don't mind email as

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Speaker 2: a tool. What I do mind is the hyperactive hive mind.

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Speaker 2: So everything I'm trying to do is to get away

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Speaker 2: from having a sort of back and forth unscheduled conversation

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Speaker 2: happening digitally right finding the broadcast information. Email's great. If

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Speaker 2: someone wants to put something on my plate, I'm happy

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Speaker 2: for it to come via email. If I need to

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Speaker 2: set something up with someone, I'm happy to send that

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Speaker 2: via email. But the thing to really avoid is just

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Speaker 2: what do you think about this question? Mark?

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Speaker 1: All? Right?

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Speaker 2: Well, when should we meet and let's go back and forth.

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Speaker 2: Do you know anything about what's going on over here

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Speaker 2: with Bob? Can we get some sort of solutions that's

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Speaker 2: sort of back and forth, asynchronous back and forth conversation.

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Speaker 2: That is the real killer of productivity. So that's what

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Speaker 2: I was always trying to minimize.

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Speaker 1: Yes, oh gosh, And I know I can relate to that.

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Speaker 1: And it was so funny. As I was in the

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Speaker 1: process of reading your book, I kind of read it

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Speaker 1: over about a two or three day period. I was

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Speaker 1: thinking about my inbox and there's a particular new product

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Speaker 1: that I'm working on with a colleague, and I was

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Speaker 1: just thinking, I think I've got about six or seven

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Speaker 1: emails about different parts of that product that we're trying

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Speaker 1: to develop sitting in my inbox, and it was doing

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Speaker 1: my head in and I was procrastinating on risks. I'm like,

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Speaker 1: I need to organize exactly what does she need me

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Speaker 1: to do and how long will it all take? And

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Speaker 1: the book really resonated with me because I think that

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Speaker 1: there are just so many instances where that happens. So

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Speaker 1: given that, like in a typical day, how often would

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Speaker 1: you be in your inbox, given email does play a role,

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Speaker 1: but it's a much smaller role than people think that

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Speaker 1: it should play in their lives.

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Speaker 2: Well, first of all, just note, you know, speaking to

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Speaker 2: your situation, that would be a perfect example where the

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Speaker 2: right thing to do here, or a much more effective

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Speaker 2: thing to do there would be you have some sort

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Speaker 2: of shared system where all of the information, question, task

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Speaker 2: and ideas around that product is all stored and everyone

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Speaker 2: can see it, and then they highly structured as twice

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Speaker 2: a week, twenty minute conversation. That's on the books. It's

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Speaker 2: real time. What are you working on, What happened to

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Speaker 2: the thing you were doing? What do you need for

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Speaker 2: me to get the next thing done? We're all on

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Speaker 2: the same page. Good, We'll talk in two days, no emails,

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Speaker 2: forty minutes of talk in a week, and you could

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Speaker 2: be super productive. But going back to my life, well,

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Speaker 2: first of all, I don't have a in box singular.

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Speaker 2: I think I have something like six maybe seven different inboxes.

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Speaker 2: I'm not a big believer in just having a single

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Speaker 2: catch all email addresses associated with your name. We have

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Speaker 2: different roles, we have different types of work we work on.

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Speaker 2: Not all of this should be let's say, combined together.

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Speaker 2: Right in one inbox. I have many different types of

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Speaker 2: inboxes for many different roles within my life as a

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Speaker 2: writer and a computer scientist. How and when I check

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Speaker 2: them depends on the day, depends on the season, right,

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Speaker 2: So I'll go some days where I'm just locked in

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Speaker 2: working on something hard, no email gets checked. I have

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Speaker 2: other days where okay, I'm spending a lot of time

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Speaker 2: in some of these inboxes catching up on various announcements

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Speaker 2: or questions that have been sent in, and those days

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Speaker 2: will be pretty heavy email. It just depends on what's

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Speaker 2: going on that day. But the key thing is I

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Speaker 2: time block plan so I give every minute of my

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Speaker 2: day a job. I don't go through my day reactively.

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Speaker 2: So when it is I'm going to check various email

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Speaker 2: inboxes is figured out in advance. It's never a default activity.

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Speaker 2: It's never something I fall back on to you say Okay,

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Speaker 2: what should I do next? I prefer to make those

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Speaker 2: decisions much more or intentionally.

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Speaker 1: Do you time block, like literally every chunk of time

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Speaker 1: of your working day, let's say between nine to five?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so if you use something like my

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Speaker 2: time block Planner product, it's literally a grid and there's

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Speaker 2: different columns in the grid. You start in the first column,

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Speaker 2: you mark off the hours, so all the hours of

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Speaker 2: your workday are there and have boxes for them, right,

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Speaker 2: and you draw boxes. You're blocking off every I'm in

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Speaker 2: a meeting here for these thirty minutes, I'm working on this.

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Speaker 2: For the next two hours, I'm working on this. You

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Speaker 2: really are planning. There is no gaps. Every minute of

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Speaker 2: your day gets a plan. And if you fall off

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Speaker 2: your plan, which happens, you move over to the next column,

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Speaker 2: fix the plan for the time that remains. And then

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Speaker 2: if you fall off that plan, you move over to

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Speaker 2: the next column and you can fix your plan for

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Speaker 2: the time that remains. But at any moment, the idea

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Speaker 2: is that what you're doing with the time that remains

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Speaker 2: in the day is something that you've given some thought to.

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Speaker 2: You're never in a time block planning approach. You're never reactive.

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Speaker 2: You never let the incoming determine what you're going to

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Speaker 2: work on that day, because that will one hundred hijack

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Speaker 2: all your time away from the things that really matter.

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Speaker 1: And I'm imagining that you would time blocking your lunch

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Speaker 1: or breaks as well.

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Speaker 2: Yep, yeah, here's why I'm going to take lunch here'

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Speaker 2: we're gonna take a break. One of the reasons why

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Speaker 2: people who time block get a bit of a productivity

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Speaker 2: boost is that they time block their breaks. It's a

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Speaker 2: subtle psychological thing. But if you don't plan when your

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Speaker 2: breaks are going to come, then any moment is potentially

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Speaker 2: a time you could take a break. So what happens

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Speaker 2: is you are all throughout the day having to have

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Speaker 2: this argument with your mind, should we take a break now,

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Speaker 2: should we jump on the email now? Should we look

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Speaker 2: on social media now? And if there's no pre plan

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Speaker 2: about when you're going to take those breaks, you're constantly

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Speaker 2: having this argument. You're going to lose that argument more

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Speaker 2: often than you win it, and you end up fragmenting

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Speaker 2: your attention way more so. Even just knowing here's why

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Speaker 2: I checking email, Here's why I'm just going to zone

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Speaker 2: out for thirty minutes and look on social media. Knowing

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Speaker 2: when that is has the advantage of in they other time,

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Speaker 2: you don't even have to have the debate.

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Speaker 1: Now, you describe the personal canban in your book, can

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Speaker 1: you talk about how you use it in your own life?

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Speaker 2: So I have one of these taskboards for each of

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Speaker 2: the different roles in my life. So when I was

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Speaker 2: a director of graduate studies, that was one board. I

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Speaker 2: have one board for writing. I have another board for

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Speaker 2: my computer science research, and I have another board for

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Speaker 2: I call it like professor. It's class related things and

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Speaker 2: university administration related things, right, so I sort of separate

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Speaker 2: those from research. So for each of those roles, I

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Speaker 2: have a board where I keep track of all the

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Speaker 2: things that I need to be doing and their status.

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Speaker 2: And you're like, well, I can load it up. I

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Speaker 2: have it right here, sot me load it up on

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Speaker 2: my computer. Depending on the board, I have different columns,

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Speaker 2: but I'm looking right now. For example, on my writer board,

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Speaker 2: I have a column called two process. So sometimes you're like, Okay,

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Speaker 2: here's something I need to work on, but I can't

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Speaker 2: even right now figure out what that means. Right, Like

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Speaker 2: I need to figure out a book launch campaign, Like

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Speaker 2: we need to get started on the book launch campaign,

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Speaker 2: and I don't even know what that means other than

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Speaker 2: we need to do this soon. So two process means

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Speaker 2: here's things that need to be thought through and figured out,

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Speaker 2: like what activities they actually relate to. Then I have

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Speaker 2: two different I call them back burner columns. So these

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Speaker 2: are things that they're not urgent, but the things I

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Speaker 2: want to do at some point probably, And I have

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Speaker 2: a couple of these different columns are just kind of

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Speaker 2: categorizing by whether it's related to book writing or whether

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Speaker 2: it's related to sort of bore my book business activities.

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Speaker 2: I have a waiting to hear back column, So to me,

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Speaker 2: it's a huge mental relief to know that if I

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Speaker 2: am waiting to hear back from someone about something, that

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Speaker 2: it's written down somewhere, I don't have to keep track

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Speaker 2: of that in my head. Then I have a column

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Speaker 2: for this week, So I'll move cards over to this

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Speaker 2: week when I do my weekly plan. Okay, these are

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Speaker 2: the things that I want to actually get done this week.

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Speaker 2: I look at these boards in detail. At the beginning

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Speaker 2: of each week, I move things over to the column

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Speaker 2: for what I want to execute this week, and then

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Speaker 2: each day, as I make my plan, I look at

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Speaker 2: these boards, but really focus in on the this week

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Speaker 2: column and say, Okay, which of these things am I

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Speaker 2: going to try to fit in today? And so I

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Speaker 2: have a board like this for all my different roles.

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Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about a column in your

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Speaker 1: board that is called to discuss can you talk a

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Speaker 1: bit more about the two discuss columns. I found that

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Speaker 1: quite interesting.

