The Art of Manliness - Email Is Making Us Miserable

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast each day you

00:00:11.520 begin work with high hopes for productivity and creativity but each day you instead find

00:00:15.340 yourself bogged down in checking and answering emails and responding to messages on slack

00:00:19.520 as frustrating as this is it just seems like the inevitable unalterable dynamic of modern

00:00:24.100 jobs just something you have to do but my guest today says that another way of working

00:00:27.620 is possible and it could unleash a tidal wave of new productivity his name is cal newport he's a

00:00:32.100 professor of computer science and the author of several books including his latest a world without

00:00:36.060 email reimagining work in an age of information overload cal describes how email and chat channels

00:00:40.980 have created what he calls the hyperactive hive mind and the cost of productivity well-being and

00:00:45.280 focus that this hive mind incurs he then explains why we feel the need to quickly respond to messages

00:00:49.760 even if we rationally know they're not urgent cal then lays out practical ways to replace the hive

00:00:54.200 mind with more effective ways of working and why it involves concentrating on processes over

00:00:58.180 messaging increasing intellectual specialization and return to hiring support staff and counter

00:01:02.820 intuitively more friction and less convenience cal also offers advice on how to make these changes

00:01:07.760 at your office even if you're not a position of authority after the show's over check out our

00:01:11.240 show notes at aom.is slash no email cal joins you now via clearcast.io

00:01:16.440 cal newport welcome back to the show brett i'm always happy to chat with you all right so this is

00:01:30.800 your fourth appearance on the a1 podcast this is a rarefied group here i don't i think you might be the

00:01:35.700 only one maybe one other person that's been on the podcast four times but we had you on the podcast

00:01:40.320 first to talk about your book so good they can't ignore you that's episode number 78 then we had

00:01:45.620 you on to talk about your book deep work and that's episode number 168 and then last time was

00:01:51.000 digital minimalism that's episode number 479 and you got a new book out called a world without email

00:01:56.780 reimagining work in an age of communication overload and what i like about your books is that each book

00:02:03.260 seems to be building upon each other like you're seeing this thought process going on over years how is

00:02:09.420 this book a world without email a continuation of your previous work that you've written about

00:02:14.260 well with with deep work in particular i was talking about the value of focus and it just seemed

00:02:19.900 to me that we were underestimating how effective it was to just keep your attention on one thing at a

00:02:25.420 time we're very distracted with email and slack and and our phones and so i wrote this book that

00:02:30.560 said i think we should focus more and here's my argument for why and here's how to train yourself

00:02:35.240 to focus more i naively assumed in that book that okay once that's clear uh we'll just spend less

00:02:41.340 time on email you know okay once we realize right it's like okay great maybe we should be less

00:02:45.560 distracted and the the clear feedback i got was cal you don't realize how entrenched this sort of

00:02:53.820 constant distraction this constant need to be checking inboxes checking slack on your phone all the

00:02:59.600 time that work has become this and so i got interested in that question you know why you

00:03:05.340 know why has work become this and is there is it possible that we should be doing something else and

00:03:09.200 it blew up it was like this huge topic that that we had completely transformed knowledge work for no

00:03:14.300 really good reason it's making people miserable it's holding back our national productivity that's

00:03:19.500 how much of an issue it is and then there was this huge countervailing force is probably going to

00:03:22.760 completely change the way work happens in the near future so i felt as if i had stumbled

00:03:27.600 backwards into a massive story and it took me four years to pull together all the threads but i've

00:03:32.480 been working on it since deep work you've been writing about your thinking about this on your blog

00:03:37.000 and i've been following that and it's been great to see how all this coalesced in this book in a really

00:03:41.360 solid case so you make this case that with the advent of email and digital communication

00:03:46.460 technology so like instant messenger now we got slack things like discord whatever it's created

00:03:53.140 something that you call the hyperactive hive mind and this is across work cultures around the world

00:03:59.000 how would you describe the hyperactive hive mind what is it it's the dominant workflow so it's the

00:04:04.820 dominant process by which we collaborate and coordinate and knowledge work and it's where we basically say

00:04:09.920 we can figure things out on the fly with unscheduled unstructured back and forth digital messaging so

00:04:16.500 if we need to deal with this client request we need to deal with this issue we need to figure out who's

00:04:20.280 going to work on this new proposal we'll just send messages back and forth right just rock and roll

00:04:24.280 in our inbox slack came along later as a way to implement the hyperactive hive mind even more

00:04:28.720 smoothly but it's doing the same thing let's just rock and roll back and forth on the fly which by the

00:04:34.060 way works fine if there's two of you yeah there's two of us that wants to figure something out let's

00:04:39.380 just go back and forth figure it out that's very natural but if you scale this to a whole team into a

00:04:44.200 whole company with all your vendors and all your clients it's entirely unsustainable so when i say

00:04:49.660 a world without email in the title of my book what i actually mean is a world without the hyperactive

00:04:56.120 hive mind workflow as the primary way that we collaborate and as you said like there it seems

00:05:02.200 like intuitively oh well if you can do this things on the fly and and send a quick text message or a

00:05:07.960 slack or an email you can get this done really fast it beats you know scheduling a meeting or getting on a

00:05:13.380 phone call but you in the first chapters of this book you make this case that we'll know this promise of

00:05:18.940 you know frictionless seamless that this of communication would make work better and easier

00:05:26.260 and more productive there's actually a lot of costs that have come with this hyperactive hive mind and

00:05:30.680 so one is you mentioned productivity i mean how has email and digital communication made us less

00:05:36.120 productive when when it first was introduced back in the 80s and 90s you thought oh this is the

00:05:40.560 salvation this is going to make us more productive what happened network switching right so this is one of

00:05:45.740 these huge under emphasized but critical realities of the way our brains operate is that network

00:05:52.040 switching and when i'm talking networks here i mean neural networks is expensive so what happens in a

00:05:57.660 typical hyperactive hive mind workflow is you have to keep tending these conversations if there's two

00:06:02.300 to three dozen different back and forth asynchronous conversations happening in your inbox you can't be

00:06:07.120 away from that inbox too long right because the the ball is pinging back and forth you have to hit it

00:06:11.620 back across the net you have to keep checking right so you have to constantly be checking these inboxes

00:06:15.180 every time you check this inbox you initiate a context switch your brain is trying to switch its

00:06:20.120 area of focus from the primary thing you were working on to all of these messages from people

00:06:23.900 in your life all these requests some urgent some not some exciting some upsetting you try to switch over

00:06:28.800 to this context and you glance at this inbox to see you know hey did brett answer me about when we're

00:06:33.420 meeting and then you wrench your attention back to the primary thing you were working on

00:06:37.100 that rapid network shift there creates a cognitive catastrophe and we experience as a reduced ability

00:06:44.320 to think we get fatigue we get anxiety we get a sort of frustration and tiredness we don't realize

00:06:49.860 that when we check our inbox once every six minutes we are setting ourselves up into a cognitive

00:06:55.560 environment in which we are terrible at actually working with our brain so yes the hive mind was

00:07:00.060 convenient on paper because it's much easier than figuring out more structured ways of working

00:07:04.440 it just has this nagging side effect of also making us terrible at doing our work gotcha so

00:07:09.460 yeah what happened we've talked about network switching on some with some other guests but it's

00:07:12.600 like every time you switch attention there's basically leftover it's called attention residue

00:07:18.460 right so you're still thinking about the previous task you're working on or the thing you were

00:07:22.580 thinking about as you're beginning to think about this other one and that results in you not being

00:07:26.720 able to focus essentially yeah and it makes you feel frustrated and it makes you feel tired and it makes

00:07:32.900 you feel anxious and we all have that we all experience it right like you check you're checking

