Simple Ways To Stop Procrastination, Laziness & Increase Motivation | Cal Newport
00:00:00.000 | what to do on the very first day
00:00:03.200 | on your journey from disorganized to organized.
00:00:08.700 | So it's the day one steps I want to focus on today.
00:00:12.100 | My plan is I have five steps to go through.
00:00:15.200 | The first four steps are highly technical.
00:00:17.200 | What to do in the first four to six hours on the quest to become.
00:00:20.800 | A more organized person, the fifth step will then give you
00:00:25.000 | the maintenance activities to do for the 30 days to follow to make sure
00:00:28.000 | that everything you do this first day actually sticks.
00:00:31.300 | So this is not about having the most advanced ongoing system,
00:00:35.900 | but instead taking the biggest possible steps on the very first day.
00:00:41.400 | Before we get into those details, though, let's start by briefly discussing
00:00:47.200 | the psychological obstacle that we have to get past
00:00:52.000 | before we can hope to succeed in this quest to become more organized.
00:00:58.600 | Here is what I think the main problem is that people have is a misperception
00:01:03.300 | about the reality of their workload.
00:01:06.400 | So I'm actually, again, with great trepidation,
00:01:08.500 | going to draw a picture here for those who are watching instead of just listening.
00:01:12.000 | I want to draw a picture about how most people think about their work day.
00:01:18.600 | This is just sort of implicitly in their mind.
00:01:21.400 | So we have here a very happy stick figure.
00:01:24.200 | And he's sitting, I don't know, he's sitting at his desk.
00:01:27.900 | And there we go.
00:01:29.700 | You know, he's sitting here at his computer, expertly drawn.
00:01:33.000 | So let's draw a little computer here.
00:01:34.500 | Perfect perspective.
00:01:37.200 | All right. So there he is, happy at his computer.
00:01:39.400 | Because in the in the world of the way most people just sort of imagine
00:01:44.100 | their work is, what's going on?
00:01:45.500 | Well, there's maybe a couple phone messages to return.
00:01:51.700 | I have three little phone messages over here.
00:01:54.900 | And there's, you know, two projects.
00:01:57.900 | Somebody choose one of these projects to make progress on.
00:02:00.300 | And there's like a few phone messages that you might want to return.
00:02:03.000 | And in fact, our happy person here, I'm going to give them a notebook.
00:02:07.400 | And in this notebook, they, with colored pencils,
00:02:11.500 | kind of have this like nice little plan for the day.
00:02:13.900 | Work on project A, and then return these calls,
00:02:16.300 | and go for a nice walk, and then take lunch.
00:02:19.700 | Like this is sort of the implicit assumption people have
00:02:22.700 | about what their work life is like.
00:02:25.500 | I have some stuff I'm working on, some things I have to get back to people.
00:02:28.600 | All right, what's the reality?
00:02:30.900 | Well, I'm going to draw a picture of what I imagine,
00:02:35.300 | this is what I think the reality is for most people.
00:02:39.000 | So what I have here is our same person,
00:02:44.700 | now very unhappy, running as fast as he or she can,
00:02:51.700 | because there is a giant cloud of an overwhelming quantity
00:02:56.600 | of projects, and requests, and tasks, and things that people need from them.
00:03:01.000 | And it's chasing him or her.
00:03:05.200 | I'm going to say, or, you know, let's do, for whatever reason,
00:03:10.500 | it's shooting lightning bolts at this person.
00:03:12.800 | Huge cloud chasing after the running person, there's lightning bolts.
00:03:18.200 | For some reason, things are on fire,
00:03:21.300 | because I don't know, that's kind of what it feels like.
00:03:23.200 | So there's just flames everywhere.
00:03:24.900 | This is the reality, all right?
00:03:29.100 | What people think, oh, I use my colored pencil,
00:03:32.800 | so that I can differentiate my phone call
00:03:35.900 | from when I work with a nice cup of tea on project A.
00:03:38.900 | Reality, running from fire,
00:03:42.200 | as there's this giant swarm chases after you,
00:03:44.500 | firing lightning bolts at you.
00:03:45.900 | All right, why is it important that we have this misconception?
00:03:49.000 | It's because when you think, it works not so bad,
00:03:52.700 | two things happen.
00:03:53.600 | One, you don't think you really need to do much to get more organized.
00:03:58.200 | Like work is not that hard.
00:04:00.200 | I just need to, you know, maybe draw out a to-do list
00:04:03.800 | in a nice format, be a little bit careful,
00:04:06.200 | or just buy, like I bought this nice,
00:04:08.100 | this nice looking, you know, Japanese paper planner online,
00:04:10.800 | and just, we'll write it.
00:04:12.200 | It's gonna make our lives a little easier.
00:04:13.200 | You don't see the urgency of actually taking major action.
00:04:16.700 | The second issue that's generated by this misconception
00:04:19.200 | is that if you do begin wandering
00:04:21.900 | towards some more systematic organization,
00:04:25.000 | it's you open the door to this reality,
00:04:27.400 | and my God, it's so terrible,
00:04:29.200 | that you just slam that door shut and say,
00:04:30.700 | let's just pretend that doesn't exist, denial.
00:04:33.900 | I don't wanna confront the reality of how much stuff is going on.
00:04:38.700 | Here's the thing though, and this is the first step
00:04:40.500 | of the five steps I wanna talk about today.
00:04:43.000 | The very first step on your very first day of becoming organized
00:04:47.000 | is preparing yourself to face this reality.
00:04:50.800 | So it is a psychological preparation step.
00:04:53.400 | There is a term of art that I used to use
00:04:55.700 | in the early days of this show,
00:04:57.200 | and that was called facing the productivity dragon.
00:05:02.100 | And the idea behind facing the productivity dragon
00:05:05.000 | is that you confront the reality of everything
00:05:07.600 | that is on your plate,
00:05:09.200 | even if it is terrifying and overwhelming
00:05:11.100 | and shooting lightning bolts at you
00:05:12.300 | and lighting the world around you on fire.
00:05:14.100 | It is better to confront the reality
00:05:16.700 | than to pretend it doesn't exist.
00:05:19.400 | So step one is to prepare to face this productivity dragon.
00:05:25.200 | Now, this is not a new idea.
00:05:27.500 | If we go back to the sort of OG of digital age productivity,
00:05:30.900 | that is David Allen, he wrote about what was involved
00:05:36.000 | in trying to get your arms around for the first time,
00:05:39.300 | the step of getting started on being organized.
00:05:42.400 | He wrote very clearly in his 2001 classic,
00:05:45.100 | Getting Things Done, how much is involved
00:05:48.800 | in taking that first step from chaos towards calm.
00:05:51.700 | I'm gonna read you from chapter five of his book here.
00:05:53.700 | Here's a short excerpt.
00:05:56.100 | Just gathering a few more things than you currently have
00:05:58.900 | will probably create positive feelings for you.
00:06:01.700 | But if you can hang in there
00:06:02.700 | and really do the whole collection process 100%,
00:06:05.400 | it will change your experience dramatically
00:06:07.400 | and give you an important new reference point
00:06:09.200 | for being on top of your work.
00:06:11.800 | When I coach a client through this process,
00:06:13.600 | the collection phase usually takes between one and six hours,
00:06:17.600 | though it did once take all of 20 hours with one person.
00:06:23.100 | All right, so what Allen is teaching us here
00:06:25.700 | is this very first step
00:06:27.000 | of confronting the productivity dragon takes time.
00:06:30.500 | It takes hours, 'cause there is more in there
00:06:32.900 | than you probably want to admit.
00:06:35.500 | So the concrete advice that comes out of this first step
00:06:37.800 | is that you need to put aside a full day for this day, right?
00:06:42.800 | When I say, what do you do the first day
00:06:44.200 | of becoming more organized?
00:06:45.200 | I don't mean here's something you can do
00:06:46.800 | for 30 minutes in the morning
00:06:48.800 | and then you'll be more organized.
00:06:50.200 | You actually are gonna need a full day to do this right.
00:06:53.700 | So you could take, put aside a day that was otherwise quiet
00:06:56.800 | or put aside a weekend day or a vacation day if you need to.
00:06:59.600 | We have plenty of those coming up.
00:07:01.900 | But you need to prepare yourself
00:07:02.900 | that you're gonna need something like a full day
00:07:04.500 | to actually make the transition
00:07:06.300 | I'm gonna talk about right now from chaos to calm.
00:07:10.100 | All right, step two, let's get technical.
00:07:13.700 | You need to set up your first storage system.
00:07:18.000 | The place that is going to gather and make sense
00:07:21.100 | of all of these things that you actually have to do.
00:07:24.600 | Now, if you go back and read David Allen,
00:07:26.300 | one of the things you're gonna notice
00:07:27.300 | is that he relies a lot on a embodied physicality
00:07:32.100 | in the obligations in people's lives.
00:07:34.700 | So he sort of imagines that many of the obligations
00:07:37.500 | in people's lives have a physical embodiment.
00:07:39.700 | There's a receipt that has to be submitted.
00:07:42.400 | There's a phone slip for a call that has to be returned.
00:07:45.500 | There's a printed report that was given to you
00:07:47.800 | that you have to do your revisions on.