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Speaker 2: Oh, that was critical for my director of Graduate Study

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Speaker 2: setup because there was a couple people in that role

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Speaker 2: that I had to talk two weekly. So there's my

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Speaker 2: department chair and there's lots of issues that the department

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Speaker 2: chair is the right person to talk to in that role.

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Speaker 2: And then also there's a program administrator, the graduate program

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Speaker 2: administrator with whom I worked, and so we would meet

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Speaker 2: a couple times a week usually, and so it was

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Speaker 2: sort of a two man job. And what I had

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Speaker 2: with this too Discuss column is I realized I could

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Speaker 2: save a ton of communication if every time I had

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Speaker 2: something I needed to ask my department chair or ask

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Speaker 2: my program administrator instead of just shooting off an email

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Speaker 2: in that moment, which in the moment would give me

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Speaker 2: a little bit of relief. But every one of those

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Speaker 2: is a new unscheduled message that's out there, and a

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Speaker 2: new unscheduled response that's going to come back, and perhaps

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Speaker 2: even a long back and forth chain of unscheduled messages,

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Speaker 2: which I learned doing the research for my book is

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Speaker 2: productivity Poison. I would put it under the two Discussed column,

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Speaker 2: and I actually had one for each of those two

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Speaker 2: different people. Then whenever I had my next meeting with them,

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Speaker 2: I'd be like, Okay, hold on, I got a lot

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Speaker 2: of things to go through here, and think, bam bam bam,

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Speaker 2: bam bam, go through all the things in that list,

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Speaker 2: and we just resolve them so quick because there's a

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Speaker 2: real time back and forth. Bam bam, bam, bam bam.

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Speaker 2: Probably saved many dozens of unscheduled emails per week by

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Speaker 2: just waiting until I got to those next meetings. So

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Speaker 2: that was a great That was a great productivity saver

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Speaker 2: for that particular role.

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Speaker 1: Would you ever come across things that you're like, no,

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Speaker 1: that this is an urgent thing to discuss, or do

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Speaker 1: you think that people may be listening going well, when

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Speaker 1: I fire off an email to someone, I need a

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Speaker 1: response now, do you think that maybe just overestimating what

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Speaker 1: is urgent and what is not actually that urgent.

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Speaker 2: I mean, often when people think they need a response now,

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Speaker 2: it's because they don't want to keep track of it.

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Speaker 2: They say, Okay, I want a response now because I

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Speaker 2: don't know if you're going to answer or not, and

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Speaker 2: I can't I'm not organized enough to keep track of, Like,

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Speaker 2: have I heard back from cal about this? So I

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Speaker 2: just I'm going to send you this email and just

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Speaker 2: get a response right away so I can take this

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Speaker 2: off the things I need to worry about. That's usually

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Speaker 2: why people need immediate responses. It's a function of disorganization,

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Speaker 2: not an actual function of urgency. Structure solves this problem.

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Speaker 2: Base Camp, for example, Jason Freed's company, their subject matter

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Speaker 2: experts have office hours. If you have a question for me,

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Speaker 2: wait till my office hours, come to my office hours,

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Speaker 2: ask me in my office hours. They worried that people

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Speaker 2: want it. Put up with the delay. I mean some

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Speaker 2: of these people only did office hours once a week,

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Speaker 2: so you could have up to seven days you had

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Speaker 2: to wait before you could ask someone a question. There

384
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Speaker 2: are very few complaints because it turned out urgency was

385
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Speaker 2: not really a big issue here. It's just clarity. So

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Speaker 2: if they know, oh, this is how I ask questions

387
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Speaker 2: on Monday mornings, I go there and ask you this question. Okay,

388
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Speaker 2: so I'll just have to wait till Monday and then

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Speaker 2: I'll ask you. Let me. People are fine, So again,

390
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Speaker 2: I come back to this a lot. Clarity Trump's accessibility,

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Speaker 2: We need an urgent response, typically not because this actually

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Speaker 2: needs a response right now, but because I don't want

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Speaker 2: to keep track of it.

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Speaker 1: I do love that idea of applying the academic idea

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Speaker 1: of office hours to a company, and I loved what

396
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Speaker 1: base camp for doing. Now I want to talk about outsourcing,

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Speaker 1: because you do write a bit about that in the

398
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Speaker 1: book What have you outsourced in your own work life?

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Speaker 2: I mean outsourcing It's difficult, right, there's two different responses

400
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Speaker 2: to a common problem. The common problem here is that

401
00:18:29,240 --> 00:18:32,159
Speaker 2: the average knowledge worker does too much. And not only

402
00:18:32,240 --> 00:18:36,360
Speaker 2: they do too much, but we've created this productivity paradox

403
00:18:36,560 --> 00:18:41,640
Speaker 2: where modern technology made a lot of logistical or administrative

404
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:45,399
Speaker 2: tasks just easy enough that anyone could do them, and

405
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Speaker 2: so we just put them on the plate not of

406
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Speaker 2: support staff, but just of the people who are also

407
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Speaker 2: doing the frontline work. Right because well, we have email,

408
00:18:51,760 --> 00:18:53,399
Speaker 2: now you don't need someone to type thing. Do you

409
00:18:53,440 --> 00:18:54,920
Speaker 2: have a work process or you don't need a type is?

410
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Speaker 2: You know, we've moved things onto the plate of the

411
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Speaker 2: frontline work. So now the frontline worker has way too

412
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Speaker 2: much work and way too administrative work probably on their

413
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Speaker 2: plate to actually get a good return from the brain power.

414
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Speaker 2: So this is a real issue. It's it's the it's

415
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Speaker 2: called the diminishment of intellectual specializations, a technical term net net.

416
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Speaker 2: It probably makes us less profitable, right, Yeah, you save

417
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Speaker 2: money by not having support staff, but you lose money

418
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Speaker 2: because you have to hire more expensive frontline workers to

419
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Speaker 2: get the same amount of work done. You end up

420
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Speaker 2: usually worse off. So how can we deal with this problem?

421
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Speaker 2: If let's say you're a solopreneur or a freelancer, so you

422
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Speaker 2: don't you know, you don't have support staff and a

423
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Speaker 2: company that you can you can put work off to. Well,

424
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Speaker 2: there's there's two responses here. One is to outsource things, right,

425
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Speaker 2: this has to be done, but let me paying someone

426
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Speaker 2: else to do this is going to be net net

427
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Speaker 2: better because I can produce more valuable things. But the

428
00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:48,720
Speaker 2: other option is to just minimize the amount of things

429
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Speaker 2: on your plate in the first place. And so, I mean,

430
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Speaker 2: I heard someone say once and I kind of like

431
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Speaker 2: this idea. Once you get to the level where you

432
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Speaker 2: think you need a personal assistant, your right response should

433
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Speaker 2: be I need to do less, not I need the

434
00:20:01,280 --> 00:20:03,960
Speaker 2: higher personal assistant. So in my life, I've I've felt

435
00:20:04,440 --> 00:20:07,760
Speaker 2: a tension Between those two things, I've gone through periods

436
00:20:07,800 --> 00:20:12,560
Speaker 2: where I've had assistant types handling more, and I've gone

437
00:20:12,600 --> 00:20:14,640
Speaker 2: through periods where I've just tried to minimize take things

438
00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:17,120
Speaker 2: off my plate, and usually taking things off my plate

439
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:19,919
Speaker 2: just not doing them bypassing those opportunities, not doing this

440
00:20:19,960 --> 00:20:23,800
Speaker 2: particular type of work that often work better now. The

441
00:20:23,800 --> 00:20:25,919
Speaker 2: one exception is that there's certain things, especially in my

442
00:20:25,960 --> 00:20:28,640
Speaker 2: business life as opposed to my CS life, that are

443
00:20:28,760 --> 00:20:32,639
Speaker 2: technical and need to be done. And for technical things,

444
00:20:32,640 --> 00:20:35,480
Speaker 2: I do have people you know that are better at me.

445
00:20:35,520 --> 00:20:37,840
Speaker 2: There's I have a web person on retainer so that

446
00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:42,639
Speaker 2: the three dozen small issues involving my various websites and

447
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:45,800
Speaker 2: technology that comes up each week, I can just send

448
00:20:45,800 --> 00:20:48,359
Speaker 2: those immediately to that person. That's really worth the money.

449
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:49,879
Speaker 2: I have some similar people who helped me with my

450
00:20:49,920 --> 00:20:53,520
Speaker 2: podcast that's really worth you know, that's really worth the money.

451
00:20:53,880 --> 00:20:57,240
Speaker 2: So I really evolve on this up and down depending

452
00:20:57,280 --> 00:20:59,600
Speaker 2: on how busy I am. But that's the key tension

453
00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:02,480
Speaker 2: I feel, should I do less or do I need help?

454
00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:05,240
Speaker 1: What's an example of something that you did take off

455
00:21:05,280 --> 00:21:05,720
Speaker 1: your place?

456
00:21:06,440 --> 00:21:09,239
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, okay, these are yeah, good question. So

457
00:21:09,840 --> 00:21:14,040
Speaker 2: like with my podcast for example, I simplified the production

458
00:21:14,880 --> 00:21:18,400
Speaker 2: to the point where there's I didn't need, for example,

459
00:21:19,119 --> 00:21:22,560
Speaker 2: a producer or a production company that I had to

460
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:25,000
Speaker 2: work with the sort of get the files edited and

461
00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:28,400
Speaker 2: put together. I said, I'd rather just create a simpler

462
00:21:28,440 --> 00:21:31,640
Speaker 2: format for my podcast where I could just record it

463
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:33,919
Speaker 2: and edit on the fly and it's ready to go. Right.