00:07:36.900 your inbox where you're trying to write something else and you eventually just fall back into like

00:07:41.000 i'm just going to sit here and look at messages why because your brain can't do it i mean it's like

00:07:44.880 you're trying to run a 440 faster than your legs are able to do it we're asking our brains to do

00:07:49.480 things that they can't but we have ignored this the psychological reality of how our brains actually

00:07:55.120 operate when we've designed our current workplace and i think it's a crisis we just don't realize a lot of

00:08:00.680 people don't realize how much damage is actually being done and we got a video like people aren't

00:08:04.960 just dealing with email or slack they're probably also checking twitter they're probably also

00:08:09.160 checking facebook or instagram into the mix as well and so that just makes it even worse

00:08:13.860 yeah that just amplifies it but at least at least you could decide as an individual i'm not going to

00:08:20.060 check social media while i work right the insidious nature of the hive mind it's this might be how

00:08:25.060 your organization actually gets things done right so you can't just say and this is why by the way

00:08:29.720 trying to fix these problems in the inbox always fail to just tell people you know batch your emails

00:08:35.680 have better response time expectations use inbox zero the reason these fail is because the problem

00:08:40.700 is not fixable in the inbox you got to fix the underlying workflows that's generating all those

00:08:45.660 messages in the first place and so that's what makes this problem so insidious is that i can just

00:08:50.200 say i'm not going to check twitter during work because it's trash to my concentration it's much harder

00:08:54.480 for me to say i'm not going to answer my boss's email today during work because it's trash to my

00:08:58.720 concentration so we have a much a much stickier issue which is why i think it has stuck around

00:09:02.840 as long as it has have economists done studies on this like where they've been able to put a

00:09:06.880 number on how much lost productivity we have because of email communication or digital communication

00:09:12.480 it's hard to get exact numbers but there's one hypothesis that i find compelling

00:09:18.100 is that this shift to the hyperactive hive mind helped explain why over the last 10 to 15 years

00:09:25.200 where so much money was invested in making communication as low friction and fast and easy

00:09:30.680 as possible non-industrial productivity in this country has stagnated and in fact i would go so

00:09:35.940 far as to guess that non-industrial productivity would have probably fallen because this is taking

00:09:40.980 such a toll on our brain if not for the fact that we just added all of these off the book extra shifts

00:09:46.340 that we do like early in the morning or late at night to actually get work done when we're free from

00:09:50.820 all the communication about work i think we had to add all these off the books hours just to keep

00:09:55.280 the ship level but if it wasn't for these extra hours we added we probably would have seen non-industrial

00:10:00.500 productivity strictly decreasing so though it's hard to pull apart all the variables and say this is

00:10:06.740 exactly what the effect is i would guess that it is significant and so you're making this case that

00:10:12.660 you know one thing we can do if we can restructure how we do work we can unleash amount of like a bunch

00:10:18.680 of lost productivity that we're not tapping into right now yeah a huge amount potentially i mean

00:10:25.060 one thing i cite in the book is peter drucker at the end of the 20th century said the story of

00:10:31.320 industrial manufacturing in the 20th century was a 50x increase in productivity from 1900 to 2000

00:10:39.060 there's a 50x increase because they got very serious about asking the question what's the right way to

00:10:43.020 build things not what's the most convenient way not what's the easiest way what's the best way to build

00:10:48.160 things and he said that 50x growth was so phenomenal that essentially all of the wealth on which the

00:10:53.740 developed world was built in the 20th century came from that he then looked back and said okay right

00:10:59.060 now in 1999 when i'm writing this where we are in knowledge work is where the industrial sector was in

00:11:03.640 1900 so he said we had basically not even begun yet serious thinking about what's the best way to

00:11:11.740 actually get a bunch of minds together and produce things that are valuable so if there is a 50x increase

00:11:16.940 in productivity possible here it is a almost mind-boggling amount of economic growth and

00:11:24.240 prosperity that is latent in this growing sector and it's just sitting there because we haven't

00:11:29.900 really started thinking seriously yet about wait a second what actually is the best way to get a bunch

00:11:35.380 of brains together and have them collaborate to produce whatever ad copy computer code podcast whatever it

00:11:42.340 is and so once we start doing that thinking i think it's going to be phenomenal what we can unlock

00:11:47.400 all right so the hive mind it causes productivity because the task switching causes us to not be able

00:11:52.880 to focus but you also said besides lost productivity you mentioned this that it's just making us miserable

00:11:57.640 too you've surveyed your readers and i know other organizations have surveyed workers about digital

00:12:03.560 communication like that's the one thing they complain about they just feel like they can never

00:12:06.820 never log off like what is it about email and you know slack or whatever that causes us to feel like

00:12:14.740 we need to respond and need to always be on even though we might not have to be well so i have this

00:12:21.260 whole chapter called you know email is making us miserable and there's two threads of evidence that i

00:12:26.900 uncover for what i think is making us so miserable at email now first is it just conflicts fundamentally

00:12:32.780 with the way the social circuits in our brain operates so our if you look at the deep history

00:12:38.220 of our species we really take seriously our one-on-one relationships right i mean it is absolutely

00:12:43.300 crucial to our survival or at least it used to be absolutely crucial that you very carefully maintained

00:12:48.560 relationships with different tribe members so that you could for example get food shared next time

00:12:53.840 there's a famine or they don't put a spear in your back or whatever your concern was these circuits get

00:12:59.360 very upset when they think about messages from other people piling up now you can tell yourself

00:13:06.340 hey look i'm rational i know that these messages are not urgent i know that we have norms at our

00:13:13.600 company that says don't expect a response within 24 hours none of this is going to directly affect my

00:13:18.900 survival you can tell yourself that in your rational mind those deeper social networks don't care and

00:13:23.820 they're anxious and they're upset and you can actually measure this in the lab there's these

00:13:27.860 insidious experiments where they have people hooked up to heart rate monitors doing some sort of fake

00:13:32.840 task on a computer and they come over and say look your phone is causing interference you have to move

00:13:38.600 it and so they move their phone but while they're moving it across the room they they turn off the do

00:13:43.580 not disturb mode and they put the phone across the room they go back to experiment and then they call

00:13:48.400 it or send a text message to it while you're doing the experiment now here's the thing rationally

00:13:53.560 speaking that person doing the experiment they had put their phone in the do not disturb mode

00:13:58.020 so rationally they've been like i am not going to hear from anyone for 30 minutes i'm fine with it

00:14:02.000 i'm doing this experiment i'm completely fine with it i'm completely happy with that and yet when they

00:14:07.640 hear the phone ring from across the room all of their stress indicators jump up because they had

00:14:12.440 them all hooked up to these things for the fake experiment so no matter what your rational mind told

00:14:15.840 you it doesn't matter a tribe member's tapping you on the shoulder you're ignoring them so this

00:14:20.480 notion that there's always messages piling up and they're from people and they're from people who

00:14:25.360 want you to respond and right now you're not that makes us really miserable and then the other

00:14:30.420 threat of things that makes us miserable is that we are not good at communicating linguistically

00:14:34.000 we lose a ton of information when we reduce communication down to just text that's sent in

00:14:39.080 like an email or a chat and we're we're wildly misunderstood people get upset we misinterpret

00:14:45.120 other people we get upset with them so it's just a really impoverished form of communication so

00:14:49.860 yeah if we're sending like the occasional file to someone no problem but when we're doing most of

00:14:53.980 our workplace collaboration so our back and forth communication is happening by these text-based

00:14:58.640 messages we're constantly misunderstood we're constantly misunderstanding other people and

00:15:03.840 that's incredibly frustrating so you put these two things together you know yes the hive mind is