00:07:49.500 | And so his process of collection from getting things done
00:07:52.500 | is all about having these physical inboxes, literal boxes.
00:07:56.400 | And you're going around your space
00:07:58.100 | and collecting these artifacts
00:07:59.500 | and putting them into these inboxes.
00:08:01.800 | You're building piles of your stuff.
00:08:05.500 | And for the small number of things
00:08:06.600 | that don't actually exist in the real world,
00:08:08.100 | he says you write down a pointer to it
00:08:10.600 | and put that piece of paper in the physical box.
00:08:12.500 | So it's a very physical process.
00:08:14.800 | I'm gonna suggest something different.
00:08:17.000 | I think that the difference between the late '90s
00:08:19.700 | and early 2000s when Allen was putting together
00:08:21.900 | this methodology and now in the 2020s
00:08:24.100 | is that the vast majority of professional obligations
00:08:27.400 | in your life as a knowledge worker are digital.
00:08:30.700 | Very few of them are embodied.
00:08:32.100 | Maybe you printed something,
00:08:33.400 | but the thing you printed has a digital counterpart
00:08:36.600 | for which it began.
00:08:37.800 | Most stuff is actually implicitly in an email somewhere.
00:08:42.000 | It's a request that was in a Slack.
00:08:43.800 | It's an appointment that's lurking on your digital calendar
00:08:47.000 | for which work has to be done.
00:08:49.500 | So to try to translate now
00:08:50.900 | that the vast majority of our obligations are digital,
00:08:53.500 | to try to somehow translate those into the physical world
00:08:55.900 | to gather them back into the digital would be inefficient.
00:08:59.300 | So our storage systems, we're gonna start digital
00:09:02.300 | and we're gonna remain digital, all right?
00:09:05.000 | So no physical inboxes.
00:09:07.000 | What is gonna be the digital system
00:09:09.900 | in which we're going to store everything?
00:09:12.700 | It's gonna require three things, a collection of lists,
00:09:15.500 | the ability to rapidly add, update,
00:09:18.900 | or move items between these lists,
00:09:21.500 | and the ability to efficiently append information
00:09:24.600 | such as links or notes or texts copied out of emails
00:09:27.800 | to individual items on these lists.
00:09:29.700 | These are the three capabilities we're gonna need
00:09:31.800 | in our storage system.
00:09:33.400 | This clearly is gonna have to be digital.
00:09:36.000 | You're not gonna be able to get all of those features
00:09:38.100 | in a purely analog system,
00:09:39.600 | the quickly moving things with back and forth,
00:09:41.800 | appending information to things.
00:09:43.500 | So we're gonna need a digital system here
00:09:44.900 | that can satisfy those three things.
00:09:47.100 | I'm gonna give you three options here
00:09:49.200 | from simple to most complex.
00:09:51.100 | The simplest way to implement a system
00:09:53.600 | that has those three properties
00:09:54.700 | would just be with word processing or text files.
00:09:57.900 | So just imagine you have a text file.
00:10:00.900 | You can just have a bold header for each of the lists
00:10:03.300 | that we're gonna define and then just write below it,
00:10:06.600 | separated by white space, different items of the list.
00:10:09.900 | If you want to append information to an item
00:10:12.200 | in this particular implementation,
00:10:13.800 | you can just put a bullet point
00:10:15.200 | or a collection of bullet points under the item
00:10:17.300 | and just copy and paste whatever information you need.
00:10:20.000 | It doesn't have to be neat.
00:10:22.100 | So you could just get going
00:10:23.300 | with Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
00:10:25.900 | Any number of online task programs
00:10:27.500 | let you do this easily as well.
00:10:29.400 | A favorite of mine is WorkFlowy.
00:10:32.200 | All it is is list that you can indent.
00:10:34.900 | Press Enter, you get another item,
00:10:36.300 | press Tab, it indents over.
00:10:38.800 | What's nice about this is you can hide indentations.
00:10:42.000 | So if you have a bunch of things,
00:10:44.200 | extra information or a task,
00:10:45.600 | you can click Assign to have it all collapse
00:10:47.300 | and then you can just open it again
00:10:49.700 | when you want that information.
00:10:51.400 | So for our three properties, text files will be fine.
00:10:54.000 | Next more complicated solution for implementing this system
00:10:56.900 | is gonna be something like Trello.
00:10:58.800 | This is what I use.
00:11:01.900 | It's just very well set up for what we're talking about here.
00:11:04.800 | Each list can be a column on a Trello board.
00:11:07.000 | Each item can be a card on a Trello board.
00:11:09.400 | Extra information can be appended to the back of the cards
00:11:12.800 | and the cards are easy to move back and forth
00:11:14.500 | between different columns.
00:11:16.500 | The more advanced solution would be
00:11:18.000 | to build something more custom,
00:11:19.900 | perhaps using a task view database system like Notion.
00:11:23.700 | I would not start here
00:11:25.400 | for your very first day of becoming organized
00:11:28.500 | unless you're already a pro at one of these systems
00:11:30.800 | and it's as easy for you to put together
00:11:32.300 | as it is for someone else to set up WorkFlowy.
00:11:35.000 | This is the type of thing you can think about down the line.
00:11:38.600 | Once we've made this initial leap from chaos to control,
00:11:42.900 | chaos to calm, down the line,
00:11:44.500 | you might think about if you're more tech oriented,
00:11:46.700 | building a more advanced system,
00:11:48.000 | but I wouldn't start there.
00:11:49.300 | Okay, so we now know what a system, broadly speaking,
00:11:53.500 | needs these lists that you can update
00:11:55.600 | and move stuff between and append information.
00:11:58.400 | We know what tech tools you can use
00:12:00.000 | to actually store these lists.
00:12:02.000 | What are the actual lists we need in our initial system?
00:12:07.000 | I'm gonna suggest six for your starter system.
00:12:11.600 | Again, whether this is in Docs, Trello, or Notion.
00:12:14.800 | Ready, Backburner, Waiting, To Discuss,
00:12:19.800 | Clarify, and Scheduled.
00:12:27.500 | So in fact, I'll even write these on the screen
00:12:30.800 | so we can be on the same page.
00:12:32.900 | I'm gonna talk a little bit about each of these.
00:12:36.400 | I always try to type on here, Jesse,
00:12:40.700 | but it always just creates,
00:12:42.200 | makes the world just fall apart.
00:12:44.400 | By the way, see that issue with the trying to type on here?
00:12:47.100 | That's why I had to stop using this in my classroom.
00:12:49.100 | When you're in projection or screen sharing mode
00:12:51.900 | in Notability, the text does,
00:12:54.300 | the typing doesn't work very well.
00:12:55.300 | All right, I can just write though.
00:12:56.300 | I got beautiful handwriting.
00:12:57.600 | All right, so what are these things?
00:12:58.700 | Ready was number one.
00:13:00.300 | What we mean by ready is going to be,
00:13:02.900 | think of it as like ready for action.
00:13:04.600 | These are things, items that need to be worked on
00:13:07.700 | as soon as we can get to them.
00:13:09.100 | I typically think about something under a ready list
00:13:11.800 | as something that I want to try to complete
00:13:13.600 | in the given week.
00:13:15.200 | Different people do that slightly different ways.
00:13:18.200 | Next, we had Backburner.
00:13:19.700 | These are things that they need to get done.
00:13:23.400 | You've committed to them,
00:13:25.200 | but you're not working on them right now.
00:13:27.400 | So we have them on the Backburner.
00:13:29.800 | So we're not gonna forget about them.
00:13:31.100 | We have a place and here it is on this list.
00:13:34.400 | If we get more information about this thing
00:13:36.300 | that we've committed to, but it's not coming up yet,
00:13:38.800 | we have a place to put that information.
00:13:40.900 | Someone emails us more details
00:13:42.900 | about the workshop we've agreed to set up,
00:13:44.700 | and we're not really working on that yet.
00:13:46.200 | We can copy that text from the email
00:13:47.800 | and put it on the back of this Trello card
00:13:49.400 | or an indentation under this item.
00:13:51.100 | So that's what's going on the Backburner.
00:13:53.100 | Waiting, this is critical.
00:13:56.800 | I think this is the most important type of list
00:13:58.900 | that people do not typically keep.
00:14:02.500 | This is things that you are waiting to hear back about.
00:14:05.200 | All right, so this is I'm working on this workshop.
00:14:09.400 | I sent an email to the administrator
00:14:12.400 | about trying to get a room reservation.
00:14:14.000 | I am waiting to hear back from that person
00:14:15.800 | about whether or not we can get that room.
00:14:18.600 | That item can be now under the waiting list.
00:14:21.100 | So it's waiting as in waiting to hear back.
00:14:23.800 | Other critical lists that most people don't use
00:14:28.600 | in their systems but is very efficient is to discuss.
00:14:33.600 | So it's where you keep track of things
00:14:35.100 | where I'm going to be meeting with this person or team
00:14:39.100 | at some point in the near future.
00:14:41.300 | What do I want to discuss with them at that next meeting?
00:14:44.400 | Now you have two options here.
00:14:46.900 | You can just have one list to discuss
00:14:49.600 | and every item on it, the very first thing
00:14:51.500 | in the title of the item in bold is to discuss with Jesse.