464
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:37,240
Speaker 2: So now I do have someone that does the ads

465
00:21:37,280 --> 00:21:39,399
Speaker 2: for the podcast, though, because that's really annoying. You have

466
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:42,160
Speaker 2: to actually deal with advertisers. You actually have to talk

467
00:21:42,200 --> 00:21:44,119
Speaker 2: to people, You actually have to sign contracts, and so

468
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:47,240
Speaker 2: there I'll happily hire someone. But I didn't have a producer.

469
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:49,160
Speaker 2: I took that out. You know, that's the standard thing

470
00:21:49,160 --> 00:21:51,119
Speaker 2: to do. And it wasn't a money issue. It was

471
00:21:51,160 --> 00:21:53,680
Speaker 2: a complexity issue. Now you have another person you're dealing with,

472
00:21:53,720 --> 00:21:55,240
Speaker 2: you have to get things to them in advance, You

473
00:21:55,240 --> 00:21:58,000
Speaker 2: have to explain things. There's more overhead working back and forth,

474
00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:00,919
Speaker 2: and so as an examp where I simplified something so

475
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:04,439
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have to worry about that, There's many different

476
00:22:04,480 --> 00:22:06,439
Speaker 2: types of opportunities to come my way that I just

477
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:10,119
Speaker 2: blanket don't do. I don't consult, I don't do advice calls.

478
00:22:10,359 --> 00:22:14,120
Speaker 2: I do very limited speaking because again there's a lot

479
00:22:14,119 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 2: of overhead involved with that. Now I could hire people

480
00:22:16,640 --> 00:22:19,320
Speaker 2: to help me with that overhead, but I'd rather just

481
00:22:19,480 --> 00:22:21,680
Speaker 2: not have the overhead In the first place. I had

482
00:22:21,720 --> 00:22:24,280
Speaker 2: someone who was helping me emails that had their own

483
00:22:24,320 --> 00:22:27,160
Speaker 2: email address, an assistant that could communicate on my behalf.

484
00:22:27,200 --> 00:22:30,280
Speaker 2: But I found it simpler to actually just close up

485
00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:33,920
Speaker 2: the incoming channel, so less emails came through and there's

486
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:36,240
Speaker 2: just less for me to answer. So, you know, this

487
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:38,680
Speaker 2: type of thing shows up pretty often actually in my

488
00:22:38,720 --> 00:22:40,719
Speaker 2: work life, where I actually try to constrain things or

489
00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:44,600
Speaker 2: simplify things as opposed to hire someone to handle something complex.

490
00:22:45,160 --> 00:22:47,600
Speaker 1: Do you still use a virtual assistant like you write

491
00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:48,359
Speaker 1: about in the book.

492
00:22:48,800 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 2: No, I don't work with her anymore. Yeah, I just

493
00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:56,119
Speaker 2: I instead I simplified things. I simplify things even further,

494
00:22:56,160 --> 00:22:58,560
Speaker 2: so there there's less emails to deal with, and then

495
00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,399
Speaker 2: I ended up with more subject matter experts. So you know,

496
00:23:01,480 --> 00:23:03,200
Speaker 2: I have my web person who can do a lot

497
00:23:03,240 --> 00:23:06,440
Speaker 2: of my internet stuff, and that took a lot off

498
00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:10,560
Speaker 2: my plate. And I have my publicist at the publisher

499
00:23:11,119 --> 00:23:13,680
Speaker 2: really could handle a lot of the publicity related things,

500
00:23:13,680 --> 00:23:15,280
Speaker 2: so I didn't really need the assistant to help with that,

501
00:23:16,040 --> 00:23:18,639
Speaker 2: and projects that I was using are for I just

502
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:22,040
Speaker 2: stopped doing. So I was taking that original piece of advice, Hey,

503
00:23:22,040 --> 00:23:23,920
Speaker 2: when you need an assistant, maybe you need to do less.

504
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 2: I took that to heart and it's been okay, it's

505
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:27,120
Speaker 2: worked pretty well.

506
00:23:27,960 --> 00:23:30,920
Speaker 1: I want to know what your process was for actually

507
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:34,120
Speaker 1: writing the book. What were some of the workflows that

508
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,719
Speaker 1: you had to actually create this book when you were

509
00:23:37,760 --> 00:23:40,920
Speaker 1: doing the researching and the actual writing.

510
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:44,359
Speaker 2: Is Yeah, it's an interesting question. People often ask me

511
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 2: about my writing habits, and one of the reasons why

512
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:49,199
Speaker 2: it's a little bit hard for me to answer is

513
00:23:49,200 --> 00:23:51,320
Speaker 2: just I've always been writing books. I mean my entire

514
00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:53,920
Speaker 2: adult life. I signed my first book deal right after

515
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:56,439
Speaker 2: I turned twenty one. There's really no period in my

516
00:23:56,440 --> 00:23:59,600
Speaker 2: life where I'm not writing books at the same time

517
00:23:59,600 --> 00:24:01,720
Speaker 2: as whatever where else is going on, right, So it's

518
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:05,160
Speaker 2: almost like asking a fish about water. I'm just very

519
00:24:05,240 --> 00:24:07,040
Speaker 2: used to this idea that one of the things that

520
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 2: I'm always scheduling time for week in and week out

521
00:24:10,240 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 2: is reading, thinking, writing, you know, And if I'm not

522
00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 2: actively working on a book manuscript, I'm writing articles for magazines.

523
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:21,840
Speaker 2: I'm writing longer essays, so I just am always putting

524
00:24:21,840 --> 00:24:24,679
Speaker 2: aside a non trivial amount of time to work on

525
00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:27,280
Speaker 2: my book. Now, the particular systems I use, it's really

526
00:24:27,320 --> 00:24:29,520
Speaker 2: not that complicated. When I read books, I mark them

527
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:31,439
Speaker 2: up physically with a pencil, so it's really easy to

528
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 2: go back. I have a particular format I use, really

529
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,760
Speaker 2: easy to go back and find notes. I use online

530
00:24:36,840 --> 00:24:39,440
Speaker 2: note taking systems typically, ever, note I've experimented with a

531
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 2: few others that actually capture my various research I'm doing

532
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:46,080
Speaker 2: for a book. And then at some point when I'm

533
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:49,280
Speaker 2: ready to write, I go chapter by chapter and I

534
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 2: pull in the sources I think irrelevant, I look through

535
00:24:51,520 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 2: my notes, I go for a bunch of thinking walks,

536
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,240
Speaker 2: and I just start writing. So the tech behind my

537
00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:59,159
Speaker 2: workflow is relatively straightforward, but the scheduling is just something

538
00:24:59,600 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 2: I'm so I used to Now I'd be very uncomfortable,

539
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,240
Speaker 2: you know, if I wasn't putting aside regular time. It's

540
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:06,760
Speaker 2: just always in my mind, when can I get time

541
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:08,159
Speaker 2: to write? When can I get time to think? And

542
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 2: I'm always fighting for that.

543
00:25:10,560 --> 00:25:13,639
Speaker 1: Do you tend to do your writing at similar times

544
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: during the day? Or is it literally just when you

545
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:16,800
Speaker 1: can find time.

546
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:19,520
Speaker 2: I'm all over the place in my book deep work.

547
00:25:19,520 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 2: I call it the journalistic method of deep work. I'm

548
00:25:22,200 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 2: just used to looking for good opportunities to write. Oh

549
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 2: my wife's taking the kids to this thing. Great, that's

550
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:29,560
Speaker 2: a period I can write. I don't I don't have

551
00:25:29,600 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 2: any meetings this morning. Let me write in the morning.

552
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,040
Speaker 2: Oh here's a clear afternoon. Why don't I go to

553
00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:37,080
Speaker 2: the coffee shop and write. It's something I'm always looking

554
00:25:37,119 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 2: for good writing times, and I'll schedule times too. Of course,

555
00:25:40,920 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 2: at the beginning of the week, I'll try to set

556
00:25:42,320 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 2: aside my writing times, but I always have an eye

557
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:46,159
Speaker 2: for that. I'm always looking out for what would be

558
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:48,399
Speaker 2: good times. I tend to write in the morning. That

559
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 2: tends to be my mess time. Writing is the one

560
00:25:51,040 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 2: thing I will do on the weekend. I don't do

561
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 2: normal work on the weekends. I'm a nine to five guy.

562
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:56,320
Speaker 2: But the one exception is book writing. I will do

563
00:25:56,320 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 2: book writing on a weekend morning because I find it

564
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:01,160
Speaker 2: quiet and a good time to concentrate. So I do

565
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 2: have those preferences. It's typically in the morning, but I'll

566
00:26:03,880 --> 00:26:07,440
Speaker 2: do many different locations and it can be quite flexible.

567
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 1: I remember when I last had you on the show,

568
00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:13,840
Speaker 1: imagery that stuck with me was around the different rituals

569
00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:16,080
Speaker 1: that you had for different types of deep work. And

570
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,240
Speaker 1: I remember you describing your writing with the custom made

571
00:26:19,480 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: kind of library desk that you have in your house.

572
00:26:23,640 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 1: Is that something that you still do different rituals for

573
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:27,119
Speaker 1: different types of deep work.

574
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:32,879
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I temporarily lost access to that library table

575
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:36,000
Speaker 2: that I had custom built because of the COVID pandemic.