00:15:08.020 very convenient it's very easy and it's very cheap but it also has the side effect of it makes us as

00:15:12.900 human beings despite our best efforts just really miserable yeah the miscommunication like i think

00:15:18.440 everyone experienced that with email but i know with slack like that's been amplified in some

00:15:22.040 organizations there's like slack drama now in companies because someone writes something on slack

00:15:27.360 and it they're joking but it was completely misinterpreted or they didn't under someone

00:15:31.880 didn't understand and there's like all this drama that you know hr has to get involved and

00:15:36.820 and that sucks away from productivity as well so this is for this vicious cycle yeah i mean it's

00:15:41.880 something we don't understand that if you if you look at a real interaction between two people

00:15:45.580 in the same room the transcript of what they are saying is a fraction of the information

00:15:50.720 that is actually being transferred in that room and we wildly overestimate i love these experiments

00:15:55.520 i talked about in the book because they were funny but the person about to send the email

00:15:59.520 wildly overestimates how much they're going to be understood because you know in your head you know

00:16:04.220 what you're trying to say and you hear all the context you hear all the nuance you're like oh this

00:16:07.100 is great like and and on the other end they're completely misunderstood the analogy one researcher

00:16:12.100 gave and this was an actual experiment someone did you know if i'm going to tap on a table with my

00:16:16.720 knuckle like look i'm going to tap out a song on the table because you hear that song in your head

00:16:22.360 you're like this couldn't possibly be clearer like of course this is happy birthday and for the person

00:16:27.420 across the room they just hear like random knocks like i have no idea what you're trying to send to me

00:16:32.380 that's a metaphor for what email communication is like so how do we end up here like why did we

00:16:37.840 why do we communicate the way we do with email and slack even though it has all these costs like

00:16:43.360 why why do we have such why do we use it something if it's not effective well i mean this is one of

00:16:48.420 the big ideas of the book is that no one decided this was a good idea it's not that anyone sat down

00:16:53.540 some ceo somewhere and said here's how we're going to make more money if we could communicate more

00:16:56.780 there was never a harvard business review article that said the future of productivity is we need more

00:17:02.000 back and forth communication it's actually relatively accidental and emergent and i try to document this

00:17:07.540 step by step but basically email spreads very wide through the early 1990s to the mid 1990s it has

00:17:13.880 this sort of exponential growth throughout the office sector it spreads wide for an obvious reason

00:17:20.040 which is like oh it's a convenient way to send information in files it's better than memos it's

00:17:23.560 better than voicemail and it's better than fax machines right so okay so email spreads for because

00:17:28.800 it's a useful tool everywhere where it spreads we almost immediately get this hyperactive hive mind emerge

00:17:35.560 i actually have a case study in the book of a company it's actually ibm in their headquarters

00:17:40.680 putting an internal email and within three or four days the amount of communication at that office

00:17:46.740 had increased by a factor of five i mean this was like way too quick for anyone to actually say we're

00:17:51.020 going to change the way we work just the presence of this tool seems to bring out the hive mind and

00:17:55.260 the reason seems to be is because it's very easy and convenient right so in the moment this is how

00:18:00.820 humans will instinctually collaborate let me just grab you i just need something what about this like

00:18:04.700 that's the way you and i would work together if we were in the savannah a hundred thousand years ago

00:18:09.620 trying to build a fire we would just go back and forth ad hoc unstructured so it's very natural very

00:18:13.900 convenient and so then the question is why was there not pushback from management saying yeah this

00:18:18.920 might be easy and convenient but guys it's making us really unproductive the reason that didn't happen

00:18:25.000 is that in knowledge work we have a very strong culture of autonomy that it is up to the individual

00:18:31.860 worker to figure out how they want to organize their work management gives objectives the knowledge

00:18:37.800 worker on their own figures out how to organize themselves and organize their work and in that in

00:18:41.920 that type of environment what's easy and what's convenient and what's flexible that's what's going to

00:18:46.900 dominate so we've been stuck with this hyperactive hive mind that no one ever really thought was a good

00:18:52.180 idea because we don't really have an easy mechanism to dislodge it right now no so i thought that was an

00:18:57.560 interesting argument you made so first off there's something about digital communication the technology

00:19:01.860 and this is goes into this idea of technological determinism there's something about the technology

00:19:06.680 that it want like it wants something you know we're saying this it wants it's not we're not saying that

00:19:10.880 the technology is sentient but like the way it's designed it wants you to communicate more it encourages

00:19:16.020 that basically that's what we're naturally going to do and you noted that with the ibm thing

00:19:20.800 but the other issue too so with this emergent thing happened and then you had you know peter

00:19:25.420 drucker and we mentioned earlier yeah he made that case that in knowledge work the knowledge

00:19:30.480 worker has to learn to manage themselves like they had to be autonomous and so yeah you as you said

00:19:35.080 in business management you hear this idea give more autonomy to workers because it makes them feel

00:19:39.460 happier because they feel like they're in control of their work and mastery and the like and you talk

00:19:43.360 about that and so good they can't ignore you right but this autonomy because everyone is autonomous

00:19:48.760 handling on their own it creates sort of a digital tragedy of the commons right so everyone's doing

00:19:56.620 what's in their best interest but by doing what's in their best interest it makes things miserable

00:20:01.260 for everybody else yes because no one person can easily say i'm not using the hive mind anymore

00:20:08.360 because everyone else is going to say well wait a second this is the only way we have to coordinate

00:20:12.460 and collaborate with you so now you are getting in the way of us getting our work done also it's easier

00:20:17.260 for me if you're doing the hive mind because that means in the moment i can get something for you

00:20:21.540 so this autonomy trap plays a big role and here's my my take on it i mean this is one of these ideas

00:20:27.500 that i haven't i hadn't heard before so it's one of the things i've really been pushing uh i also

00:20:31.720 there's a new yorker article i wrote earlier this year called the rise and fall of getting things done

00:20:35.860 that really goes deep into this autonomy trap issue as well so it's something i've really been trying

00:20:40.800 to understand publicly in recent months and i think what happened is drucker was correct

00:20:46.940 that the actual work you do in knowledge work needs to be autonomous you know i can't tell an ad

00:20:52.780 copyright or how to come up with a slogan and i can't tell a computer programmer how to write an

00:20:56.980 algorithm like i can't break that down into a henry ford assembly line and he was right about that

00:21:00.920 but the workflows that surrounds that autonomous work how we identify tasks how we assign tasks how we

00:21:07.140 review tasks and how we get the information people need to execute those tasks communicated

00:21:11.180 the workflows that surround this autonomous work that we really need to think about at the team or

00:21:16.860 organizational level and that's where we fell into this trap is that we made all of that autonomous

00:21:22.460 and i think the way out of the trap is to say yes i'm not going to tell you as a computer programmer

00:21:27.280 how to write computer code but you better believe that we are going to have a really well constructed

00:21:33.680 project management methodology where we figure out what needs to be coded who's working on what we keep

00:21:38.220 things off their plates and we call that agile methodologies and computer programmers do that

00:21:42.080 and it's actually been a great win for them and so that's what we need to be doing in other parts

00:21:46.440 of knowledge work i'm not going to tell you how to do your work but we better have really good

00:21:49.520 processes in place for how that work actually is organized and that's where the real wins are okay

00:21:54.620 so instead of spending all your time talking about the work through emails and slack you're actually

00:21:58.980 spending time working on the work yeah and the thing that kills us the thing that makes the

00:22:03.140 hyperactive hive mind so bad is the back and forth interaction email is fantastic for sending

00:22:09.500 information or files it is terrible for interaction and so where we need to get to and sort of the

00:22:15.440 prescription in the book is we have to get explicit what are the different processes that we actually