00:14:56.500 | So like you can just, you can clarify for each item
00:14:58.800 | who is this for?
00:14:59.800 | So it's for people or teams you meet with
00:15:01.200 | on a regular basis.
00:15:02.200 | And the idea here is if you have things
00:15:04.200 | you need more information on,
00:15:05.300 | instead of just throwing an email into the ether,
00:15:06.900 | you can kind of collect lists of,
00:15:08.200 | okay, next time I talk to Jesse,
00:15:09.500 | I have four things on here to go through.
00:15:11.900 | If there's people you have a lot of things
00:15:13.700 | to discuss things with
00:15:15.000 | and you talk to them on a regular basis,
00:15:16.700 | they can get their own to discuss lists.
00:15:19.100 | You might have multiple to discuss lists
00:15:21.000 | with team, with boss, with department chair.
00:15:23.400 | That's fine as well.
00:15:25.700 | Clarify, these are placeholders.
00:15:30.500 | All right, I have this obligation,
00:15:32.100 | something I'm supposed to do something about this.
00:15:34.800 | I don't yet know what that means.
00:15:36.700 | In other words, like I don't know
00:15:37.800 | what I should do right now to make progress on this thing.
00:15:41.400 | I just know I'm committed to it.
00:15:42.600 | I need to think through or learn more
00:15:44.200 | about what this actually means.
00:15:45.500 | You know, I said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:15:47.500 | I'll handle the secret Santa in the office this week
00:15:51.200 | or this month.
00:15:52.200 | And I don't really know what that means.
00:15:53.900 | Like, I don't know how that works
00:15:55.000 | or what I need to do,
00:15:55.900 | but I just committed to it.
00:15:56.800 | I don't wanna forget it.
00:15:57.600 | It can go to the clarify list.
00:15:59.400 | That means this is an obligation
00:16:01.200 | that is pending more clarification
00:16:02.900 | on what it actually is gonna require us to do.
00:16:04.800 | So we have a place for it.
00:16:06.300 | And then scheduled.
00:16:07.600 | So if there's a non-simple task
00:16:13.000 | that is scheduled on your calendar.
00:16:16.100 | So it's a task that requires some explanation
00:16:18.200 | or maybe has some information that gets appended to it.
00:16:20.900 | Here's what people emailed me.
00:16:22.400 | Here's the list of steps I need to do on this.
00:16:24.700 | I'm supposed to file this report.
00:16:26.500 | I put aside time to do this on Friday morning,
00:16:28.600 | but here's the step.
00:16:29.500 | Someone told me about how to do this
00:16:31.100 | or how to submit it.
00:16:32.100 | This gives you a place for that item
00:16:34.400 | to live in your system.
00:16:35.300 | So all that information can live somewhere.
00:16:37.500 | So a item under scheduled
00:16:40.600 | is also on your calendar somewhere.
00:16:42.400 | But the item on your list
00:16:44.900 | can hold all the extra information you need.
00:16:47.400 | Not everything on your calendar
00:16:48.700 | needs to be under the scheduled item.
00:16:50.400 | You don't need appointments
00:16:51.400 | for the most part under there.
00:16:52.600 | You don't need small things under there.
00:16:55.100 | You know, pickup, whatever,
00:16:56.600 | someone from the train station.
00:16:58.900 | You know, you probably don't need an item there.
00:17:01.800 | But if it's complex,
00:17:03.500 | there's information you need to remember about it.
00:17:06.400 | Then it can live there under the scheduled item.
00:17:09.700 | All right, so you have six lists.
00:17:11.200 | And that's your initial collection system.
00:17:13.400 | So we've set up six lists
00:17:15.300 | in some sort of digital system.
00:17:17.600 | All right, step three.
00:17:19.000 | Here's the facing the productivity
00:17:20.300 | drag and part made real.
00:17:22.300 | Dump everything on your mind,
00:17:27.000 | in your inbox, in the world.
00:17:28.800 | Everything that you are obligated to do
00:17:31.100 | gets on these lists.
00:17:32.100 | All right, so what does this mean?
00:17:35.500 | Everything you can think of.
00:17:36.500 | So just start, like, what can I think of
00:17:38.500 | that I'm supposed to be working on
00:17:40.600 | or I should be doing?
00:17:42.200 | Maybe I told someone I would do it
00:17:43.600 | or I've just been thinking to myself,
00:17:44.900 | this is something I should make progress on.
00:17:46.800 | I should update the website.
00:17:48.500 | Get everything you can out of your head.
00:17:50.200 | Get it onto an item in these lists.
00:17:53.800 | Go through your inbox and process every single email.
00:17:58.000 | Get the inbox empty.
00:18:00.400 | This doesn't mean reply to every email.
00:18:03.800 | This doesn't mean take care of every email.
00:18:06.700 | You're translating these emails into task items
00:18:09.400 | that go into your system.
00:18:10.500 | So for this initial collection phase,
00:18:12.200 | you wanna clear everything out of your inbox.
00:18:15.000 | And it might mean you might have things
00:18:17.100 | showing up on your list.
00:18:18.200 | It's just, like, reply to send Jesse the information
00:18:22.600 | he requested about skeleton manufacturing, right?
00:18:27.300 | Like, just whatever it is,
00:18:28.900 | you're just translating emails into items on this list.
00:18:31.200 | But you are denying your email inbox
00:18:35.000 | to be a secondary task management system at this point.
00:18:38.400 | You're putting all your faith into this collection system.
00:18:41.600 | Look through your calendar.
00:18:42.600 | There are complicated things on there,
00:18:44.200 | reminders that should be translated
00:18:45.800 | into tasks that are on this list.
00:18:47.200 | Then go back and think some more
00:18:48.400 | about what else am I forgetting?
00:18:49.600 | What else is just in my head?
00:18:51.500 | Let me give you a couple advanced tips
00:18:53.500 | for going through this collection process.
00:18:55.600 | Number one, it does help sometimes
00:18:57.700 | to use a working memory.txt file
00:18:59.900 | as an intermediary in this process.
00:19:02.400 | So just have a plain, unformatted text file
00:19:05.400 | on your computer.
00:19:06.700 | As you're going through one of these categories,
00:19:08.300 | you can just dump things into that text file
00:19:11.300 | and then go from that text file into your system.
00:19:13.800 | It helps, right?
00:19:16.500 | It feels like this is an extra step,
00:19:18.800 | but it actually helps,
00:19:19.700 | especially if you're cleaning out an inbox.
00:19:22.300 | 'Cause you can type really quickly into a text file
00:19:25.100 | and you don't have to be organized
00:19:26.300 | or really think it through,
00:19:27.300 | like reply to Jesse about this,
00:19:29.400 | send back dates to so-and-so.
00:19:30.800 | You can just type really fast
00:19:32.800 | and just fill in this text file really fast.
00:19:34.700 | I call it working memory.txt
00:19:36.700 | because this text file is like an extension
00:19:38.300 | of your working memory.
00:19:39.600 | Our brain can hold five or six things at a time.
00:19:42.200 | With a working memory.txt file,
00:19:44.800 | you can have 20 or 30 things.
00:19:46.100 | It's like you're extending your working memory.
00:19:48.200 | And then you go from that text file into your system.
00:19:50.600 | It takes a little bit more time
00:19:51.800 | to put things into your system.
00:19:53.000 | You have to choose the list.
00:19:54.000 | You have to create the card
00:19:55.300 | or do the font formatting
00:19:57.300 | if you're using something like Microsoft Word.
00:20:00.400 | More importantly, as you go from this very fast
00:20:03.200 | to fill in plain text file to your system,
00:20:06.400 | you see things to consolidate or to simplify.
00:20:09.500 | Eh, actually I don't really need to respond to these people.
00:20:12.300 | Or now that I look at this,
00:20:14.600 | I have eight different emails on here from Jesse
00:20:17.600 | about merchandising Jesse Skeleton.
00:20:20.400 | I could just combine this into one item on my list,
00:20:24.200 | which is, you know, set up intervention
00:20:28.200 | to talk to Jesse about his obsession with Jesse Skeleton, right?
00:20:30.800 | So you actually get some on-the-fly organization
00:20:33.900 | and consolidation simplification
00:20:35.900 | as you go to this extended working memory
00:20:38.400 | and then into your system.
00:20:41.100 | Advanced tip number two,
00:20:42.100 | when you're going through this initial dumping
00:20:43.800 | of everything in your life into this system,
00:20:46.000 | lean heavily into the clarify list.
00:20:49.200 | Don't try to work everything out during this process.
00:20:52.200 | There's too many things.
00:20:54.100 | Don't try for everything you come up with,
00:20:55.800 | like, well, what's going on with this project?
00:20:58.400 | Well, let me follow up with so-and-so about this.
00:21:01.300 | And let me go, let me look at this a little bit.
00:21:03.700 | When might I be able to do this?
00:21:04.800 | You don't have the time or energy
00:21:06.200 | to actually clarify all of the ambiguous obligations
00:21:09.900 | that are on your plate.
00:21:10.500 | Right now, we're just trying to get everything
00:21:12.000 | into our system.
00:21:13.300 | So at first, your clarify list might be really long.
00:21:16.500 | You just don't want to forget it.
00:21:18.900 | So you just have, you know, workshop plan.