576
00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:40,280
Speaker 2: We converted my study into homeschool into a classroom for

577
00:26:40,320 --> 00:26:43,119
Speaker 2: the kids because our kids' school was closed for basically

578
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:45,760
Speaker 2: a year. So I then leased, which i'm talking to

579
00:26:45,800 --> 00:26:47,560
Speaker 2: you from now. I lease some office space in town,

580
00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:50,399
Speaker 2: and I had a moving company. We took all my

581
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 2: books that because I used my books and my library,

582
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:54,480
Speaker 2: I mean I use them all the time. I use

583
00:26:54,520 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 2: it like a real library. I had all my books shipped.

584
00:26:57,440 --> 00:26:59,520
Speaker 2: I mean it's three blocks for my house. But we

585
00:26:59,560 --> 00:27:02,160
Speaker 2: had to have a moving bancome and I brought all

586
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 2: my books to this this new office space I leased,

587
00:27:04,520 --> 00:27:06,440
Speaker 2: and I set we set up a library here and

588
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:09,159
Speaker 2: brought in some new tables. So I have some tables

589
00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 2: that are they're not as nice as my custom built

590
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:13,639
Speaker 2: table and brought in my rug and a reading a

591
00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:17,640
Speaker 2: leather reading chair, And so I created a new headquarter

592
00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:21,920
Speaker 2: because I think ritual is important and having environment is important.

593
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,879
Speaker 2: Ritual is important. We should respect intense cognitive work is

594
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 2: something that we should take very seriously, be willing to

595
00:27:28,760 --> 00:27:32,480
Speaker 2: dedicate money, dedicate time, dedicate overhead to supporting these type

596
00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 2: of efforts.

597
00:27:33,600 --> 00:27:37,520
Speaker 1: Was it easy to, I guess, shift that ritual into

598
00:27:37,560 --> 00:27:40,560
Speaker 1: a new physical location. Was there anything that you did,

599
00:27:40,600 --> 00:27:44,040
Speaker 1: aside from physically get all your stuff into that new

600
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:47,120
Speaker 1: location to help get into flow more easily in those

601
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:48,280
Speaker 1: first few sessions.

602
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 2: No, it's been hard. I think it's definitely hard, because

603
00:27:51,640 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 2: ritual's really important, and so that study I was very

604
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 2: used to working in. The Other thing I was used

605
00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 2: to doing is I did a lot of work at

606
00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,359
Speaker 2: coffee shop. There's a coffee shop near my house, and

607
00:28:02,400 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 2: I would go. I do a lot of my writing there,

608
00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:06,600
Speaker 2: and it was another ritual. I would do morning writing

609
00:28:06,640 --> 00:28:08,840
Speaker 2: and I would occasionally do like a happy hour session

610
00:28:08,840 --> 00:28:10,879
Speaker 2: of writing too, where you know, maybe you'd have a

611
00:28:10,880 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 2: beer or something and you're doing more brainstorming. And they

612
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:15,479
Speaker 2: obviously all their seating was closed for the pandemic too,

613
00:28:15,560 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 2: So I lost my study and I lost my coffee shop.

614
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 2: So it wasn't Yeah, it wasn't easy to try to

615
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:24,159
Speaker 2: shift shift to a new location to try to build

616
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:26,560
Speaker 2: new new habits here. The one thing I could still

617
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 2: doing was my walking ritual. So I do a lot

618
00:28:28,280 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 2: of thinking walking in my town, and that I could

619
00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 2: still do and think, Thank goodness, I could. And I

620
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 2: started doing a little bit more work outside as well,

621
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:37,840
Speaker 2: even when it's cold. I introduced that as a new ritual.

622
00:28:37,920 --> 00:28:40,440
Speaker 2: I'd go for a walk and you would sometimes find me,

623
00:28:40,520 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 2: and you know, it'd be cold outside and people be

624
00:28:42,600 --> 00:28:45,440
Speaker 2: in jackets and I'd be at the park with my laptop,

625
00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 2: you know, write in a New Yorker piece or something

626
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 2: like this. So I added some more rituals once I

627
00:28:50,720 --> 00:28:55,120
Speaker 2: lost those old places to help jump start that creative impulse.

628
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: Hi, there, it's nearly to for a little ad to break.

629
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:04,120
Speaker 1: But can I ask a favor of you? If you

630
00:29:04,160 --> 00:29:07,479
Speaker 1: are enjoying how I work, and you're not one of

631
00:29:07,520 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 1: the several hundred people that has kindly left a review

632
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 1: for the show, I would be so incredibly grateful if

633
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 1: you could do so it's a great way of letting

634
00:29:14,760 --> 00:29:18,480
Speaker 1: other people find out about how I work, and for me,

635
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 1: it's also really lovely hearing listener feedback. It really does

636
00:29:22,760 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: bring us mile to my face every time. And up

637
00:29:25,840 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: next after the break cal we'll be talking about how

638
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: you can dramatically reduce the amount of unscheduled communication at

639
00:29:32,160 --> 00:29:36,920
Speaker 1: your organization now in a world without email. You talk

640
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:43,760
Speaker 1: about delineating between support versus specialist roles within knowledge workers

641
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:46,840
Speaker 1: work life, and I was wondering what does that look

642
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:49,960
Speaker 1: like for you in terms of how you're petitioning your

643
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:52,440
Speaker 1: time or days around those two roles.

644
00:29:52,600 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think there's two different types of

645
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 2: work and knowledge work there before I refer to it

646
00:29:57,240 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 2: as frontline work, but you can think of a specialist

647
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:02,960
Speaker 2: work that's the actual application of value to information, the

648
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:05,120
Speaker 2: thing that actually creates the value for the company, the

649
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 2: ad copy, the computer code, the new business strategies right

650
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 2: the things that you're selling or the things on which

651
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 2: you're receiving funding. And then there's all the support work

652
00:30:13,800 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 2: that goes into keeping the lights on. The timesheets need

653
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:20,400
Speaker 2: to be filed, the taxes need to be submitted, the

654
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 2: bills need to be paid. Right, so there's two different

655
00:30:22,400 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 2: types of work. There has been, as I called it before,

656
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:30,960
Speaker 2: this diminishment of intellectual specialization, where I believe misapplied the

657
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:34,400
Speaker 2: productivity potential of new technology. So as we went through

658
00:30:34,440 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 2: the personal computer revolution, then the office network revolution, and

659
00:30:37,960 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 2: the smartphone revolution, we got all of these quote unquote

660
00:30:40,240 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 2: productivity enhancing technologies, so ways of implementing certain support activities

661
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,680
Speaker 2: faster and more flexibly and quicker than before we had

662
00:30:49,720 --> 00:30:52,040
Speaker 2: these computers. A word processor, for example, is much more

663
00:30:52,080 --> 00:30:56,160
Speaker 2: efficient than a typewriter. Right, we misapplied this revolution. In

664
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:58,960
Speaker 2: my opinion, what we should have done is use this

665
00:30:59,080 --> 00:31:03,480
Speaker 2: revolution to make it cheaper to deploy a support staff,

666
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:06,400
Speaker 2: because now support staff could do their work faster, they

667
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 2: can do it more efficiently. Maybe you don't need as

668
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 2: many support staff to support the same amount of specialist.

669
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,280
Speaker 2: What we did instead is we fired the support staff

670
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 2: and so now the specialists can also do the support work.

671
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:17,320
Speaker 1: Net.

672
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:21,160
Speaker 2: I think that made things worse, right, It so diminishes

673
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:24,320
Speaker 2: the unbroken time required to actually produce the things that

674
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:27,560
Speaker 2: create the frontline value for the organizations that you end

675
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 2: up having to hire a lot more of the frontline

676
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:31,080
Speaker 2: workers to get the same amount of work done and

677
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 2: it costs more. Like that added salary is more than

678
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 2: what you saved by firing the support staff. So I

679
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 2: think we need to go back towards more specialization. And

680
00:31:40,880 --> 00:31:45,480
Speaker 2: this is just a general trend in economics that in general, specialization,

681
00:31:45,560 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 2: as long as you can have efficient, efficient information flow

682
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:52,400
Speaker 2: between the specialist units, is almost always more economically productive

683
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 2: than trying to be more general purpose. There's actually a

684
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,600
Speaker 2: whole field of economists called transaction theory that gets into

685
00:31:57,680 --> 00:32:00,240
Speaker 2: this notion when thinking about factories and production, but it

686
00:32:00,280 --> 00:32:04,000
Speaker 2: applies to really any type of work. So broadly, I

687
00:32:04,080 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 2: think we need more intellectual specialization. People should be doing less.

688
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 2: We should separate support work more from frontline specialist work.

689
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,360
Speaker 2: Each of those things should be much more focused where

690
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,640
Speaker 2: people can really do what they do really well. If

691
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 2: you're a support specialist, you should be doing that really

692
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:19,480
Speaker 2: well and be really well compensated for that. And with

693
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:21,640
Speaker 2: new technologies, you can probably support a lot of people.

694
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:24,640
Speaker 2: And if you're a frontline specialist, you should be doing

695
00:32:24,720 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 2: much less but doing those things at a higher level

696
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:28,840
Speaker 2: of accountability and be well compensated for it. I think

697
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 2: that is probably the most economically productive way of doing things. Unfortunately,

698
00:32:32,520 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 2: almost no organization does that right now. So the best

699
00:32:36,280 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 2: I can do is in the business I can control,

700
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 2: I try to minimize the amount of support work that's

701
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:45,480
Speaker 2: just necessary. So that goes back to what we were

702
00:32:45,480 --> 00:32:48,720
Speaker 2: talking about before about simplifying. And in my Georgetown work,

703
00:32:48,760 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 2: I really think of myself it's different roles. It's like

704
00:32:51,840 --> 00:32:55,240
Speaker 2: I have two part time jobs. I'm a professor and

705
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 2: I am an assistant to a professor, and I treat

706
00:32:58,080 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 2: those as two separate jobs. I mean, in a perfect role,

707
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 2: there would be an actual assistant. I have to play

708
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:04,680
Speaker 2: both roles, but I really want to separate them.