00:22:21.060 execute regularly in our team or in our business all right for each of these processes how do we

00:22:25.940 actually want to organize this process in such a way that it minimizes back and forth unscheduled

00:22:30.680 communication and you do that process by process you can eventually take that pressure off the

00:22:36.360 inbox that's the thing we have to get out of the inbox is talking back and forth about work and it

00:22:40.980 could mean a lot of different things depending on the process it might be look we just check in on

00:22:45.500 this wednesday morning at this time it might be we have a series of steps in place you know you put

00:22:49.740 the podcast episode in this shared drive by thursday close the business the editor picks it up and gives

00:22:55.020 you their notes by friday morning you know whatever right you you have some process where this is how we

00:22:59.220 do this without requiring us to go back and forth but by taking each of the processes that makes up

00:23:04.240 what your your team or your individual your company actually does and saying how can we actually

00:23:08.160 implement these in such a way that minimizes us having conversations back and forth in email

00:23:13.040 that defangs the hive mind that's replacing the hive mind with more specific processes and that's where

00:23:18.240 i think all of the the wins will come looking in the near future and you said like you you said you can

00:23:24.400 look at what we did during the industrial revolution particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century

00:23:29.520 with ford and his assembly line work like that's what he figured that out like the way they built cars

00:23:34.340 before the assembly line it was sort of ad hoc bring in some craftsmen they'll do their thing and then

00:23:39.500 another group of craftsmen will work on and like cars took forever to make but then ford had this idea

00:23:44.420 well no we don't we won't bring the the workers to the car we'll take the car to the workers and each

00:23:50.780 worker will have their own little one job they do and we just start pumping out cars like nobody's

00:23:55.980 business and you say that we can actually use that model or thinking about our communication today

00:24:02.420 in the same way and be more productive yeah i think it's a very useful analogy because the way they

00:24:08.760 built cars pre ford's assembly line it was literally called the craft method and it was the hyperactive

00:24:13.720 hive mind of its day because it was convenient and it was natural and it was flexible and was easy to

00:24:18.760 manage yeah just we had to put the car the chassis on sawhorses so you didn't have to bend over but it

00:24:24.080 was okay we're building a car here and if we want to scale up our factory we buy some more sawhorses

00:24:27.920 and buy some more teams it was easy it was convenient it was flexible and the important thing in this

00:24:33.080 analogy is ford said i think there's better ways to build cars but those ways are going to be less

00:24:38.040 convenient less easy less flexible they're going to require more management we're going to have to

00:24:43.340 invest more money and it's going to cause in the short term lots of bad things to happen because

00:24:46.680 hey it's pretty hard to calibrate these assembly lines to get them to actually work so it was a pain

00:24:51.180 but that pain made the model t's get produced 100x factor and change ford into one of the largest

00:24:56.480 companies in the world and i think that's a useful analogy not that there's anything specific about

00:25:01.980 an assembly line that we would replicate in knowledge work industrial work is completely

00:25:05.840 different than in knowledge work no we step up a level this idea that what's convenient and

00:25:10.460 flexible might not be the best way to do it that sometimes going through the pain of coming up with

00:25:14.680 better systems is worth it by far in the long run and that's a mindset shift on pitching and i think

00:25:20.440 it is poetic that it took about 20 years from the beginning of industrial car manufacturing to

00:25:26.060 ford starting to innovate how do we actually get past the easy ways of doing this well if we if we

00:25:32.360 look at email we're not too much farther than 20 years from the first sort of widespread adoption

00:25:36.960 of email in the knowledge work sector so we're kind of on track with that existing timeline for

00:25:42.400 okay the tech is here we've done the easy thing who is our knowledge work henry ford who's going to

00:25:48.260 say my company will take the pain of moving past the hive mind even if it's annoying in the short term

00:25:53.380 because we'll be the biggest company in the world a couple years later and this is by putting in some

00:25:58.040 structure and thinking about your work process this will allow you to do what you call the attention

00:26:02.500 capital principle which is by thinking about your processes for the long term you're actually

00:26:07.340 going to allow your workers to be able to think on the thing that they're good at so if it's an ad

00:26:10.920 copywriter they're going to be able to spend more time writing good ad copy instead of you know doing

00:26:15.420 back and forth admin work trying to talk about the work they need to be doing and that will actually

00:26:20.120 just increase productivity so like you're you're taking a hit in the maybe in the short term for long-term

00:26:26.720 gains yeah that's exactly right and i introduced that that term attention capital theory to try to

00:26:32.420 make this more concrete because i think we got a little bit confused because it's well it's people

00:26:37.140 and it's fellow people and we're kind of just talking to other people and let's keep this

00:26:40.300 convenient and we're thinking about interpersonal dynamics whereas in the industrial sector we're

00:26:44.480 like oh we have capital you know we have all this equipment and machinery and and you know sheet metal

00:26:48.980 and tires and we want to figure out what's the best deployment of this to produce cars as fast as

00:26:52.480 possible and knowledge work is the same thing except for now it's what i call attention capital it's the

00:26:57.560 latent potential of all these human brains to add value to information to actually produce value in

00:27:02.380 the knowledge sector and we should be experimenting with what's the right configuration how do we hook

00:27:06.840 up all these brains in the way that's going to produce the best value and when we think about it

00:27:10.640 that way yeah we get all these innovations like well get rid of the hive mind we should probably have a

00:27:15.160 lot more specializations another thing that falls out like people should be doing less they should be

00:27:19.240 focusing on what they do best that's probably going to produce more value than allowing the hr

00:27:23.180 department and the it department and the cmo and all these people that just lay claim to time and

00:27:28.280 attention you know when you start seeing this as we're trying to get a good return on capital

00:27:32.020 all these innovations fall out and you're going to get a lot of different ways of configuring work a

00:27:36.880 lot of bespoke processes a lot more specialization a lot more protection of time and attention

00:27:41.040 we just have to have this first fundamental mindset shift that yeah it's human brains instead of factory

00:27:46.920 equipment but that doesn't mean we can't innovate and try radical things and really think outside the

00:27:53.060 box about what's the right way to actually hook these brains together and have them produce

00:27:56.740 stuff that's valuable we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:27:59.920 and now back to the show well let's talk about some things some big picture principles of how

00:28:07.660 people and organizations can structure work so they're more effective and get more done and what's

00:28:12.000 great about your book you actually found companies who have been experimenting with this stuff they've

00:28:16.540 been experimenting ditching the hyperactive hive mind and so with all these organizations that have had

00:28:21.000 success with this what have been like the big principles you see them following to you know

00:28:27.280 get this attention capital basically well so i mean you certainly see a process focused approach

00:28:34.780 so instead of just rock and roll in our inbox let's actually name the different processes that we come

00:28:39.840 back to again and again so that we can have conversations about how do we actually want to implement these

00:28:45.380 processes so that we have less of this back and forth communication you see a couple different

00:28:51.400 responses to that question emerge like one thing that i i saw being very popular in these companies is

00:28:56.500 that they would externalize and make transparent the work that's actually happening so tasks and

00:29:02.300 information get out of these inboxes and onto shared systems you know they're on a task board with

00:29:08.160 different columns for different statuses and information and notes from the clients and files are

00:29:12.100 attached to these virtual cards and who's working on what is crystal clear and they have some

00:29:16.060 synchronous way we get together every morning for 10 minutes we look at this who needs what from whom

00:29:20.140 okay go work so you see that common communication protocols come up a lot so if there's something

00:29:25.480 that just involves i got to check this i have to send it back to you you have to approve my changes

00:29:30.300 that it needs to go to the producer or something like this any of these sort of replicatable processes