00:21:20.900 | It's like, God, I don't even know what that means,
00:21:22.000 | but I'm not forgetting it.
00:21:23.100 | Let me just throw it in the clarify list for now.
00:21:24.900 | We'll deal with this in the next step.
00:21:26.500 | So don't worry about that.
00:21:28.700 | The key rule to maintain
00:21:30.300 | as you're initially populating your list in your system,
00:21:33.700 | and this is the rule that you should maintain going forward,
00:21:36.300 | is that every obligation gets one item in the system.
00:21:41.200 | It can move between lists.
00:21:42.500 | It cannot exist on multiple lists.
00:21:45.200 | You do not have, okay, under ready, workshop,
00:21:49.600 | you know, next steps for this workshop project.
00:21:52.300 | And then if that generates an email to an administrator,
00:21:54.300 | you don't keep that item under the ready list
00:21:56.700 | and add a new item to the waiting to hear back list.
00:21:59.500 | You move that full item over to the ready,
00:22:02.400 | waiting to hear back from list
00:22:03.600 | and just update the status up top.
00:22:05.500 | I'm waiting to hear back from so-and-so about this.
00:22:07.800 | All of the information about a given obligation
00:22:10.800 | lives in the system,
00:22:12.600 | but it moves around to what is the status
00:22:15.500 | of this obligation right now.
00:22:17.100 | So think about these lists
00:22:18.200 | as the statuses of various obligations.
00:22:22.700 | If you are actually building a notion-based system
00:22:25.600 | to keep track of this stuff,
00:22:26.600 | this would be a lot more explicit
00:22:28.200 | because these are database entries
00:22:30.100 | that can have a single status.
00:22:32.300 | It's here, then it's there, then it's here.
00:22:35.200 | So everything just lives in one place.
00:22:38.000 | All right, this will take a while,
00:22:41.400 | one to three hours probably.
00:22:43.400 | So we've really spent a lot of our day here
00:22:46.000 | getting everything into this list.
00:22:47.400 | But now symbolically when you're done,
00:22:49.700 | everything is captured.
00:22:50.600 | Your inbox is empty.
00:22:52.400 | There's nothing in your head.
00:22:53.700 | There's nothing just sitting there on your calendar.
00:22:55.100 | You don't know what it means.
00:22:55.900 | It's all in this one place,
00:22:57.300 | this collection of lists, this system of yours.
00:23:00.700 | That brings us to step four
00:23:02.900 | to do your initial configuring.
00:23:07.500 | Moving forward, configuration of your list,
00:23:10.400 | of your system is something you're gonna do
00:23:11.700 | on a semi-regular basis.
00:23:12.800 | We'll get to that soon.
00:23:13.800 | But we're gonna do our very first configuration step
00:23:16.700 | during this very first day
00:23:17.900 | that you're making your leap from chaos to calm.
00:23:22.000 | This is a big thing that was always missing
00:23:23.500 | from David Allen's methodology,
00:23:24.900 | but I think is really important.
00:23:26.400 | This is where you make sense
00:23:27.900 | of all of the things in your system
00:23:30.000 | and you clarify and optimize, remove redundancies.
00:23:33.000 | It's where you sit and move and work around
00:23:35.700 | and make more sense of this huge mess of stuff
00:23:39.100 | that's on your plate.
00:23:41.100 | So this means a few things.
00:23:42.800 | One, start going through your clarifying,
00:23:45.700 | the items under the clarify list
00:23:47.100 | and try to clarify as many as you can.
00:23:50.500 | The stuff that's not particularly urgent,
00:23:52.300 | you can skip for now.
00:23:53.200 | But the things you think like,
00:23:54.700 | I need to do something about this.
00:23:56.900 | Now you can clarify it.
00:23:59.100 | So you don't want to clarify
00:24:00.000 | as you're filling in your list
00:24:01.600 | and doing your dumping everything in your life
00:24:03.000 | because that's too much friction.
00:24:04.700 | But now that you've done that,
00:24:05.700 | now we can focus just on moving through this clarify list
00:24:08.400 | and say, what are the things that really
00:24:09.700 | I should be making progress on
00:24:11.800 | and start doing the clarification.
00:24:13.300 | Now this might mean you discard it.
00:24:15.200 | I don't really need to do this.
00:24:16.500 | Or it might mean you're sending a clarification email.
00:24:19.300 | This is often the case with stuff that ends up on clarifying
00:24:22.000 | when you go through a configuration step.
00:24:24.000 | Often the reaction is,
00:24:25.900 | I got to write to someone to say,
00:24:27.300 | what the hell does this mean?
00:24:29.100 | Like, how do I set up the Secret Santa?
00:24:31.000 | You did it last year.
00:24:32.600 | Can you tell me about it?
00:24:33.500 | That's fine.
00:24:34.300 | So those things just get moved over
00:24:35.400 | to the waiting to hear back from list.
00:24:38.200 | Other things, it might be obvious.
00:24:39.600 | Now that I think about it,
00:24:40.400 | what I need to do is set up a meeting with my team
00:24:42.300 | and we need to make a plan.
00:24:44.700 | So either I can send that doodle pool now to do that
00:24:49.700 | or move this over to the ready list
00:24:51.900 | and change the actual description of the item
00:24:54.200 | to set up meeting with team to discuss this project
00:24:58.200 | and all the information about it is attached to this card.
00:25:02.600 | This is what I mean by clarify.
00:25:04.200 | So it's moving things off of that clarify list
00:25:06.100 | to where they should go.
00:25:08.100 | This is also a good time to triage.
00:25:11.000 | Go through and triage the back burner.
00:25:14.800 | Do I really need to do this?
00:25:16.000 | I was excited about this,
00:25:17.700 | but I'm thinking now I don't need to do that, right?
00:25:19.900 | So you can kind of go through like what's on the back burner.
00:25:21.900 | Let me triage things out of this.
00:25:23.700 | What do I really want to stick with?
00:25:25.600 | This is where you might send some sorry triage messages.
00:25:28.900 | Hey, you know, sorry.
00:25:29.900 | I know I said before like I could help you with this,
00:25:33.400 | but actually I think my schedule is too crowded.
00:25:35.200 | That creates like seven seconds of annoyance
00:25:37.700 | on the recipient's end,
00:25:39.100 | but for the sender of that email,
00:25:40.300 | it can create seven hours of freedom.
00:25:42.300 | So those are very powerful.
00:25:44.400 | Whenever I get those type of messages from someone,
00:25:46.900 | not right before something is due or after it's due.
00:25:49.400 | Hey, I didn't do this.
00:25:50.400 | I can't really get to this, but like three weeks in advance.
00:25:52.500 | Hey, you know how I said we should record this thing.
00:25:55.700 | Honestly, like I don't, I was misreading my schedule.
00:25:58.400 | This is probably not the right time for it.
00:26:00.000 | I know that someone who has their act together.
00:26:02.900 | That's someone who's looking
00:26:04.100 | and configuring their whole schedule
00:26:06.100 | and seeing what makes sense and what doesn't.
00:26:08.100 | You'll actually earn respect if in advance,
00:26:10.300 | you're stepping back from things.
00:26:12.200 | Now, if you wait until it's due and just don't do it
00:26:14.000 | and then step back, that's a different thing.
00:26:15.400 | Then you look out of control.
00:26:17.000 | Another part of configuring is adding things to calendars
00:26:19.600 | that need to be on calendars.
00:26:20.800 | Okay, this is pretty urgent.
00:26:22.800 | Let me find time for this and get that on my calendar.
00:26:25.900 | If there's information associated with this task,
00:26:27.600 | I'll move this over to scheduled.
00:26:29.200 | If it's a one-time thing like set up doc dentist appointment
00:26:31.900 | and I get it on my calendar, then, you know,
00:26:33.300 | I just delete the item from my list.
00:26:35.000 | I don't need it there.
00:26:36.400 | It's also a good time.
00:26:37.500 | And this is an advanced tip
00:26:39.200 | to look for batching opportunities.
00:26:43.000 | Like this, this, this, and this.
00:26:44.700 | All of these things I could really make progress on
00:26:48.000 | if I talk to Jesse about them.
00:26:49.900 | So what I really want to do is take all of these five things
00:26:53.300 | and put them all on the back of my Trello card
00:26:55.900 | for the item of set up meeting with Jesse
00:27:00.200 | to discuss many things.
00:27:01.400 | And you kind of have these things below.
00:27:04.500 | And then I send the email to Jesse saying,
00:27:06.300 | "Let's do this meeting."
00:27:07.200 | And that whole card gets moved to waiting to hear back from.
00:27:10.200 | Or I'm like, "Oh, we meet every week
00:27:12.000 | when we record our podcasts.
00:27:13.400 | Let me batch a bunch of these things
00:27:14.800 | and put it under the to discuss list,
00:27:17.300 | Jesse's to discuss list, right?"
00:27:18.900 | So it's in this configuring step
00:27:20.100 | you get all these great batching opportunities.
00:27:22.600 | Let's wait to do this here.
00:27:23.800 | Let's do all these things at the same time.
00:27:26.000 | Let's, I'm going into work on Friday.
00:27:28.300 | And so like, let's put aside a big group of time
00:27:30.100 | and we're going to like squash through 20 things
00:27:31.900 | that need to get done.