709
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: All right.

710
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:06,960
Speaker 2: I have my part time job. I'm doing professor stuff,

711
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 2: and when I'm doing that, that's what I'm doing unbroken concentration.

712
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:11,440
Speaker 2: Let's go, let's produce research, let's teach classes. And when

713
00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 2: I'm doing assistant work, it's like, okay, let's do this.

714
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 1: Now.

715
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,200
Speaker 2: We're doing emails and forums and trying to optimize processes

716
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:18,240
Speaker 2: and get rid of unscheduled messages. And I really treat

717
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:20,680
Speaker 2: those almost like two different part time jobs.

718
00:33:21,600 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 1: Is there an argument for you asking the university to

719
00:33:24,680 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 1: just provide an assistant, Like, what's the logic in going, Okay,

720
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:30,680
Speaker 1: now I'm going to play the assistant role of a

721
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: professor as opposed to getting one.

722
00:33:33,680 --> 00:33:37,040
Speaker 2: Well, they won't. So I wrote a whole article about

723
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:39,320
Speaker 2: this a couple of years ago for a public the

724
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 2: Chronicle of Higher Education, which is, you know, an industry publication,

725
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 2: And I wrote an article that was titled is email

726
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,719
Speaker 2: making professor Stupid? And I really got into this argument

727
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 2: about we placed way too much administrative work on professor's

728
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 2: place and it's unchecked. But the issue is it's kind

729
00:33:53,400 --> 00:33:56,960
Speaker 2: of an unresolvable problem. It's a very difficult problem. Universities

730
00:33:56,960 --> 00:33:58,760
Speaker 2: would say they don't have the resources. I don't think

731
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 2: that's true. I think well supported professors could produce much

732
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:04,080
Speaker 2: more and be much more effective for the university than

733
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:08,200
Speaker 2: non supported professors. I also think probably a large fraction

734
00:34:08,360 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 2: of the work that falls on professors plates and universities

735
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,799
Speaker 2: as not necessary. It's just in a university environment, it's

736
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:17,719
Speaker 2: really more of like a federation. You have all of

737
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,799
Speaker 2: these different units. It's kind of way more democratic than

738
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,080
Speaker 2: a company. Right, there's not a CEO over university with

739
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:25,720
Speaker 2: a profit motive that can come in and make big changes.

740
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 2: It's very more democratic at universities, and every unit has

741
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:32,320
Speaker 2: their own objectives and for every unit, getting some of

742
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 2: your time and attention makes their life easier. And so

743
00:34:34,239 --> 00:34:36,000
Speaker 2: you just have a bunch of these independent units, all

744
00:34:36,040 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 2: trying to do their job as well as possible, all

745
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:40,839
Speaker 2: of them wanting more of your time and attention. Hey,

746
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 2: if you could just figure out this complex form, it

747
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:46,759
Speaker 2: makes our life easier. So, professor, figure out this complex form.

748
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:48,960
Speaker 2: All right, we need this information professor to do our

749
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:53,279
Speaker 2: COI filings this year, and it's a pain for us

750
00:34:53,320 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 2: to try to put this in the right format. So

751
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 2: we're going to give you a very complicated online intranet

752
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 2: portal you have to figure out and aren't going to understand,

753
00:34:59,400 --> 00:35:00,920
Speaker 2: because it make our life easier if you could do

754
00:35:01,040 --> 00:35:03,400
Speaker 2: that better. Everyone is just trying to pull from everyone's

755
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:05,920
Speaker 2: time and attention, with no one looking down at the

756
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:08,399
Speaker 2: whole thing saying, oh, our profits are down this quarter,

757
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:10,480
Speaker 2: leave our programmers alone. Like you know, if you're in

758
00:35:10,520 --> 00:35:12,600
Speaker 2: a different type of company, it's a different type of feel.

759
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 2: So I actually think it's a real problem in universities.

760
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 2: I think we have significantly significantly diminished the cognitive freedom

761
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 2: and capacities of the professors, which is kind of counterproductive.

762
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:25,319
Speaker 2: But as I learned after I published that article, it's

763
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 2: not easily.

764
00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:29,839
Speaker 1: Fixed us thinking about your university, Georgetown, has anyone at

765
00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: Georgetown reached out to you and said, cal can you

766
00:35:33,640 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 1: help us fix the problem here at this university.

767
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:39,279
Speaker 2: I had lunch with the dean after that article. I

768
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 2: think they're sympathetic. It's hard, though, right, I mean, it

769
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 2: is a hard problem. If I had a small university

770
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 2: that I wanted to really increase the reputation of, this

771
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:52,360
Speaker 2: would be my advice. Make this thing a citadel of concentration.

772
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 2: If you come here as a professor, you were going

773
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:56,840
Speaker 2: to think and you were going to teach, and that

774
00:35:57,120 --> 00:35:59,840
Speaker 2: is it. You don't even need an email address. We

775
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:02,040
Speaker 2: will take care of that for you. We're going to

776
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:05,400
Speaker 2: give you an office. It's esthetically pleasing, like it's going

777
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:08,920
Speaker 2: to be Cambridge in the nineteen twenties. There's going to

778
00:36:08,960 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 2: be a fire going in the fireplace, and you'll have

779
00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:12,840
Speaker 2: brandy in the evening, and the whole thing will be

780
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:14,759
Speaker 2: set around you producing the best thoughts you can with

781
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:16,919
Speaker 2: your brain. You would put some of the best talent

782
00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:18,919
Speaker 2: in the country to a school like that, right, That's

783
00:36:18,960 --> 00:36:21,440
Speaker 2: what I would do. It's very hard to go back

784
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:25,080
Speaker 2: and do that retroactively once you have your huge university

785
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:27,560
Speaker 2: with fifty different units that each have your own constituencies.

786
00:36:27,719 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 2: I mean, famously, one of the hardest things at universities

787
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 2: is that once something comes into existence, it's very hard

788
00:36:33,080 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 2: to get rid of it. It just becomes a permanent

789
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 2: part of the university landscape. And I see every one

790
00:36:38,719 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 2: of these units from an attention capital perspective as a

791
00:36:42,760 --> 00:36:46,040
Speaker 2: different sink for attention capital, because every one of these

792
00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:48,719
Speaker 2: units is going to need some attention capital from other

793
00:36:48,760 --> 00:36:51,600
Speaker 2: people in university to survive. And so it's like you

794
00:36:51,719 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 2: have so much In a different metaphor, you have so

795
00:36:53,680 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 2: only so much petroleum for your motorized army, and as

796
00:36:58,080 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 2: you add more and more units, they eat see a

797
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 2: little bit or petroleum, Like you're eventually going to run out, right,

798
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 2: and your frontline units aren't going to have much gas

799
00:37:04,840 --> 00:37:06,600
Speaker 2: left to do their movement. Right, There's only so much

800
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 2: concentration attention capital to go around. But it's very hard

801
00:37:09,840 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 2: to go backwards. But that's my model. I think the

802
00:37:11,800 --> 00:37:17,439
Speaker 2: citadel of concentration model is one that more schools should follow.

803
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:19,479
Speaker 2: I think they'd really be punching above their weight class

804
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:21,080
Speaker 2: if they did so.

805
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 1: For organizations that exist already, should we be thinking about

806
00:37:25,000 --> 00:37:30,759
Speaker 1: making workflow changes gradually to reduce what we're relying on

807
00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:33,879
Speaker 1: email for or do we do it all at once?

808
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: What's the ideal way to approach this.

809
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 2: What I think organizations should do is focus first at

810
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:43,000
Speaker 2: the team level. So I think that's the appropriate scope

811
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,040
Speaker 2: at which to make these type of changes. If you're

812
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 2: in a large organization and you try to do workflow

813
00:37:48,200 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 2: engineering at the organization level, it's difficult. You're not flexible enough,

814
00:37:54,120 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 2: one size fits all solutions aren't going to work, and

815
00:37:56,440 --> 00:37:59,000
Speaker 2: you really run the risk of falling into bureaucracy territory.

816
00:37:59,040 --> 00:38:01,440
Speaker 2: And bureaucracy territory can be just as bad, where you

817
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:03,479
Speaker 2: feel like there's these arbitrary rules that you had little

818
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:05,759
Speaker 2: say in and in the end are causing more harmed

819
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:07,400
Speaker 2: and goods. So you really want to avoid that. So

820
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:09,760
Speaker 2: I think the team, which a term I use loosely,

821
00:38:09,840 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 2: but most organizations have some notion of a team, that's

822
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,440
Speaker 2: the right level. So a group of people who consistently

823
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,840
Speaker 2: work together on consistent outcomes. The right thing to do

824
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 2: right away is say, the hyperactive high mind workflow is

825
00:38:20,560 --> 00:38:22,320
Speaker 2: what we're trying to get away from, where we just

826
00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 2: figure things out back and forth messages. And the other

827
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:26,640
Speaker 2: thing to do right away is like, let's list out

828
00:38:26,680 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 2: all the different things this team does. I call them

829
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:30,080
Speaker 2: processes and call them what you want, but here are

830
00:38:30,080 --> 00:38:32,759
Speaker 2: the things we repeatedly do. Our long term goal will

831
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 2: then be processed by process to figure out how to

832
00:38:35,960 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 2: implement it without the high mind, without so many unscheduled messages.