00:29:34.500 you'll see a lot of protocols emerge where they say let's just figure out how we do this it does not

00:29:38.880 require me to just shoot you a message and so you get these protocols in place of like this goes here

00:29:45.000 by this time i change this status in a spreadsheet that's how you know to grab it your notes go here

00:29:50.680 i approve it where suddenly you automate these processes so they don't require messaging that's

00:29:54.620 also quite common and then you see what i think of as just innovations around communication density so

00:30:01.040 you might have things like office hours twice a week you know i'm in the zoom room or i'm in my

00:30:05.920 office if you're in person and a lot of quick coordination and questions just gets moved to

00:30:11.200 yeah just grab me in my office hours right so you get these sort of general innovations or or you see

00:30:15.540 email addresses get disassociated with individuals well no we have an email address for this client

00:30:20.740 that client uses that email address to communicate with us that that email then goes into a system

00:30:25.700 that's monitored by a lot of people we have shifts right so you get these kind of think of these as

00:30:29.860 these ad hoc communication innovations so these are the three classes of things you begin to see

00:30:34.820 once you start from the fundamental premise of the hive mind's not the only way to work we have

00:30:39.160 these underlying processes what could be better so yeah and i think what it sounds like is this is

00:30:44.360 kind of counterintuitive but when you start thinking about these processes and putting these protocols

00:30:48.540 in place you're actually making communication more complicated because there might be multiple steps

00:30:53.400 and multiple systems you have to set in place but by increasing complication you actually in

00:30:59.820 decrease complexity right because like whenever you allow ad hoc or sort of asynchronous communication

00:31:04.880 anyone can talk like you have all sorts of different people communicating like that's come that's

00:31:09.280 complex all these different interactions going on but if you just inject a bit of friction a bit of

00:31:13.860 complication you reduce that complexity and things actually more streamlined yeah we we place too much

00:31:20.220 emphasis in this current moment in this particular sector on convenience convenience is not a very useful

00:31:25.720 principle for designing an effective business i mean no one looks at a you know musk elon musk tesla

00:31:32.960 assembly line and says this is really a pain like we have to invent these robots and program all these

00:31:39.280 robots and have all these like just-in-time production systems like this isn't easy you know it would be

00:31:44.080 much easier if i could kind of just build a car with my friends or something like this right and they

00:31:48.160 would say who cares if it's easy you know convenience is not a relevant principle and so that's a mindset

00:31:54.560 shift that has to happen is that our goal is not to avoid small bad things from happening our goal is

00:31:58.960 not to try to make things as convenient as possible and certainly our goal is not as it seems to have

00:32:03.760 been in the tech sector in the last 20 years to reduce as much friction as possible from communication

00:32:08.340 because our job is not we don't get paid right we don't get paid by the the inbox size we get paid by

00:32:14.240 producing valuable things so it's the wrong these are all the wrong metrics to look at so yeah it does

00:32:18.440 seem counterintuitive at first some of these processes you use to replace the hive mind because you say

00:32:24.180 there's more upfront cost there might be more time involved i have to spend in the moment

00:32:29.280 but once you step back and say my convenience even time friction none of these things are directly what

00:32:36.500 we're trying to optimize and what we're trying to optimize is producing effective results in a way

00:32:40.660 that is sustainable for the workers that doesn't burn them out or make them miserable

00:32:43.540 and those solutions tend not to be convenient they tend not to be low friction they tend not to be

00:32:49.080 flexible and we just have to get used to the fact that it's okay but that's how

00:32:52.620 most business runs in most other sectors so the outliers here are really the office worker

00:32:57.400 that says i know but it would be inconvenient if bob didn't answer my email right away

00:33:02.220 you know so we're kind of the outliers we need to get our act together

00:33:05.680 so you mentioned some things that people some of these companies have done and one thing you make

00:33:10.160 this really strong case for a type of work you mentioned it earlier this sort of agile development

00:33:14.680 or scrum or kabon kabon for those who aren't familiar this is something that computer

00:33:20.840 programmers have used and this is your this is what you do you you're a professor at computer

00:33:24.720 science so you're familiar with this stuff for those who aren't who aren't familiar with agile

00:33:28.680 development and task board like what does that look like so one of the key things in agile

00:33:33.200 methodologies is everything that's being worked on or needs to be worked on is stored in a common

00:33:40.440 transparent centralized place so traditionally this would be post-it notes on a whiteboard but

00:33:45.840 obviously this you can do this virtually very easily right so you have this board i call them

00:33:51.280 task boards every methodology has their own name and you have these cards on the boards that represent

00:33:55.200 things that have to happen you have columns that represent statuses like waiting to work on in

00:34:00.300 progress you know q a testing needs to be done done etc and everyone sees everything that needs to be

00:34:06.620 done everything being done what's everything status they also then add in they're called status

00:34:11.300 meetings and traditionally they're held standing up they're every morning and they're fast and during

00:34:16.200 these status meetings you say this is what i worked on this is what i was working on yesterday and how

00:34:20.380 it went right so there's accountability here's what i'm working on today and here's what i need from

00:34:25.420 people to get that done and then you're basically left to execute and one of the big concepts especially

00:34:30.820 in kanban is something called the works in progress limit where they're explicit about how many things

00:34:35.940 should we do we want one person to be responsible for at a time and because this is inspired by

00:34:41.320 industrial manufacturing they realize that if you significantly cut that down that just one or two

00:34:44.980 things at a time that's much more effective than putting 10 things on someone's plate and having them

00:34:49.460 just try to figure that out over time but my big point about these methodologies which i talk about a

00:34:54.240 lot is not that in other types of work you should be using scrum or you should be using kanban it's

00:35:00.940 actually a higher level observation which is what they did right is they said we're not just going

00:35:06.700 to hive mind it we're not just going to rock and roll an email and say knowledge workers are autonomous

00:35:11.000 let's just figure out we'll just kind of figure things out over slack how to program this code

00:35:14.720 they put in place these really set workflows that allowed people to get more out of these brains

00:35:20.140 and people to be less burnt out that's the lesson i want to pull away for other types of work

00:35:24.120 not that you should use scrum but you should have whatever your own equivalent of scrum is in place

00:35:28.960 don't just settle on let's rock and roll and i mean one of the big takeaways too is how effective

00:35:34.940 in-person meetings can be like they don't have like i think most people think oh meetings like

00:35:38.580 that's the bane of any office workers existence but the way you describe how these companies use

00:35:43.640 meetings they're like there's a single purpose it's to do the check-in and after that it's done

00:35:47.960 you're not doing any there's no you're not reporting like here's what we're gonna do and then how's

00:35:52.920 everyone doing and but it's just like here's what i've done here's what i need and then here's what

00:35:57.700 i'm gonna do and it takes 15 minutes and you're able to and you follow that up a week later and

00:36:03.680 you ask the same questions here's what i did here's what i need to be done and here's what i'm gonna do

00:36:07.820 and things just start flowing once you add that little in-person meeting instead of having to go

00:36:12.740 back and forth in email saying well i need this file can you send me this but it you don't you don't

00:36:17.380 do that anymore and so i've seen and i documented in the book other type of work where they pulled in

00:36:22.960 that same highly structured status meeting approach in all sorts of other type of work and it's been

00:36:28.620 really successful so i talk about for example a ux development firm they're not coding they're like

00:36:33.340 designing user interfaces so it's a different type of thing but they have their morning status meeting

00:36:38.240 and then they have another one in the afternoon like the morning status meeting is how they figure

00:36:41.120 out what to do during the morning and they just work there's no slack emails barely used then they

00:36:46.060 check in at two and then they work until the end of the day and they and then they have

00:36:50.240 systems so they were using base camp a project management system in this particular example to