00:27:33.700 | This is really productivity ninja stuff
00:27:36.000 | when you begin to do these batching opportunities,
00:27:39.100 | something that really doesn't happen
00:27:40.700 | when you're just reactive and chaotic.
00:27:42.300 | "Oh my God, what do I need to do next?
00:27:44.000 | My inbox is on fire.
00:27:45.300 | Oh my God, this thing is due."
00:27:46.500 | You're never going to see those types of opportunities.
00:27:49.100 | All right, so at this point,
00:27:51.300 | you have your system fully set up.
00:27:53.400 | We're about four or five hours
00:27:54.700 | into your first day of trying to be more organized
00:27:57.300 | and you have everything
00:27:58.500 | in a intelligently designed digital system
00:28:01.500 | in these six optimal lists.
00:28:03.500 | And you've done your initial configuring.
00:28:05.300 | So stuff that's important has been clarified.
00:28:07.500 | You've batched stuff, you've removed stuff,
00:28:09.000 | you've moved things where it needs to go.
00:28:10.300 | Some things are on the calendar.
00:28:11.700 | So you kind of have your arms around what's on your plate.
00:28:15.900 | The fifth and final step is how do we then make
00:28:19.000 | the use of this system stick?
00:28:21.500 | If you stop trusting this system,
00:28:26.500 | it will fall apart.
00:28:27.900 | If you find yourself unwilling, for example,
00:28:30.800 | to move something out of your inbox
00:28:32.800 | and onto an item in these lists,
00:28:34.300 | that means you don't trust yourself for this system.
00:28:36.000 | It means you say, "I know I'll check my inbox."
00:28:39.000 | 'Cause I get yelled at if I don't.
00:28:40.300 | I don't trust myself to look at this system.
00:28:41.900 | So let me just keep this in here.
00:28:43.400 | If you're writing notes to yourself,
00:28:45.100 | you're not trusting your system.
00:28:46.300 | So how do we actually get you into the habit now
00:28:49.300 | of actually making this system part of your workflow?
00:28:52.800 | Well, I'm going to suggest two things you do daily
00:28:55.000 | and one thing you do weekly for the next four weeks
00:28:57.600 | after this very first day of getting organized.
00:29:00.600 | So the first daily thing,
00:29:01.900 | review this system every morning
00:29:04.100 | when you look at your calendar.
00:29:05.900 | Use it to help make your plan for the day.
00:29:08.100 | I won't even get into now
00:29:10.300 | how you're making your plan for the day.
00:29:11.600 | This is more advanced stuff.
00:29:12.800 | But however you make your plan for the day,
00:29:14.600 | and again, the brightly colored pencils
00:29:17.300 | on your fancy planner,
00:29:18.600 | or you're just jotting stuff down on a text file,
00:29:20.800 | I don't care for now.
00:29:22.800 | I look at my system every day before I make this plan.
00:29:25.600 | I see what's on that ready list.
00:29:27.100 | I remind myself who am I waiting to hear back from.
00:29:29.500 | I remind myself on the to-discuss list.
00:29:32.100 | Hey, do I have a meeting coming up today
00:29:33.600 | that I need to discuss things on a to-discuss list?
00:29:37.700 | We're talking five minutes, but you see it all.
00:29:40.800 | You see the mess of stuff
00:29:41.900 | and clarify that you haven't got to.
00:29:43.600 | You see the big back burner.
00:29:45.400 | You see everything.
00:29:46.300 | Number two, at the end of every day,
00:29:51.100 | when you're finishing the shutting down your work,
00:29:53.400 | you have to go back and review the system again.
00:29:55.400 | Here, the goal is to make sure that anything
00:29:57.600 | that is floating gets nailed down back into the system.
00:30:00.500 | Oh yeah, you know, I said in this meeting I would do this.
00:30:04.300 | Let me make sure that's written down in my system.
00:30:07.600 | This thing came in, this request in a Slack.
00:30:10.800 | Let me get that into my system.
00:30:12.800 | You're closing the loops,
00:30:14.000 | making sure that there's nothing just in your head.
00:30:16.500 | Should you at this point empty everything
00:30:19.800 | in your inbox into your system like we did on the day one?
00:30:22.500 | It's probably not practical
00:30:24.600 | because it just is too time consuming.
00:30:26.000 | You might not always have that time.
00:30:27.200 | So let's put that aside for now.
00:30:28.700 | But otherwise, anything else that's loose or urgent,
00:30:31.700 | you want it in your system.
00:30:33.100 | You look at your system,
00:30:34.000 | make sure there's no obvious changes or updates to do.
00:30:37.000 | Typically, if the day moves fast,
00:30:38.700 | there's updates you need to make to your system
00:30:40.200 | you haven't gotten around to.
00:30:42.000 | Oh, I sent that email about this.
00:30:43.400 | I need to move that over to waiting to hear back.
00:30:45.500 | Or I heard back from this thing,
00:30:47.200 | so I need to move this back from waiting to hear back.
00:30:49.300 | To over here and then copying what I heard about it.
00:30:51.900 | So just do that final cleanup.
00:30:53.400 | So your system, everything is back in it
00:30:54.900 | and the system is up to date.
00:30:56.800 | Do that every day, first four weeks.
00:30:59.300 | The weekly thing I want you to do
00:31:02.100 | for the first four weeks
00:31:03.600 | is return to that step four configure step
00:31:06.900 | at the beginning of each week for the next four weeks.
00:31:09.300 | Do it Monday morning, you can do it Sunday.
00:31:12.200 | Some people do it at the end of day Friday,
00:31:13.700 | so they can go into their weekend less stressed.
00:31:16.400 | I don't care when you do it,
00:31:17.800 | but go back and do something like that configure step,
00:31:20.100 | which remember meant you're going through the clarify items
00:31:22.300 | and trying to like, okay,
00:31:23.200 | which ones can I actually make progress on?
00:31:25.200 | You're triaging, you're batching,
00:31:27.000 | you're moving things, your calendar are off.
00:31:28.400 | This is like a 30 minute process
00:31:30.100 | of just getting the system fully up to speed.
00:31:33.600 | Critically, when you do that configure process,
00:31:35.700 | this is a time to return to your inbox and empty it.
00:31:39.100 | That's why it's good to do on the weekend
00:31:40.400 | or before the week really gets going.
00:31:42.300 | The stuff that's piled up to my inbox
00:31:44.200 | that I didn't really have time during the days
00:31:46.000 | or my daily reviews to get to,
00:31:47.900 | I wanna get that back down to zero
00:31:49.600 | and everything back into my system.
00:31:51.100 | So it's a more thorough configuring
00:31:53.000 | than what you're doing at the end of each day.
00:31:55.100 | So the book has four myths of attention span.
00:31:58.600 | So four things that we think is true
00:32:01.000 | about attention, but are not.
00:32:02.600 | That's what Jason's asking about.
00:32:04.700 | So let's go through these one by one.
00:32:06.500 | And then I'll tell you whether or not I agree or not
00:32:09.300 | that this is a myth.
00:32:10.300 | All right, glorious first myth.
00:32:14.300 | We should always strive to be focused
00:32:16.100 | and should feel guilty if we can't or can't be.
00:32:19.500 | Yeah, I completely agree with that that's a myth.
00:32:23.600 | To strive to always be focused is absurd.
00:32:28.500 | It's like talking to someone who wants to get stronger
00:32:31.900 | or an athlete and be like,
00:32:33.000 | you should strive to always have your muscles
00:32:36.200 | like in a state of load-bearing strain.
00:32:39.500 | That's crazy, right?
00:32:40.400 | There's only so much load-bearing strain you can do
00:32:43.300 | like modern bodybuilding orthodoxy says,
00:32:45.600 | really you wanna have eight to 10 sets per week
00:32:48.700 | per muscle group, right?
00:32:49.800 | Like otherwise it's overload.
00:32:51.400 | So just because you need to know how to put hard strain
00:32:54.900 | on your muscle and do it on a regular basis to get stronger,
00:32:58.300 | it is obviously a reducto ad absurdum to then say,
00:33:02.200 | therefore it is good to always have
00:33:03.800 | your muscles under strain.
00:33:05.000 | Same thing with attention, focus is important.
00:33:07.400 | You need the focus to produce things of true value
00:33:10.000 | using your brain, but to then extrapolate from that
00:33:14.500 | to say you should always be in a state of focus is absurd
00:33:16.600 | because that's impossible.
00:33:17.900 | So I agree, that's definitely a myth.
00:33:20.340 | All right, Gloria, second myth.
00:33:23.300 | Mindless activity that we do on our computers and phones
00:33:26.400 | is wasteful of our time.
00:33:28.600 | No, I agree here as well.
00:33:31.500 | I'm gonna draw from my book "Digital Minimalism"
00:33:33.900 | to tell you what I believe.
00:33:34.900 | So the whole premise of that book,
00:33:37.500 | like why did I write that book?
00:33:39.700 | Not because I believe there is some intrinsic evil
00:33:43.700 | in particular activities,
00:33:45.200 | but because my readers and listeners were reporting to me,
00:33:50.000 | I am spending more time on these activities
00:33:52.900 | than I know is useful or healthy.