833
00:38:39,320 --> 00:38:40,719
Speaker 2: It may then take a long time to get through

834
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,640
Speaker 2: all those processes. Start with the low hanging fruit. You're

835
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:45,320
Speaker 2: going to have to go back and tweak things. That

836
00:38:45,400 --> 00:38:47,839
Speaker 2: could be a long term process to get through all

837
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 2: the different processes, and momentum will build as you get

838
00:38:50,200 --> 00:38:51,799
Speaker 2: better and better at it, so that could take a while,

839
00:38:52,600 --> 00:38:54,640
Speaker 2: but your goal up front should become pretty clear.

840
00:38:55,400 --> 00:38:57,600
Speaker 1: In terms of low hanging fruit. Let's just imagine a

841
00:38:57,680 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: typical professional services organization that full of knowledge work is.

842
00:39:01,719 --> 00:39:05,000
Speaker 1: Are the processes that you find it tend to be

843
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 1: like hanging for it?

844
00:39:06,120 --> 00:39:08,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's a couple of things. One meeting

845
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:12,080
Speaker 2: scheduling software has to be the standard. There cannot be

846
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:14,520
Speaker 2: meetings being scheduled with back and forth emails. Well, what

847
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:16,960
Speaker 2: about Tuesday, No, Tuesday's not too good. What about Wednesday?

848
00:39:17,000 --> 00:39:19,080
Speaker 2: I might be free in the afternoon. Is it a

849
00:39:19,200 --> 00:39:21,720
Speaker 2: huge productivity sync? We don't realize it. But here's the issue.

850
00:39:22,280 --> 00:39:25,919
Speaker 2: Setting up a meeting via email just back and forth

851
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 2: might on average generate let's say six messages, right, So

852
00:39:29,239 --> 00:39:33,880
Speaker 2: that's six times someone has to pay attention shift their

853
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:36,000
Speaker 2: context to that email inbox. But the thing about meeting

854
00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:38,000
Speaker 2: scheduling is that has to happen kind of quick, right,

855
00:39:38,080 --> 00:39:39,480
Speaker 2: Like I don't want to spend a week to set

856
00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:40,840
Speaker 2: up a meeting for you. That meeting might be in

857
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:43,600
Speaker 2: two days, right, So I have to check the inbox

858
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,719
Speaker 2: quite a bit for each of those messages so that

859
00:39:46,880 --> 00:39:49,000
Speaker 2: I see it pretty soon after it comes. So now

860
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,920
Speaker 2: six messages might actually generate sixty inbox checks in just

861
00:39:52,960 --> 00:39:55,319
Speaker 2: a couple of days. Each one of those inbox checks

862
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 2: breaking your concentration and initiating a very cognitively expensive context shift.

863
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:03,120
Speaker 2: Just one meeting, therefore, can be a scheduling. One meeting

864
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:05,719
Speaker 2: could be a pretty big cognitive disaster. Now multiply that

865
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,960
Speaker 2: over ten or fifteen meetings, you're trying to set up.

866
00:40:08,680 --> 00:40:13,280
Speaker 2: That simple thing alone can significantly reduce a team's ability

867
00:40:13,320 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 2: to get things done. So everyone should use meeting scheduling software. Great,

868
00:40:16,600 --> 00:40:18,600
Speaker 2: let's do it. You know where my link is, schedule it.

869
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 2: One email meeting gets scheduled. So I think that's low

870
00:40:21,600 --> 00:40:25,359
Speaker 2: hanging fruit. Office hours are also low hanging fruit. Any

871
00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:28,080
Speaker 2: sort of small questions, what about this? I don't understand this?

872
00:40:28,440 --> 00:40:30,360
Speaker 2: Can we quickly figure out when we want to do that?

873
00:40:31,440 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 2: Who's going to take on this? As much as you

874
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:35,680
Speaker 2: can divert as possible to just come to my next

875
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:37,480
Speaker 2: office hours. Just come to my next office hours. We

876
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 2: will talk in real time then, not back and forth messaging.

877
00:40:41,520 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 2: That is applicable to almost an industry. So do those

878
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:45,960
Speaker 2: two things, meeting scheduling software and office hours that can

879
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:49,480
Speaker 2: handle eighty percent of small questions, discussions and clarifications. Those

880
00:40:49,520 --> 00:40:51,360
Speaker 2: two things alone, for almost any team, will make a

881
00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:52,040
Speaker 2: huge difference.

882
00:40:52,960 --> 00:40:56,320
Speaker 1: With meeting scheduling software. What are you currently recommending that

883
00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:57,120
Speaker 1: people check out?

884
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:00,040
Speaker 2: Well, there's a bunch of tools that are relatively the

885
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 2: equivalent right now. I've used a couple, I've used Acuity

886
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:06,400
Speaker 2: in the past. At the moment, I'm using Calendly. I

887
00:41:06,600 --> 00:41:09,600
Speaker 2: like them both. I mean maybe Calendly has a slightly

888
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:14,360
Speaker 2: slicker interface. I think Microsoft Suite has its own meeting

889
00:41:14,440 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 2: scheduling link type software built into it. I mean I

890
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,160
Speaker 2: occasionally get links from people that are built out of

891
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,719
Speaker 2: the Microsoft Productivity Suite. People like x dot ai a lot.

892
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 2: It's another meeting scheduling tool for group meetings. Doodles pretty good.

893
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:30,320
Speaker 2: I think that's kind of a default. The other tools

894
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 2: are getting those, but they're all pretty equivalent. I mean,

895
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:34,719
Speaker 2: it's not a hard thing that you're doing here. You

896
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:36,840
Speaker 2: just trying to avoid the back and forth to the

897
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 2: point it's so important. Let's say you want to set

898
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 2: up a meeting with someone and for whatever reason, because

899
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 2: of their personality, you just know that no matter how

900
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:47,120
Speaker 2: much you social engineer it, if you send them a link,

901
00:41:47,120 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 2: they're going to be upset because you're at a lower

902
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 2: station to them. To even go through that software and

903
00:41:52,600 --> 00:41:55,399
Speaker 2: manually list out fifteen different times they can choose from.

904
00:41:55,640 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 2: That may seem like WHOA, that's really inefficient. That's going

905
00:41:59,160 --> 00:42:00,680
Speaker 2: to take me ten minutes to list out all these

906
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:02,399
Speaker 2: times when I could just shoot off a message that says,

907
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,239
Speaker 2: how about Wednesday. But spending fifteen minutes to list a

908
00:42:05,280 --> 00:42:08,359
Speaker 2: bunch of times in an email that that person can

909
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:12,120
Speaker 2: then just grab one that is worth it because fifteen

910
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:16,120
Speaker 2: minutes concentrated in the one task is way less of

911
00:42:16,160 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 2: a cost than six messages you have to check your

912
00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:22,320
Speaker 2: inbox ten times for each. So even if you're just

913
00:42:22,520 --> 00:42:26,600
Speaker 2: literally manually doing implementing the software by just listing out

914
00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:28,359
Speaker 2: a bunch of times letting someone choose it, it's still

915
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:31,080
Speaker 2: a win because that's how devastating these unscheduled messages are.

916
00:42:31,960 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: Now. In the book, you talk about thinking about workflows

917
00:42:37,719 --> 00:42:41,840
Speaker 1: and processes with customers and suppliers and potentially just looking

918
00:42:42,040 --> 00:42:45,359
Speaker 1: internal first rather than trying to change things with people

919
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: outside the organization. But let's just say we're starting at

920
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 1: the team level and there are a lot of processes

921
00:42:52,000 --> 00:42:56,640
Speaker 1: that involve customers or suppliers. Should we be trying to

922
00:42:57,000 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: change these because I know in your book you give

923
00:42:59,239 --> 00:43:02,120
Speaker 1: examples of how you've avoided doing that. But then it

924
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:04,800
Speaker 1: was interesting hearing you talk about how you're working with

925
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:08,640
Speaker 1: your publicist for the book and you know they are

926
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: an external partner. I guess, so what's your view on that?

927
00:43:12,960 --> 00:43:16,239
Speaker 2: So when you're doing individual work, and this might be

928
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 2: what you're referencing. So you can always start by trying

929
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:22,719
Speaker 2: to just optimize your processes from a personal perspective. Given

930
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,200
Speaker 2: just what I can control, how can I minimize unscheduled messages?

931
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:28,400
Speaker 2: And I advise in the book if you're doing that,

932
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:30,000
Speaker 2: which you should do, because, by the way, even if

933
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:32,359
Speaker 2: you can't control anyone else in your team, just thinking

934
00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:34,360
Speaker 2: that way for your own processes makes a big difference.

935
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:39,040
Speaker 2: Don't advertise it, right, So that was the argument, don't

936
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 2: advertise what you're doing because it's just going to make

937
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 2: people upset. You know, apologize once they're actually upset. Don't

938
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 2: give them a reason to be upset about something they

939
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:48,919
Speaker 2: didn't realize they should be upset about. When you're working

940
00:43:48,960 --> 00:43:51,120
Speaker 2: as a team on these processes, then of course that's

941
00:43:51,160 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 2: not an issue because everyone has buy in when it

942
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 2: comes to clients. You, I do think you need to

943
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:00,719
Speaker 2: engineer these protocols. I do think you need to move

944
00:44:00,800 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 2: away from unscheduled messaging, and you do need to tell

945
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 2: them what you're doing, but maybe just be careful about

946
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:12,920
Speaker 2: how you advertise it. Never advertise these new protocols from

947
00:44:12,920 --> 00:44:16,040
Speaker 2: the perspective of making your life easier. It always has

948
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:18,560
Speaker 2: to come from the perspective of making the relationship better,

949
00:44:19,080 --> 00:44:21,799
Speaker 2: being more structured, being more responsive, being able to better

950
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 2: serve the client, right, And I do think that's very

951
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:28,080
Speaker 2: important to build. In specific, we should be very clear

952
00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:30,000
Speaker 2: about how we interact with each of our clients, how

953
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:33,360
Speaker 2: they send questions, how we give them updates. Clients love this.