00:36:54.260 keep track of all the information about each client so all everything is stored you see what's

00:36:57.900 going on they don't use email for anything except for delivering files and private communication so

00:37:04.240 like if i'm going to talk to you about your salary i don't want to post that on you know base camp or

00:37:08.880 everyone else can see and so that's really effective and it's because synchronous communication is very

00:37:12.540 effective real time back and forth is incredibly rich and incredibly effective the reason why we hate

00:37:17.900 meetings is because there's other things people use meetings for which is pretty terrible and when

00:37:22.160 people start to use meetings for example as a proxy for productivity like here's something i need to

00:37:27.180 work on i'm kind of disorganized i don't trust myself to actually make progress on this so let's just

00:37:32.220 get a meeting on the calendar because the one thing i know i will do is if i see a meeting on my calendar

00:37:36.120 i'll attend it and now i don't have to worry about this so we start to use meetings as a way to work

00:37:42.800 around the fact that we're unorganized and unable to actually schedule and execute work without being

00:37:47.700 forced to do it and then what you end up with is you end up with days full of meetings where it's

00:37:51.120 like i don't i guess we're talking about this project and those are killer but synchronous

00:37:55.800 communication if you can structure it and there's a purpose for it is way better than trying to take

00:38:02.440 that same conversation say well we'll just work it out on emails we'll just work it out back and forth

00:38:05.800 because you don't realize that five minutes check-in on the status meeting that turns into a dozen

00:38:10.200 back and forth emails otherwise and a dozen back and forth emails might turn into 120 email inbox

00:38:15.840 checks as you're waiting for each of those messages to come in and to respond so we should not

00:38:19.900 underestimate the cost of taking synchronous coordination and saying well we'll just figure it

00:38:25.600 out on the fly and also the other nice thing about organizing your work by with these boards right

00:38:31.120 is that you can create multiple boards for different projects and then that reduces task switching so you

00:38:36.960 can like look at one board for this one project and then you say well i'm moving on to this next

00:38:41.260 board because i'm done with that board this that project instead of going to your inbox where you

00:38:44.860 see just sort of it's basically whoever it's chronological like reverse chronological so instead

00:38:50.980 of just going through down your email list and say oh i got to do this and that's one project and i

00:38:54.500 got to go to this next email and that's a different project you're with the board organizing by

00:38:58.440 project with these boards you're able to reduce task switching yeah which is one of the examples i gave

00:39:04.320 was davish's marketing firm and you know he was so happy after they made this shift and it was just

00:39:10.020 like you were talking about it's they use trello as their particular software one board per client

00:39:15.040 and then everything about that client's on this board like okay here's the notes from the last call

00:39:19.480 we had here's from the brainstorming meeting here's the file with the proposal everything's on here and

00:39:24.540 the way he explained it to me is my day is now let's load up a board for the project i want to put my

00:39:30.140 attention on and then you're just in that world like all you were seeing is information for that

00:39:34.980 client you're looking at the update since you were last there you get up to speed with what's going on

00:39:39.640 you take the thing that you could be most useful on you work on it for a while you update the card

00:39:45.820 and attach your results so that you've you know you've updated the status of the project you know an

00:39:49.660 hour has passed and you say okay now i'm done i'm going to work on another client and then you shift

00:39:54.880 your context and he really emphasized right the founder of this company davish really emphasized he's like it just

00:39:59.780 the positive impact of just being able to do one thing at a time he didn't realize how much of a

00:40:06.580 relief that was going to be because otherwise you're exactly right it's like well i'm kind of

00:40:11.080 working on this project but it's an email and so i'm going to see about seven other projects at the

00:40:15.340 same time i'm going to kind of try to answer some of those messages and switch back to this message

00:40:18.460 and then you're just exhausted and miserable and then you start doing the inbox surf you're like well

00:40:22.860 i just want to find the messages that are easier to respond to everyone knows that effect that's

00:40:26.340 because you burnt out your brain from the context switching where you start inbox surfing to find

00:40:30.440 the stuff to answer that's easy so you're like at least i'm busy and they don't have any of that

00:40:34.320 anymore they like work on a client for a while and then they're done and then they work on another

00:40:38.420 client for a while and then they're done and it seems like a little thing but it made all the

00:40:43.540 difference in terms of how people at that firm felt and i even wrote about like he showed me his boards

00:40:48.000 and i wrote in the book about how it must have been what it felt like if you worked for buick and the

00:40:53.820 first time you walked in and saw the henry ford assembly line you're like oh yes this is obviously

00:40:58.920 a much better way to do it that same sort of aha moment for me i was like this is obviously better

00:41:04.580 than an inbox you know you just had to see it for a second to realize that and this ties in with

00:41:08.640 another thing you've written about with time blocking so you could have a board like a board for

00:41:12.820 one project you can actually plan out your week and say on mondays from 10 a.m to 12 a.m i'm working on

00:41:19.800 x project and all you're going to do is look at that board and then you can say well on

00:41:23.560 wednesdays from 10 a.m to 12 p.m i'm going to work on this other project and you can actually schedule

00:41:28.780 that out and you know exactly what you're going to do you don't have to think about it because it's

00:41:32.940 already on the calendar yeah and you and you know it's coming and you can do that across the whole

00:41:37.200 team and and i you know i talked about another company that did this they were using flow all these

00:41:42.560 tools kind of do the same thing right it's cards on boards you can attach stuff to and assign

00:41:47.280 them and they're all great i don't have any particular favorites they did like you were

00:41:50.720 talking about and and they anchored these sessions with these short status meetings so it was you

00:41:57.040 knew like yeah for this project we all get together for 15 minutes at this time and then we can all

00:42:03.020 just go and work on that right so we can we can quickly sync up like okay wait i need this you need

00:42:07.100 that we send that in here what are we doing we got it good and then they're just in that world and

00:42:11.140 that's what they work on and so these these synchronous status meetings anchored

00:42:14.840 sessions in which everyone was going to be working on that project and so but once you

00:42:20.180 start thinking about attention capital theory and getting away from the hive mind all of these

00:42:23.500 things become options like all these innovation floodgates just open once you realize what if we

00:42:28.480 don't just rock and roll in an inbox in another case you make in this book and it's going to be

00:42:35.820 i don't know i wouldn't say controversial but it's it's counterintuitive the way we do work today

00:42:39.980 one of the other things that happened with digital communication is it allowed people

00:42:44.160 workers to be become generalist right you could instead of relying on a secretary to handle your

00:42:50.020 scheduling well you can do that through calendaring tools and email you don't need a secretary anymore

00:42:55.060 instead of relying on some other support staff to do i don't know marketing well no as a ceo like

00:43:03.180 you can easily do marketing yourself if you're a small business owner with these tools but as you make

00:43:08.460 this case because we've become generalist we've actually diluted what we're able to do that

00:43:14.200 actually brings in money or productivity yeah we're doing way too much i mean what's typically

00:43:20.680 on the plate of a normal knowledge worker is too much if you want to again maximize the return you get

00:43:26.180 on the investment in this human brain one of my favorite studies that i cite in the book i talk about

00:43:31.500 all the time because i just love it it's this economist from georgia tech and this was in the early

00:43:36.300 1990s late 1980s early 1990s so he was looking at the very this first wave where personal computers

00:43:41.920 came into the office and it was doing just like you're talking about we don't need typing pools

00:43:46.120 and we don't need a travel agency internal you can just book that on the intranet like you know this

00:43:51.720 where we got rid of a lot of support staff and he took 20 different departments over five major

00:43:56.100 companies and he studied like what they did and okay so they fired a lot of support staff right

00:44:02.000 because i don't need a typist i can i can do a word processor so i don't need a typist and you know i