00:33:55.200 | This is when distractions become a problem.
00:33:59.900 | When you know they are keeping you away
00:34:02.900 | from things that are more important,
00:34:04.300 | that they are lowering the quality of your life.
00:34:06.800 | That's when you say this is a problem.
00:34:08.400 | And that was the problem people began feeling
00:34:10.500 | around 2016, 2017.
00:34:12.400 | This tipping point where more and more people
00:34:14.900 | who bought their iPhone in 2010
00:34:17.500 | because they saw the Steve Jobs speech
00:34:19.100 | about having your iPod and your phone combined,
00:34:21.300 | like that's awesome,
00:34:22.300 | woke up seven years later and said,
00:34:24.800 | "I checked this 150 times a day.
00:34:26.500 | "I'm not paying attention to my kids.
00:34:28.100 | "I'm not socializing anymore.
00:34:29.600 | "I feel strung out and anxious.
00:34:31.700 | "I'm not doing the activities that used to matter."
00:34:33.800 | That's the problem.
00:34:36.400 | So there's nothing intrinsic,
00:34:38.000 | "This is evil to look at it."
00:34:40.000 | It's, "I can't help but look at this
00:34:41.600 | "when I'm trying to do bath time with my kids."
00:34:43.700 | That's when it becomes a problem.
00:34:45.300 | Good analogy here would be something like alcohol.
00:34:48.800 | Right, same thing.
00:34:50.600 | It's not, "Hey, you should never touch alcohol.
00:34:52.200 | "That's bad."
00:34:53.500 | But what's the cliche about it?
00:34:54.900 | When does it become a problem?
00:34:56.100 | When it's messing up your life.
00:34:58.100 | And I think that's what happened for a lot of people
00:35:00.700 | with their relationship with their phones.
00:35:02.400 | So yes, you wanna measure technology from your values.
00:35:06.400 | "Is it helping or preventing me
00:35:07.800 | "from doing the things I care about?"
00:35:09.700 | So it's perfectly fine to have perfectly distracting,
00:35:13.100 | low-quality things in your life,
00:35:14.800 | as long as it's not having a footprint
00:35:17.100 | that keeps you away from things that you value.
00:35:19.700 | Problem is for a lot of people, they do.
00:35:21.600 | And then the real problem becomes when we look at kids,
00:35:24.800 | because they can't help it.
00:35:26.900 | I'm yet to find a 13-year-old
00:35:29.300 | who you give unrestricted access
00:35:30.900 | to the internet with on their phone,
00:35:32.700 | and they're like, "I'm gonna use this a little bit.
00:35:35.400 | "I wanna go outside and play."
00:35:36.600 | Nah, if you're a kid,
00:35:38.700 | that thing is gonna brain worm in there.
00:35:40.400 | So we gotta, there we have to have some more protection.
00:35:43.000 | All right, but so far I'm on track here with Gloria.
00:35:45.700 | All right, myth number three.
00:35:47.200 | "The inability to focus on our devices
00:35:50.500 | "are due primarily to notifications
00:35:53.000 | "and our lack of discipline."
00:35:55.000 | That's an interesting one.
00:35:58.000 | I agree with the notifications piece.
00:36:00.100 | That's like 2003 thinking.
00:36:03.600 | Notifications are the problem.
00:36:05.300 | I get the notification that I have a new email,
00:36:09.900 | and that's the problem.
00:36:11.000 | And if I just turn off my notifications, I'll be fine.
00:36:13.400 | No, that's crazy.
00:36:15.200 | We come back to these things again and again,
00:36:19.100 | not because we were notified,
00:36:20.600 | but because what they're offering us,
00:36:22.100 | whether we were notified or not.
00:36:23.700 | And it is a complicated picture.
00:36:25.500 | When it comes to work,
00:36:28.500 | you can turn off your email notifications,
00:36:30.100 | but you're still gonna check that inbox
00:36:31.500 | once every six minutes.
00:36:32.400 | Why?
00:36:33.400 | Because of the hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration.
00:36:36.600 | This is the core of my book, "A World Without Email."
00:36:39.400 | We work out so much of our collaboration
00:36:41.600 | through asynchronous back and forth messaging.
00:36:44.400 | These conversations required many back and forth messages.
00:36:47.300 | They're timely.
00:36:49.100 | So now I have to keep checking my inbox
00:36:51.300 | so that I can see your most recent message
00:36:53.600 | and bounce it back to you
00:36:54.600 | so you can bounce it back to me
00:36:55.600 | and I can bounce it back to you
00:36:56.600 | and get an answer before lunchtime.
00:36:59.100 | So we check our work email all the time in this example,
00:37:01.200 | not because of notifications,
00:37:03.200 | but because we have a collaboration method
00:37:04.900 | that requires us to constantly check this work email
00:37:07.100 | because that's how we keep
00:37:07.900 | these asynchronous conversations going.
00:37:10.600 | On our phones, it's more complicated.
00:37:13.500 | I don't go back to Twitter compulsively
00:37:16.000 | if I have a problem with Twitter because of a notification,
00:37:19.000 | but because of what it gives me.
00:37:21.500 | It presses these emotional buttons.
00:37:23.400 | There's an addictive design element to it.
00:37:25.600 | I don't need a notification to grab a cigarette
00:37:27.500 | if I'm addicted to smoking.
00:37:29.800 | It's already wormed its way into my rhythms of the day.
00:37:34.000 | So yeah, notifications have nothing to do with it.
00:37:36.700 | Discipline is complicated.
00:37:39.100 | Often directly speaking, it's not discipline.
00:37:41.000 | I can't just fix my email problem by being disciplined.
00:37:43.400 | I'm not going to check my email.
00:37:44.900 | The whole structure of my work requires me to do it.
00:37:46.800 | So I have to put in place
00:37:48.600 | an alternative structure collaboration
00:37:50.200 | that does not require email.
00:37:51.900 | A little bit harder when it comes to your phone
00:37:53.400 | and in some ways a little bit easier.
00:37:55.400 | Yes, I agree, just white knuckling it.
00:37:57.000 | I don't want to look at these digital cigarettes is hard
00:37:59.700 | because they're helping you paper over voids in your life.
00:38:02.700 | They're giving you emotional stimulation.
00:38:04.400 | They're scratching deeply human urges you have
00:38:06.800 | in a very superficial way,
00:38:08.000 | but you need to scratch those urges.
00:38:09.400 | And it's easier to be seeing something on social media
00:38:13.500 | or like pornography than it is to actually fulfill
00:38:16.600 | those human urges with like real relationships
00:38:18.900 | with real people.
00:38:19.700 | But there is a discipline aspect to that as well,
00:38:24.400 | but it's just indirect.
00:38:26.600 | It's the disciplined construction
00:38:28.700 | of a more intentional cultivated deep life
00:38:31.200 | that begins to make the superficial pleasures
00:38:34.000 | of the attention economy superficial and optional.
00:38:39.100 | It's that disciplined effort to actually build
00:38:41.500 | into your life what really matters to get a taste for it
00:38:45.100 | that makes the digitized junk food no longer appealing.
00:38:48.900 | So ultimately discipline will be involved,
00:38:52.000 | especially with the non-work digital life,
00:38:55.500 | but it's not the obvious discipline of just avert my eyes
00:38:58.800 | and grip my knuckles.
00:39:01.300 | It's a more indirectly subtle relentlessly applied discipline
00:39:04.700 | to build a life where you don't just avoid those things,
00:39:08.200 | but you find them increasingly intolerable.
00:39:10.100 | So look at that like I 80% agree.
00:39:13.200 | Number four, fourth myth flow is the ideal state.
00:39:17.700 | We should strive for when using our technologies.
00:39:19.600 | Yeah, I agree flow state be wary.
00:39:23.100 | It's overrated.
00:39:24.400 | We have this argument a lot flow state feels great
00:39:27.700 | and there are certain times in work
00:39:29.000 | where flow state feels great for example,
00:39:31.200 | but also there's a lot of important work activities
00:39:33.200 | that are not a flow state.
00:39:34.500 | It's pulling teeth.
00:39:35.600 | Why because you're straining your brain to do something
00:39:38.200 | that is past your comfortable ability,
00:39:40.800 | which is critical if you want to get better
00:39:42.500 | produce your best work flow state requires
00:39:45.100 | that you get you fall into a zone which requires
00:39:47.500 | that you're like right in this sweet spot of like
00:39:50.300 | I have to focus but I can do this pretty well.
00:39:52.100 | For the guitar player flow state is
00:39:54.900 | when you're playing a hard song you can play.
00:39:56.400 | Well, it's great.
00:39:57.400 | You get lost in it.
00:39:58.200 | Your fingers are doing it deliberate practice is
00:40:00.900 | when you were learning that song in the first place
00:40:03.100 | and you couldn't play it fast enough
00:40:04.700 | and that feels like the opposite of flow you feel every second
00:40:08.300 | when you're trying to with your full concentration do
00:40:11.600 | something you cannot yet do comfortably so flow states great,
00:40:14.600 | but it's not the be all end all goal when it comes
00:40:17.800 | to Technologies Gloria's right be very wary,
00:40:20.900 | especially addictive video games want you to get
00:40:24.300 | into a flow state because you look up seven hours later
00:40:27.400 | and you've been focusing on that thing all day long.