954
00:44:34,200 --> 00:44:36,160
Speaker 2: It is much more important to clients that they have

955
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 2: clarity about how they interact with you than it is

956
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:42,440
Speaker 2: that they have constant accessibility. I mean, it is the

957
00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 2: point that we talked about earlier. Accessibility is something that

958
00:44:46,040 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 2: people demand only when there's nothing else to assuage their

959
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:51,840
Speaker 2: fears that something's going to be lost. So with clients,

960
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:53,080
Speaker 2: I think you do need to do that work.

961
00:44:54,080 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: In the book, you talk about the thirty X rule,

962
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:58,759
Speaker 1: which I loved. Can you describe this?

963
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 2: I mean it's a standard idea from outsourcing, thinking that

964
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:05,040
Speaker 2: you know, if you're going to do something more than

965
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:07,560
Speaker 2: thirty times, I think this is a year I have

966
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:10,280
Speaker 2: that right, then it's worth automating or outsourcing.

967
00:45:10,360 --> 00:45:10,480
Speaker 1: Right.

968
00:45:10,520 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 2: So, if it's something if you're gonna do with that

969
00:45:12,160 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 2: much times in the overhead of figuring out how to

970
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 2: outsource or automate. It is probably worth it. We probably

971
00:45:16,880 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 2: don't have to be that specific, but I think the

972
00:45:19,480 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 2: general idea there is a useful heuristic. If something's going

973
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 2: to happen repeatedly, then it's really worth thinking through what's

974
00:45:26,840 --> 00:45:29,160
Speaker 2: our process for this. You know, if something is just

975
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 2: happening one time, then let's not spend too much time

976
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 2: trying to figure out the optimal way to get this

977
00:45:34,000 --> 00:45:35,960
Speaker 2: thing done. If it's never going to happen again, it's

978
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,080
Speaker 2: a sort of you know, there's some business emergency and

979
00:45:39,160 --> 00:45:40,960
Speaker 2: we have to go, you know, figure out how to

980
00:45:41,040 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 2: solve some issue that's unlikely to come up again, then

981
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,200
Speaker 2: it's less important that we figure out the optimal way

982
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 2: to do that. But if this happens every month, let's

983
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:50,359
Speaker 2: figure out our rules, all right. This information goes into

984
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:52,680
Speaker 2: a shared doc, we have the shared meeting on the calendar.

985
00:45:53,680 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 2: That's when it's worth the overhead of trying to put

986
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 2: in place a better process.

987
00:45:57,760 --> 00:46:00,759
Speaker 1: Now, when I finished rating a well without email, I

988
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:05,279
Speaker 1: immediately ironically cringe as I say this. I emailed my

989
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: CEO my organization Invantium, and I said, Mish, you have

990
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:11,160
Speaker 1: to read this book and we have to apply it.

991
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 1: And so with that in mind, where a management consultancy,

992
00:46:14,600 --> 00:46:18,400
Speaker 1: we specialize in innovation and productivity, where should we start.

993
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,080
Speaker 1: We are a ten person team, but then we work

994
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:25,280
Speaker 1: in smaller teams on different projects. Where do we start cal.

995
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:27,359
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I would say,

996
00:46:27,400 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 2: don't cringe about sending the email. The semi provocative title aside,

997
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 2: the book is really about how to get past the

998
00:46:34,640 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 2: hyperactive high mind workflow. I'm happy for email to be around.

999
00:46:38,080 --> 00:46:39,920
Speaker 2: I don't want to leave voicemails. I don't want to

1000
00:46:39,960 --> 00:46:42,080
Speaker 2: fax things, you know, so I'm happy. I'm happy that

1001
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 2: email is here. What I don't want is to hyperractive

1002
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:45,640
Speaker 2: high mind. I don't want to work everything out with

1003
00:46:45,719 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 2: back and forth messaging. So there's nothing wrong with that's

1004
00:46:47,960 --> 00:46:50,440
Speaker 2: actually a good use of email. I am sending you

1005
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 2: some information. You should look at this. Here's something we

1006
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:54,799
Speaker 2: should discuss next time we meet. I think you might

1007
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:57,560
Speaker 2: like this. That's a perfect use for email. The wrong

1008
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,120
Speaker 2: use for email would be thoughts, question mark, you know,

1009
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:02,840
Speaker 2: at the end of that message, and then you and

1010
00:47:02,880 --> 00:47:04,600
Speaker 2: your CEO trying to figure this out with back and

1011
00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 2: forth messages. That would be uh, that would be a

1012
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 2: worse be a worse use of emails. So where should

1013
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 2: you start list out the processes? What are the things

1014
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,080
Speaker 2: as a management consultancy that we we do again and

1015
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:15,719
Speaker 2: again and again. These are the core things we have

1016
00:47:15,880 --> 00:47:18,440
Speaker 2: to do to make money and keep the business running. Okay,

1017
00:47:19,560 --> 00:47:21,319
Speaker 2: Now for each of these we can go one by

1018
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:22,680
Speaker 2: one and we don't have to do this all at once.

1019
00:47:22,719 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 2: We can start with the low hanging fruit. How do

1020
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:26,600
Speaker 2: we actually want to implement these processes? If we don't

1021
00:47:26,640 --> 00:47:30,399
Speaker 2: have an existing answer to that question, the default answer

1022
00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:33,160
Speaker 2: is probably the hyperactive hive mind. It's just we just

1023
00:47:33,280 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 2: get this done by messaging each other. How do we

1024
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 2: actually want to do it? And everyone should have buy in,

1025
00:47:39,160 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 2: everyone involved in this process, Like, Okay, here it is,

1026
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:42,840
Speaker 2: let's write it down somewhere. Here's how we're going to

1027
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:44,880
Speaker 2: try to implement this. We'll check back in two weeks,

1028
00:47:44,920 --> 00:47:47,080
Speaker 2: and here's our escape hat. So if like something bad

1029
00:47:47,160 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 2: happens and the process isn't working, here's what we do.

1030
00:47:50,000 --> 00:47:52,080
Speaker 2: You call me on my cell. Here's the fall back routine,

1031
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 2: and you try it and you evolve it, and you

1032
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:57,240
Speaker 2: do this process by process every time, trying to minimize

1033
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 2: unscheduled messages. That's the metric. Right In the industry sector,

1034
00:48:00,560 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 2: the metric was how do we minimize the man hours

1035
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,520
Speaker 2: required to produce the car. In the brain work sector,

1036
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 2: the metric for these processes is how do we minimize

1037
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:11,600
Speaker 2: the number of unscheduled messages that have to be received

1038
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,239
Speaker 2: and replied to an order to get this done. That

1039
00:48:14,440 --> 00:48:16,719
Speaker 2: is our equivalent of assembly line speed. And you just

1040
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 2: go process by process, write down what you're doing, try it, adjust,

1041
00:48:21,400 --> 00:48:24,120
Speaker 2: get something you like, move on to the next. And

1042
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:28,080
Speaker 2: it's simple. And it's hard because hey, it's hard to

1043
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 2: get these things right. And sometimes the answer is maybe

1044
00:48:31,320 --> 00:48:34,439
Speaker 2: we shouldn't do this process, you know, because it's really

1045
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 2: there's no way to do this without lots of interruptions.

1046
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:38,480
Speaker 2: It's not that valuable to us. I'd rather lose this

1047
00:48:38,560 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 2: classic client than have to constantly be on beck and call.

1048
00:48:41,760 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 2: So it's not always easy, but the approach is pretty straightforward.

1049
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:46,719
Speaker 1: I read in your book, but you're not a fan

1050
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:50,080
Speaker 1: of auto responders on email, and I've had one for

1051
00:48:50,160 --> 00:48:51,920
Speaker 1: a while, and one of the reasons why I have

1052
00:48:52,040 --> 00:48:54,839
Speaker 1: one now is that we gosh, nearly a year ago,

1053
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:58,840
Speaker 1: we implemented a four day week at Inventium, and my

1054
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:03,000
Speaker 1: auto responded tells people that I'm generally not available on Fridays.

1055
00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: But you're not a fan of auto responders, so I'm

1056
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,799
Speaker 1: wondering if you can explain why you're not and if

1057
00:49:09,840 --> 00:49:11,879
Speaker 1: you would recommend that maybe I'd just switched that off

1058
00:49:12,000 --> 00:49:12,800
Speaker 1: after this interview.

1059
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 2: I would look, if someone complains, you can explain it

1060
00:49:16,040 --> 00:49:18,279
Speaker 2: to them. But I think you'll have zero to one

1061
00:49:18,360 --> 00:49:20,920
Speaker 2: person complain in the next six months, you know what

1062
00:49:21,000 --> 00:49:23,920
Speaker 2: I mean. I think when it's about am I away,

1063
00:49:24,040 --> 00:49:26,840
Speaker 2: am I here, am I whatever, it's best just to

1064
00:49:26,920 --> 00:49:31,040
Speaker 2: have your systems and just execute, and you know, if

1065
00:49:31,040 --> 00:49:33,040
Speaker 2: someone gets upset, you can explain to them what's going on.