00:44:07.640 don't need a receptionist because you can do email etc what he did which was cool is he crunched all the

00:44:12.680 numbers and he said okay here's what happened yeah that work got easier but it moved onto the plate of

00:44:18.320 the executives that were doing the actual frontline value creation for the firm so in order to get the

00:44:24.220 same amount of work done they had to hire more of these executives because they were now spending a

00:44:29.000 huge portion of their time servicing administrative tasks well the salary of these executives is more

00:44:33.940 than the salary of the support staff sassone crunches all the numbers and says in the end on

00:44:39.600 average their salary costs ended up 15 percent higher because it was like you fired the assistants and

00:44:46.260 then you had to hire more of the executives that did get the same amount of work done and you ended up

00:44:50.640 spending more and he called this the diminishment of intellectual specialization that's the effect

00:44:56.260 and basically his warning which i think is a good one is that making tasks easier in isolation don't

00:45:02.480 necessarily make companies more effective broadly speaking and we saw this with email you make it

00:45:09.120 easier for people to communicate you make it easier for people to grab someone's attention doesn't mean

00:45:14.180 they become more effective you can actually make them less effective we end up sending more work to

00:45:18.680 each other we end up assigning more tasks we end up claiming trying to lay claim that people's time

00:45:22.640 and attention more often we tend to do this in less efficient ways in ways that distracts people

00:45:27.140 more so i think email is just a a continuation of this trend of making certain things easier with

00:45:33.160 technology in the workplace doesn't necessarily make that workplace more effective all right so

00:45:37.220 counter to the notion if you're a business owner you might actually want to hire more people

00:45:41.460 again this is making work more complicated but uh there's gonna be friction but you actually might save

00:45:47.280 more money because yeah because what i think here's what should have happened right so i think the

00:45:52.480 way that we should have leveraged it technologies that made certain support tasks more easier the wrong

00:45:58.400 thing to do was to say let's fire the support staff and put all this work onto the plate of the people

00:46:02.640 they were supporting instead the right way to take advantage of that is to say oh with smaller support

00:46:08.040 staffs we can implement the same amount of support work that was the right way to maximize the

00:46:14.280 the advantage of productivity saving is that we're not going to put anything new onto the plate of the

00:46:19.960 frontline value producers where we're going to save money is that now that we have all these tools

00:46:24.160 the support staff can use all these tools and now we don't need as many support staff to support the

00:46:29.720 same amount of people or the support staff can give even more support to the computer programmers or

00:46:34.660 the ad copywriters that would have been logically actually the way to maximize value by completely

00:46:39.400 eliminating the support staff and moving that work onto the plate of the frontline workers it was just

00:46:44.700 a mistake it wasn't the optimal return we could get on that particular technological innovation

00:46:49.640 all right so just to recap here we've been talking about these principles sort of high level and you

00:46:53.380 get into details with it and there's lots of books out there if people want to like pick up a book

00:46:56.880 about scrum or sprint or whatever but the idea is instead of relying on email you want to create

00:47:02.500 systems where you don't even have to communicate with each other through email like you can just look at the

00:47:07.660 like it could be a task board online or it could be a whiteboard with posting notes and all the

00:47:12.360 information about the project is right there and it like it's it's self-evident basically what needs

00:47:20.080 to be done and you might incorporate some check-in meetings that are once a week or every day that

00:47:24.960 are just 15 minutes and by thinking about that and structuring it you can spend less time talking

00:47:31.000 about work and actually working so that's the idea yep i think that i think that's absolutely right

00:47:36.000 email is great for sending broadcasting information or delivering files but for all the interaction that

00:47:41.920 needs to happen about your work find ways to do it it doesn't require that ad hoc messaging

00:47:46.540 okay so let's talk about this uh if you're a business owner easy to do right because you're like

00:47:51.900 okay i heard this i'm going to implement this let's say you work at a company you're just sort of

00:47:56.380 a staff member or an employee or you know in your case like you work at a university

00:48:00.480 which i know are just i have friends who are professors and it's the hyperactive hive mind is

00:48:06.280 full-blown there how can you implement some of this stuff we've been talking about so you know from

00:48:13.140 the bottom up is it possible what do you think yeah here's the good news if as an individual

00:48:19.140 that has no leverage over how anyone else works if you still go through this mindset shift and say

00:48:24.280 my work is made up of processes there's these repeated processes that i'm a part of again and

00:48:30.360 again that produces value there's the answer the client questions process there's the you know

00:48:34.200 whatever get proposals together process go through and figure out what these processes are and the

00:48:39.260 best way to do this by the way is actually when you're in your inbox just ask this question about

00:48:44.020 every message you answer what process is this email interaction connected to what process is this email

00:48:51.020 interaction connected to and that's a good way to quickly uncover oh here's the things i do regularly

00:48:55.740 and then for each of these go one by one and say given just what i can control how can i minimize the

00:49:03.000 amount of back and forth communication required to execute this process what i found is that even if no

00:49:09.940 one else is on board with this that type of thinking can have a huge effect right so sometimes it's just

00:49:15.180 stuff you're doing internally like okay the way i keep track of information and gather information from

00:49:20.060 people prevents there being a lot of back and forth you know we have to schedule a meeting i just send

00:49:24.280 a schedule once link so we don't have to do back and forth and sometimes you can stealthily recruit

00:49:28.380 people into your processes without calling it that right so you say all right we got to get this uh

00:49:32.660 we got to get this this uh proposal out there so here's here's here's what i suggest i'll have a

00:49:38.120 draft uploaded the dropbox by noon on monday you take a look put any comments you have into it i'm

00:49:43.800 planning to work on it tuesday afternoon let's have a i have this office hours tuesday at four so if

00:49:48.840 there's any questions just grab me then and we can we can chat about it and then i will sit off to the

00:49:52.380 developer wednesday morning right they don't know this is a process but what you've done is you've

00:49:55.780 just brought them into a plan that doesn't require back and forth communication and they're just busy

00:50:00.360 and overwhelmed they're like great i'm glad you know brett has a plan i don't have to worry about

00:50:04.200 this they've just been drawn into a process that's going to minimize back and forth so if you just

00:50:08.180 asymmetrically optimize processes to reduce back and forth you can have a massive increase a massive

00:50:15.040 improvement i should say on how hyperactive the hive mind is and how much pressure you feel to

00:50:20.160 have to keep checking these inboxes and i imagine another thing you can do is just talk to your boss

00:50:24.020 and be like hey i got this idea that would make us more productive and make people less miserable

00:50:29.260 and they might listen to that yeah and just have a safety valve what works there is a positivity oh i

00:50:35.680 think i think we can get more done right and b put in a safety valve this is what gets rid of the

00:50:41.360 main complaint of like what if something bad happens you say and of course we have a safety

00:50:44.880 valve where you can just call me if there's an issue or it's not working these safety valves are

00:50:50.260 never invoked no one ever calls you the processes work but it gets past the main mental block that

00:50:56.160 bosses have which is like what if something happens unexpected this process can't handle i'm worried

00:51:01.980 about not being able to reach you i'm worried about a client thing being missed you just put in a

00:51:05.300 safety valve of like i always have my phone it's always on just call me if there's any issues and we can

00:51:09.720 take care of it and don't worry the valves never open in practice yeah no one ever calls but they'll

00:51:14.160 send an email if you if you allow that right yeah 10 more friction it's crazy there's this researcher

00:51:20.120 was telling me this story by the way of they went into this company and they took a dozen people in

00:51:25.260 this big company and said they're not going to use email for a week just so they could see what

00:51:28.860 happens right it's this mindset of like let's study how this dynamic works by breaking it and seeing