00:40:30.600 | They want to just pull you from one experience to another.
00:40:33.400 | There's no more purified example of a flow state
00:40:36.200 | than the tick-tock interface swipe swipe swipe swipe,
00:40:40.300 | you know, just here's something here's something
00:40:41.900 | that's not good.
00:40:42.800 | That was really good.
00:40:44.100 | This one wasn't but if I swipe some more I should get
00:40:45.700 | some more they get you lost in this flow state.
00:40:48.000 | So there you go.
00:40:48.600 | They've just gathered three hours of data on you.
00:40:50.600 | So Gloria's right in technology use flow states,
00:40:54.300 | not the goal in work in general flow states are great,
00:40:56.800 | but they're not the only thing that's good.
00:40:58.500 | So I think we sometimes we probably sometimes put too
00:41:02.300 | much popular emphasis on them.
00:41:04.600 | And by the way, my Haley checks hit me high would agree
00:41:07.500 | with this right?
00:41:08.200 | I mean he he studied these very specifically the context
00:41:12.500 | of psychology. He wasn't saying you should be in a flow
00:41:15.500 | state all the time.
00:41:16.100 | He said there's a very observable thing.
00:41:18.000 | It's important and we can measure it and we should
00:41:19.500 | understand it but people took it and said flow states
00:41:22.100 | all that matters.
00:41:22.900 | So some wisdom in those.
00:41:25.000 | So thank you who asked this question Jason good question
00:41:29.800 | was a chance to go over Gloria's four myths and I recommend
00:41:33.200 | that book attention span.
00:41:34.600 | If you read my book world without email.
00:41:37.100 | I have a whole long section on Gloria mark.
00:41:38.900 | I talked about her her whole story.
00:41:41.000 | I've interviewed her on multiple occasions really one
00:41:43.600 | of the top thinkers on attention and distraction.
00:41:46.100 | So definitely check out that book if you're a fan of
00:41:49.000 | what we talked about here.
00:41:50.000 | I work in data analysis and I'm regularly bored in my
00:41:53.500 | day-to-day tasks at the same time.
00:41:55.300 | My side hustle has gotten to the point where I can spend
00:41:57.500 | the whole day and deep work without distraction.
00:41:59.700 | What should I do in the intern to maintain my deep work
00:42:02.800 | muscle while also getting through the day?
00:42:05.700 | Just if you've gotten used to this type of question,
00:42:09.300 | we get the I call it the leading the witness question,
00:42:12.800 | right where it's like, well, my work is bad and it's
00:42:17.000 | really boring and it's stupid and but this other thing
00:42:20.800 | is really great and it's awesome and I could do it all
00:42:23.300 | day long and I gives me meaning in life.
00:42:26.000 | What should I do?
00:42:27.700 | It's a leading leading the question.
00:42:29.600 | Yeah.
00:42:30.100 | So I want you to be careful here.
00:42:31.400 | This is Maggie.
00:42:32.900 | I want you to be wary of grasses greener syndrome.
00:42:37.300 | So when you're just sort of going through your professional
00:42:40.200 | life with what in my book so good they can't ignore you.
00:42:43.900 | I call the passion mindset, which is what is this job
00:42:46.100 | offering me?
00:42:46.700 | You're very susceptible to the grasses greener syndrome,
00:42:51.000 | which is like I don't love like what I'm doing day-to-day
00:42:53.500 | right now.
00:42:54.300 | Maybe there's something where I would love what I'm doing
00:42:56.600 | day-to-day more and when you start messing around with
00:42:59.100 | side hustles, this gets even more dangerous because it
00:43:01.800 | is easy to create a quote-unquote side hustle that just
00:43:07.400 | like lets you do the thing you think is fun in the moment,
00:43:09.800 | right?
00:43:10.200 | Because when you don't have to depend on that side hustle
00:43:12.900 | for all of your income when you don't have to you know,
00:43:15.300 | depend on that side hustle to actually create an impact
00:43:19.500 | in the world or support people.
00:43:21.100 | You can just make it whatever you want and then you tell
00:43:23.600 | yourself the story that like there's jobs like this out
00:43:25.900 | here. I could just be doing this really fun thing.
00:43:27.900 | But over here on this other world in this non, you know
00:43:30.000 | data analysis there's you know, I have to fill out memos
00:43:32.400 | and it's not always like that.
00:43:33.700 | My boss is kind of annoying and it's not always interesting
00:43:38.200 | what I'm doing.
00:43:38.700 | But in my side hustle, I'm writing a novel and it's like
00:43:41.000 | fun. I'm just writing all day.
00:43:42.200 | But the issue is that side hustle could just be you
00:43:45.300 | cosplaying some sort of imaginary ideal of what work
00:43:49.000 | could be. It's a dangerous thing to have pulling you.
00:43:52.000 | So how do we get out of this situation?
00:43:54.300 | It's not just we say we'll just grin and bear whatever
00:43:56.200 | your job is because maybe your job isn't in its current
00:43:59.400 | state what it should be.
00:44:00.300 | The way you get out of this situation is lifestyle
00:44:04.400 | centric career planning.
00:44:05.400 | I have an ideal vision of where I want my life to be
00:44:08.800 | and here's my sort of target in the next few years all
00:44:11.200 | the aspects of my life where I live what I do what my
00:44:13.600 | days are like my engagement with community and the rest
00:44:16.500 | of the world.
00:44:16.900 | All these things are really clear and as part of this
00:44:20.100 | you then look back and say how does I use my working
00:44:23.300 | life to get me closer there then what you were doing
00:44:25.900 | in your working life is part of a intentional plan to
00:44:28.900 | get you closer to a more idealized version of your
00:44:31.300 | lifestyle that is much more effective than just the
00:44:33.700 | passion mindset of do I like what I'm doing?
00:44:35.800 | Is there another thing I could be doing that I would
00:44:37.200 | like more maybe I should just be a novelist because
00:44:40.700 | this is fun.
00:44:41.500 | Like Cal I bought my hipster keyboard and it clickety
00:44:46.800 | clacks and and I'm drinking coffee and clickety clacky
00:44:50.500 | Brad Stolberg, by the way, Jesse called my new keyboard
00:44:53.900 | a hipster keyboard.
00:44:55.000 | All right.
00:44:56.100 | Yeah, he's like us you got one of those hipster keyboard
00:44:57.900 | does he seem a lot in coffee shops?
00:44:59.400 | I don't know.
00:45:00.300 | I don't know.
00:45:00.900 | He lives in Asheville.
00:45:02.000 | I've is probably a lot of hipsters there, right?
00:45:03.500 | So I understand but yeah, so he calls it a hipster
00:45:05.800 | keyboard which it is.
00:45:07.100 | So you like this is fun.
00:45:07.800 | I clickety clack and wear a beret and a pipe in
00:45:10.900 | Starbucks, which is exactly what I do.
00:45:12.900 | I'm just like ha ha ha right, right, right.
00:45:15.300 | Anyway, this is fun and data.
00:45:16.800 | Now.
00:45:16.900 | This is the other stuff is kind, you know, it's annoying
00:45:19.000 | right? You're just going to get drawn into that.
00:45:21.300 | But if you're like no, no, this data analysis job.
00:45:23.400 | Is part of like the money it generates what I'm doing
00:45:27.600 | now, but where I want to shift my position here eventually
00:45:30.800 | as I get to this level, I'm going to shift this to a
00:45:32.700 | consultant because I've saved this much money and then
00:45:35.300 | it's going to be six months on six months off which
00:45:37.400 | is going to allow us like you have this plan worked
00:45:39.200 | out that the work you're doing now and what you're
00:45:42.000 | working towards with your work is part of a plan that
00:45:44.100 | connects to deeply with what resonates that's where
00:45:46.700 | you want to be not just analyzing this your day-to-day
00:45:49.200 | activity something you enjoy or not and then inventing
00:45:52.000 | you know, this ideal job cosplay like well, I'm comparing
00:45:55.400 | it to that.
00:45:56.100 | You know, couldn't be that it's equivalent of like
00:45:59.000 | you're looking at your romantic partner and then
00:46:01.800 | you're watching.
00:46:02.700 | A Ryan Reynolds movie and you're like Ryan Reynolds
00:46:07.200 | seems kind of better.
00:46:08.500 | I mean, he's funny.
00:46:09.600 | He's like pretty good shape, you know, he's like the
00:46:13.000 | handyman in this small town in this Christmas movie
00:46:15.500 | that like I didn't realize would teach me the meaning
00:46:18.800 | of Christmas and then you know, you look over at your
00:46:22.600 | romantic partner like I don't know.
00:46:24.000 | I mean, maybe he's probably Ryan Reynolds.
00:46:25.600 | It's kind of the same thing when you're, you know,
00:46:28.300 | cosplaying on your hipster keyboard like this is more
00:46:30.300 | fun than you know, my job that's sending my kids to
00:46:33.300 | private school.
00:46:33.900 | So I think working backwards and I know I'm a broken
00:46:36.700 | record on this but Lifestyle Center career planning
00:46:38.800 | gives you focus on what you're doing and why which
00:46:41.900 | is what you need to keep moving your motivational
00:46:44.800 | system needs an understanding of what you're doing
00:46:48.200 | and how it leads to something important so that
00:46:50.500 | your episodic future thinking can see something
00:46:52.600 | that really resonates.