1066
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 2: But I don't think it's necessary to preemptively explain to

1067
00:49:37,160 --> 00:49:39,719
Speaker 2: people how you're implementing your system or when you're going

1068
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:42,440
Speaker 2: to be awound or when you're going to be away. Now,

1069
00:49:42,520 --> 00:49:45,319
Speaker 2: I think that the fact that we use these auto

1070
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,360
Speaker 2: responders and being away one day a week is a

1071
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:49,800
Speaker 2: very mild case. One of my readers sent me a

1072
00:49:49,880 --> 00:49:53,600
Speaker 2: much more extreme case recently where someone had to set

1073
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:56,360
Speaker 2: up an auto responder because their power went out or

1074
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,600
Speaker 2: something for an hour and it was like, okay, I

1075
00:49:59,760 --> 00:50:02,120
Speaker 2: might not have my email back for an hour. When

1076
00:50:02,200 --> 00:50:04,920
Speaker 2: you see that, he's like, okay, you were completely captured

1077
00:50:04,920 --> 00:50:05,680
Speaker 2: by the hive mind.

1078
00:50:05,800 --> 00:50:05,880
Speaker 1: Right.

1079
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:07,720
Speaker 2: That's like going to the car factory and they're building

1080
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 2: the cars with the lights out to try to save

1081
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:12,080
Speaker 2: money on electricity, and they produce one car a day

1082
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 2: and they're missing a wheel, right, Like it's crazy, right,

1083
00:50:15,160 --> 00:50:17,080
Speaker 2: you know that you are working in a terrible way.

1084
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:20,000
Speaker 2: You're you're you're you're optimizing in the moment convenience over

1085
00:50:20,080 --> 00:50:23,279
Speaker 2: actually producing things. That's valuable. Right, But even in your case,

1086
00:50:23,320 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 2: it's not crazy to have an auto responder since that

1087
00:50:25,200 --> 00:50:28,040
Speaker 2: it's not standard. But I usually just say just go

1088
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:30,600
Speaker 2: for it, right. I mean, when most people are sending

1089
00:50:30,640 --> 00:50:32,439
Speaker 2: an email, they're just happy that it's off their plate

1090
00:50:32,760 --> 00:50:34,400
Speaker 2: and they're not sitting there, you know what I mean.

1091
00:50:34,480 --> 00:50:37,200
Speaker 2: And they're not unless it's you know, again one of

1092
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:39,120
Speaker 2: these situations where it's a client and they don't trust

1093
00:50:39,200 --> 00:50:41,520
Speaker 2: you and they need a response right away. But in

1094
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,759
Speaker 2: that case, you have a bigger problem. You know, you

1095
00:50:43,840 --> 00:50:45,480
Speaker 2: need to solve that. You need to solve that problem

1096
00:50:45,520 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 2: of we need a more structured way of dealing with things.

1097
00:50:47,239 --> 00:50:49,680
Speaker 2: But I bet you, and you should test this. Take

1098
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,680
Speaker 2: off that auto responder and say I'm ready to apologize

1099
00:50:52,719 --> 00:50:54,680
Speaker 2: fully to anyone who says, why did you not answer

1100
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:56,920
Speaker 2: my Friday email on Friday? And I bet you'll have

1101
00:50:57,040 --> 00:50:58,440
Speaker 2: almost no one who ever says that to you.

1102
00:50:58,800 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: I'm going to switch it off and idiately after this interview. Now,

1103
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,399
Speaker 1: I want to know what your next book, what you're

1104
00:51:05,400 --> 00:51:08,719
Speaker 1: thinking about for your next book, because I remember when

1105
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:11,160
Speaker 1: we spoke last time you were thinking about and I

1106
00:51:11,239 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: think the title did not change your World Without Email?

1107
00:51:13,840 --> 00:51:15,520
Speaker 1: So what are you thinking for your next book?

1108
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not sure yet. The thing about A

1109
00:51:18,680 --> 00:51:21,000
Speaker 2: World Without Email is that I started it right after

1110
00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 2: deep work, So in twenty sixteen I started working on

1111
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:25,759
Speaker 2: this book. It was the natural follow up. A lot

1112
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:27,560
Speaker 2: of the early interviews in the book were done in

1113
00:51:27,600 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, and then I put the book on hold

1114
00:51:30,080 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 2: the Right Digital Minimalism, which I published in twenty nineteen

1115
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:35,840
Speaker 2: because that topic seemed really, really timely, and then I

1116
00:51:35,920 --> 00:51:37,920
Speaker 2: came back to finish A World Without Email. So when

1117
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:40,960
Speaker 2: we last talked, there was no doubt what I was

1118
00:51:41,000 --> 00:51:42,919
Speaker 2: working on, because I had been working on that book

1119
00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:45,839
Speaker 2: for years by the time we talked this time around.

1120
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:49,440
Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure yet. So I have some ideas.

1121
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly which direction I'm going to go. Typically,

1122
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:54,399
Speaker 2: the year that I publish a book, I start working

1123
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:56,359
Speaker 2: on the next so that I can distract myself, because

1124
00:51:56,400 --> 00:51:59,239
Speaker 2: once a book is out of my hands, I don't

1125
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:01,680
Speaker 2: like that because I can't control it anymore. So I

1126
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:03,640
Speaker 2: like to have something else to occupy me. But this year,

1127
00:52:03,680 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 2: we had the pandemic, and I put a lot of

1128
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:08,040
Speaker 2: my that same part of my brain. I put a

1129
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:10,120
Speaker 2: lot of that intention into starting a podcast, and so

1130
00:52:10,239 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 2: I think that that distracted me enough that I didn't

1131
00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:16,480
Speaker 2: start a new book yet. So I'm open to ideas. Actually,

1132
00:52:16,560 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 2: so you let me let me know, let me know

1133
00:52:18,640 --> 00:52:19,960
Speaker 2: if I have a couple, but let me know if

1134
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:21,879
Speaker 2: you have a great idea, because I'm still a free

1135
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:22,600
Speaker 2: agent right now.

1136
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: I will. And look, my final question for you is

1137
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: how can people connect with you ap presumably not over email,

1138
00:52:29,600 --> 00:52:31,400
Speaker 1: but how can people connect with you and get the

1139
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:33,120
Speaker 1: hands on a copy of the world without email?

1140
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:35,759
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not super easy to get in touch with,

1141
00:52:36,200 --> 00:52:38,759
Speaker 2: but I'm not that hard to find out about. I

1142
00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:41,279
Speaker 2: guess that's something. So a world without email. You can

1143
00:52:41,320 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 2: find any of the places that you buy books if

1144
00:52:43,920 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 2: you want to get I write this weekly essay I've

1145
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 2: been doing since two thousand and seven. You can find

1146
00:52:48,160 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 2: it at Calnewport dot com so you can sign up

1147
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:52,160
Speaker 2: for my email newsletter and I write about these topics

1148
00:52:52,200 --> 00:52:55,000
Speaker 2: every week and a big audience that listens to it there.

1149
00:52:55,239 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 2: I also have a podcast called Deep Questions, and I

1150
00:52:58,400 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 2: answer it's questions from my reading and it's about all

1151
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:02,919
Speaker 2: these type of topics. So if you like this type

1152
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,080
Speaker 2: of information, you might enjoy that podcast as well.

1153
00:53:06,440 --> 00:53:09,719
Speaker 1: Excellent. I will link to all that in the show notes. Cal.

1154
00:53:09,880 --> 00:53:13,360
Speaker 1: It's just been an absolute highlight for me. Having you

1155
00:53:13,760 --> 00:53:16,800
Speaker 1: back on your work has just influenced me to no

1156
00:53:17,160 --> 00:53:20,200
Speaker 1: end in my working life. So thank you for your

1157
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:23,280
Speaker 1: time today and just for everything that you are putting

1158
00:53:23,320 --> 00:53:24,080
Speaker 1: out into the world.

1159
00:53:24,560 --> 00:53:26,000
Speaker 2: Well, no, I appreciate it. And you know, I don't

1160
00:53:26,000 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 2: always get a chance to really geek out about the

1161
00:53:28,120 --> 00:53:31,080
Speaker 2: specifics of my systems and how I think about organizing

1162
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:33,520
Speaker 2: work because for a lot of people, you know, their

1163
00:53:33,560 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 2: eyes glass over. So I like being among my tribe

1164
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,799
Speaker 2: that is, the fellow productivity geeks out there. So it's

1165
00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:40,480
Speaker 2: always a pleasure.

1166
00:53:40,880 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Cal. That is it for today's show.

1167
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,359
Speaker 1: Next week, I'm very excited to share with you an

1168
00:53:48,440 --> 00:53:52,399
Speaker 1: interview from the founder and CEO of to do List,

1169
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: which is one of the world's most popular to do

1170
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:58,759
Speaker 1: list software and I was to dost use it for

1171
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 1: quite a bit and I loved it, I gotta say so.

1172
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:05,960
Speaker 1: Tune into that one next week, and if you're not

1173
00:54:06,239 --> 00:54:11,360
Speaker 1: a subscriber, hit subscribe wherever you listen to. This podcast

1174
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:15,360
Speaker 1: from How I Work is produced by Inventium with production

1175
00:54:15,520 --> 00:54:18,920
Speaker 1: support from dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin

1176
00:54:18,960 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 1: Imba who did the audio mix and makes everything sound amazing.

1177
00:54:23,680 --> 00:54:24,480
Speaker 1: See you next time.