00:51:33.560 what goes wrong and this one guy was telling her about how you know he hated that every week he had

00:51:40.300 this big period where they set up a lab it was a research company and his boss would just be like

00:51:44.100 email email email do this do this what about this what about this you have to answer me during that

00:51:48.640 seven days where this guy was not on email the boss completely stopped bothering him with these things

00:51:53.280 and what made it so interesting is that the boss's office was two doors down so just the friction of the

00:51:59.560 boss having to walk two doors down the hallway and say you know hey fred can you grab this for me

00:52:04.880 or do this thing for me just that little bit of friction drastically reduced the amount of time

00:52:08.900 he was bothering this so yeah a little bit of friction goes a long way zero friction is very

00:52:12.580 very dangerous a little bit of friction i have to walk down the hallway and i have to like look at

00:52:16.620 your face and bother you is a completely different ball game than i can just hit send and it costs me

00:52:21.680 nothing so we should be very afraid of zero friction in all sorts of physical systems things go crazy when you

00:52:26.060 get rid of the friction no i've i've experienced that and it's funny once you whenever i've like

00:52:31.100 had problems with my website for example i got a web developer and my as soon as there's a problem

00:52:35.880 like okay i'll just shoot this guy an email and then you know you might not take you might take a day

00:52:41.720 to get back to me but but in that time i'm working on it i oh never mind i figured it out myself i'm sure

00:52:47.580 that happens to it people all the time it's like the bane of their existence it's like oh yeah turn off

00:52:51.880 and on my computer and that'll solve it and i would imagine if there was if i had that my developer had

00:52:56.760 some friction in place and like okay you only call me if you have a serious problem i probably wouldn't

00:53:01.740 send any emails to him with these stupid problems i figure out on my own yep i think that's right

00:53:05.840 friction is we don't understand fully what goes wrong what goes wrong when you push this friction

00:53:12.520 down to zero yeah or like hey we have a call you know i did by the way i ran a web development company

00:53:16.640 when i was a teenager in the 90s and i was a high school student and this was before cell phones and this

00:53:21.760 was before laptops so like i was literally unavailable and we just built out this system

00:53:26.260 and the way we did it is we had these set calls you know and like yeah we'll go through all your

00:53:30.960 issues and we'll document everything we told you and put it and we'll upload it to this extra net you

00:53:35.900 can see exactly what we're doing and we'll have a work blog and our team will you know we just had to

00:53:39.580 put in place more difficult systems and we were able to run a company with essentially zero email

00:53:45.840 so there's a lot of other ways to do this that have a little bit more friction

00:53:49.160 it keeps everyone happy and the work gets done because you know one of the big points i make is

00:53:54.220 that we we think accessibility is what everyone wants but really what they want is reliability

00:53:59.320 like they want to know they can trust that you're going to get the work done that that you know what

00:54:03.160 you're doing that things are happening if they don't trust that stuff's going to happen then they're

00:54:06.600 going to want to be able to access you all the time because they're like this is going to be on my

00:54:10.360 head until you confirm you saw this but if you have a system in place they trust

00:54:13.640 people are pretty happy not to have to bother you all the time people don't like doing that

00:54:18.460 but they also don't like having to keep track of things in their own head and not trusting you so

00:54:21.940 you know reliability often trumps accessibility in these situations

00:54:25.060 you got to remind yourself we we fought world war ii and won world war ii without slack

00:54:29.200 or email and you actually taught you talk about george marshall like this guy was

00:54:32.680 the guy in charge of the war and the guy hardly like he wasn't really doing a lot of communication

00:54:40.460 back and forth he just worked and then he was done for the day and then he went off and rode his horse

00:54:45.280 and then he came back in the office and that was it he didn't really he wasn't on all the time

00:54:50.140 yeah he stopped at five because that's the way they dealt with heart problems back then

00:54:54.560 i will die if i work past five he didn't work past five but he's a great example because managers

00:55:01.060 often tell me look in my job i have to be very responsive that's what my job is but i say george

00:55:05.540 marshall was the manager to defeat all managers right i mean this guy was in charge of the entire

00:55:09.800 u.s armed forces during world war ii and what he did is instead of trying to say how do i most

00:55:17.000 effectively deal with the communication structures and systems in place which is the way that i think

00:55:22.400 a lot of managers think about it like it's it's unavoidable all this communication is going to

00:55:25.960 happen so i just have to be really fast he just changed the structure from scratch he fired a lot

00:55:29.840 of people he consolidated a lot of things he put people under him and he drastically reduced the

00:55:35.220 number of people who had direct access to him and he put in place more processes here's how meetings

00:55:39.180 worked are going to be incredibly effective he was very sequential one thing at a time you come in

00:55:44.880 you you've done your research here's the issue here's why we think here's the here's what we think

00:55:48.700 the right answer is marshall gave his feedback okay here's my addition to that great next and he would

00:55:54.100 just do that one thing after another you couldn't grab them it wasn't hyperactive hive mind be done by five

00:55:59.380 so i i use this example for managers like don't think that the way that your communication and

00:56:04.060 collaboration systems and habits in place now are unchangeable and all you can do is figure out how

00:56:08.560 to deal with those most effectively you can proverbially fire your own you know kernels like

00:56:14.220 marshall did by which i mean you can rebuild how you organize and collaborate and communicate with

00:56:19.340 your team in such a way that isn't just completely hyperactive mind if he could do that and he had higher

00:56:24.700 stakes more pressing things a bigger budget more people all the stuff you think is hard in your job

00:56:29.460 he had it 10 times harder and he was done by five that's inspiring and also i mean you can also do

00:56:34.920 this in your personal life too you highlight how you've done this implemented some of these ideas

00:56:38.520 in your own personal life so you can have a board for you know the vacation and then you have a board for

00:56:44.280 i don't know some household projects you got to do and you can do like a status check-in with yourself

00:56:49.200 or your spouse or even like a family where everyone's on the same board that's something

00:56:53.540 we kind of implement in my own family like my wife and i we get together once a week we have a family

00:56:58.700 like a marriage meeting and then we say here's what we need to get done are you doing that and then it

00:57:03.140 takes 15 minutes and we're good for the rest of the week and then we do have a family meeting same

00:57:07.920 thing kids what's going on what do you got going on what do you need to bring anything to school

00:57:11.760 okay that's it and it takes 15 minutes and you're done yeah you guys aren't on a slack channel

00:57:16.900 just bother okay hey like brett we need the uh the milk or whatever can you grab that what

00:57:21.060 happened to that can you do this like think about that you could take that 15 minutes and a clear

00:57:24.540 place to store who's doing what and all the information you could replace that with just

00:57:28.220 like a ton of ad hoc conversations throughout the week but it would be terrible and that's how we do a

00:57:33.340 lot of other work right now well cal this has been a great conversation where can people go to

00:57:37.780 learn more about the book and your work so my website calnewport.com that's where my blog and

00:57:43.080 newsletter are you can find out about the book also my podcast deep questions

00:57:46.480 we go deep on all these issues i answer reader questions from people you know in business with

00:57:51.780 specific case studies how do i deal with this issue so if you want to if you want to go deeper on it

00:57:56.140 that podcast also has some answers as well fantastic well cal newport always a pleasure thanks for your

00:58:00.580 time thanks brett my guest today was cal newport he's the author of the book a world without email

00:58:05.780 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you find out more information about

00:58:09.140 his work at his website calnewport.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash no email

00:58:14.260 we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:58:16.820 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

00:58:27.600 art of manliness.com where you find our podcast archives well as thousands of articles written

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00:58:56.060 this is brett mckay remind you not only listen to the aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - March 03, 2021

Email Is Making Us Miserable — Here's What to Do About It

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