00:46:53.500 | That's what it needs.
00:46:54.300 | It doesn't need to enjoy every minute of what you're
00:46:57.500 | doing.
00:46:57.800 | That's the wrong metric the athlete who really wants
00:47:01.000 | to be the best in their field does not enjoy all the
00:47:04.900 | time they spend in the weight room, but they're
00:47:06.700 | motivated to do it because it's part of their vision
00:47:08.900 | of being number one.
00:47:09.700 | So that would be my advice there.
00:47:11.900 | Be careful.
00:47:12.300 | A grass is greener syndrome.
00:47:13.500 | All right.
00:47:15.000 | What's our next question?
00:47:15.700 | Jesse is the moment of truth to it's just slow
00:47:19.200 | productivity corner.
00:47:20.200 | Yeah, let's get some theme music.
00:47:22.000 | All right.
00:47:30.700 | What is our slow productivity corner question of
00:47:32.600 | the day?
00:47:32.900 | Jesse that came from Kieran.
00:47:35.100 | Thank you.
00:47:35.600 | Kieran.
00:47:36.000 | I'm a slow thinker, but at times my employee wants
00:47:40.400 | complicated answers quickly.
00:47:42.000 | I struggle at times to gather my thoughts into
00:47:44.500 | concise answers to appease management.
00:47:46.500 | How should I compensate?
00:47:49.300 | Well, I'm going to give you a couple ideas here.
00:47:52.300 | One of them will be concrete and one of them is
00:47:54.500 | going to be a little bit more psychological.
00:47:56.000 | Let me start with the concrete lean into your
00:47:59.000 | slowness here.
00:47:59.900 | By cultivating this could be like a a quirky
00:48:05.200 | idiosyncratic trait of yours.
00:48:06.900 | You get that email.
00:48:08.300 | Hey Dante, what about like whatever you say?
00:48:12.100 | Interesting question.
00:48:13.300 | Let me give this a let me give this a thought.
00:48:16.400 | I'll get back to you after lunch.
00:48:18.800 | You have a specific time that then gives you enough
00:48:22.300 | time to sit down and say, okay, let me take a break.
00:48:24.900 | We take a beat.
00:48:26.100 | And let me think through like what do I really want
00:48:29.300 | to say here and let me gather some points here and
00:48:33.100 | actually make this pretty thoughtful and then send
00:48:35.600 | it back by the time.
00:48:36.300 | I said it was going to send it back.
00:48:37.600 | So then people think like well Dante.
00:48:40.000 | Yeah, he's very thoughtful guy.
00:48:41.700 | Like he never responds right off the cuff in the
00:48:44.000 | meetings.
00:48:44.500 | He says, let me get back to you and then he does
00:48:46.400 | and he gets back to us in the time.
00:48:47.500 | He says and it's always really thoughtful stuff.
00:48:49.400 | And now you're leaning into the slowness instead
00:48:52.400 | of losing opportunities.
00:48:53.500 | Like I like Dante doesn't he gives us doesn't get
00:48:56.300 | back to us or it's it's it's incomplete.
00:48:58.300 | They're like this is just the way this guy operates.
00:49:00.400 | That's actually kind of cool.
00:49:02.600 | He's careful so we can kind of trust him on careful
00:49:05.000 | stuff.
00:49:05.400 | And here's the bonus Dante.
00:49:06.700 | They will maybe start leaving you out of this sort
00:49:09.300 | of knucklehead like back and forth hyperactive
00:49:11.700 | hive mind.
00:49:12.200 | Like let's just like go back and forth 70 emails
00:49:13.900 | right now and try to like get some answer.
00:49:15.500 | You don't really want to be a part of that.
00:49:16.800 | Anyways, like I'm slower.
00:49:19.200 | So no, I can't do the less than 70 emails next 30
00:49:21.900 | minutes, but I can really help think what's really
00:49:24.300 | going to be best for this client to do this.
00:49:26.200 | You really have to deliver though really do think
00:49:29.100 | through and be deliberate.
00:49:30.300 | Here's my psychological answer.
00:49:32.700 | So that's like what you could do positively.
00:49:34.400 | There could be a negative aspect here as well.
00:49:36.900 | There could be some combination of perfectionism
00:49:39.300 | and imposter syndrome self-confidence issues going
00:49:41.700 | on here.
00:49:42.200 | Right?
00:49:43.500 | So the other thing that might be happening is you
00:49:45.400 | just worried about shooting off a response because
00:49:47.800 | you worry I'm insufficient.
00:49:50.500 | Like this might not be smart.
00:49:52.800 | This might not make sense.
00:49:54.300 | If I send off this response too quick and I really
00:49:57.100 | haven't thought about it.
00:49:58.100 | The boss is going to be like, aha, I knew it.
00:50:00.800 | You're not smart.
00:50:01.800 | You're an imposter pack up and get out of here.
00:50:04.200 | And so you're crippled by this idea of you know,
00:50:09.300 | I just do I really belong here?
00:50:11.700 | Can you know, are people going to think I'm dumb?
00:50:13.800 | It's sort of like a perfectionism imposter syndrome.
00:50:16.300 | That's also very common in these sort of work scenarios
00:50:19.400 | and there you have to just basically this is psychological
00:50:22.500 | you have to harness your sort of inner American white
00:50:26.500 | maleness of just I will be very confident like, yeah,
00:50:29.900 | I know about this there, you know, and just be like
00:50:32.500 | it'll work out.
00:50:33.300 | You got to have to kind of get that mindset a little
00:50:36.900 | bit. It's going to feel artificial at first.
00:50:39.200 | That's sort of like, yeah, of course do this course,
00:50:42.900 | you know, then high-five people because that's what
00:50:45.500 | American white males do.
00:50:46.400 | I suppose we high-five each other.
00:50:48.400 | Yeah, they type on hipster keyboard.
00:50:50.900 | It's like, let me just knock this out on my hipster
00:50:53.600 | keyboard. Give it up just round of high-fives.
00:50:56.600 | Everyone in the room is just high-fiving.
00:50:58.200 | So you got some that's just mindset people.
00:51:01.700 | Here's the thing.
00:51:02.200 | People are not scouring over your responses.
00:51:05.700 | They're not looking at him in detail.
00:51:07.600 | There's not a committee.
00:51:08.800 | That's like, okay, here comes Dante.
00:51:11.300 | Let's put it up project it projected on the board
00:51:14.600 | for some reason.
00:51:15.100 | They have it on a 1980 style plastic film on the overhead
00:51:18.800 | projector and they're all staring at it and thinking
00:51:21.100 | about it.
00:51:21.800 | And then finally like someone in a tweed jacket shakes
00:51:24.200 | their head and says now this is not good.
00:51:26.000 | This is not good at all.
00:51:28.200 | And then the other guy is like, so we're going to murder
00:51:31.000 | him like else do it and they all just run out of the
00:51:32.600 | room to come get you.
00:51:33.300 | That's not what happens when you send a quick email.
00:51:35.500 | It's mainly just people who are really busy and
00:51:37.300 | overwhelmed and just try to throw things.
00:51:39.700 | I didn't answer this because I have so many things
00:51:41.200 | going on.
00:51:41.500 | I'm super stressed it.
00:51:42.500 | They don't really care.
00:51:43.700 | If you read most people's emails in the hyperactive
00:51:46.700 | hive mind situation, they often sound like you have
00:51:50.600 | you know, a caveman who's dealing with a brain injury
00:51:54.200 | responding, you know, like it's like a meme client
00:51:57.300 | meeting bad 4 p.m.
00:51:59.000 | Question mark emoji, right?
00:52:00.600 | Like it's people are just throwing junk around.
00:52:03.000 | So the psychological answer is like you got a little
00:52:04.900 | easier on yourself.
00:52:05.900 | Just be like, yeah, it's fine.
00:52:08.000 | They're not people just the conversation needs to
00:52:10.200 | move forward.
00:52:10.800 | So you have some combination of these two options.
00:52:12.900 | Don't be so worried about people scrutinizing your
00:52:15.900 | responses or and this could be complimentary lean
00:52:19.100 | into being a slow thinker.
00:52:20.000 | I'll use my thing.
00:52:20.900 | I take my time, but then I give you good responses.
00:52:24.200 | I like this this second this ladder response just
00:52:27.500 | because I think it might free you from a lot of the
00:52:31.100 | back and forth hyperactive nonsense and in a way
00:52:33.500 | that's not costing you we don't involve Dante and
00:52:37.500 | like a lot some of the back and forth nonsense because
00:52:39.900 | not because he's not reliable but because he's a slower
00:52:43.300 | more careful thinker.
00:52:44.400 | So you probably won't respond to this right away.
00:52:46.500 | And in fact the fact that you are you will respond
00:52:48.700 | this right away makes me think why aren't you more
00:52:50.100 | like Dante?
00:52:50.600 | So it's like a positive way to actually get away from
00:52:53.900 | some knucklehead stuff.
00:52:54.900 | Hey, if you like this video, I think you'll really
00:52:57.200 | like this one as well.