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