A Simple Way To Improve Focus & Clarity: Boost Productivity Before 2024

00:00:00.000 | I'm trying to decide whether a ditch postpone a side hustle idea in order

00:00:03.800 | not to overwhelm myself versus adopting a slow part productivity mindset

00:00:08.760 | and see how progress compounds over time.

00:00:12.140 | So, Jonas, what you need is extreme clarity.

00:00:15.060 | And this is where the productivity perspective is going to help you.

00:00:17.600 | You have to get your arms around the job that's making you feel busy right now.

00:00:23.640 | Capture, configure, control.

00:00:26.060 | See where you can get that.

00:00:28.000 | You reduce the stress, take control of your time,

00:00:30.240 | begin with the configure step to be more aggressive about workload management.

00:00:34.800 | See where you can get that line in a place that's allowing you to do

00:00:37.300 | what you need to do without feeling overwhelmed and then.

00:00:39.640 | Step back and say, where would the side hustle fit

00:00:44.080 | and answer that question honestly?

00:00:48.040 | And now, Jonas, knowing what I know about you, because in your elaboration,

00:00:50.600 | you talked a little bit more about your busyness and you have a lot of going

00:00:53.100 | a lot of things going on with your family and young kids.

00:00:55.000 | When you step back, you might say.

00:00:57.780 | There is not time for me to execute a reasonable plan for this side hustle.

00:01:02.400 | And you know what? That's fine. Don't do the side hustle.

00:01:04.480 | But you're going to get that answer with clarity.

00:01:06.940 | Or after you capture, configure, control, you might really tame your job.

00:01:10.580 | And so you know what? I could work on this two days a week,

00:01:13.680 | three hours in the morning is my remote work days.

00:01:16.080 | Nothing really gets going until noon or whatever.

00:01:19.340 | And this would allow me and here's my plan.

00:01:22.500 | And I could actually make pretty good progress on this.

00:01:24.480 | And then you might find like, OK, now I see exactly where I'm going to work on this.

00:01:27.340 | And I'm looking at exactly I'm going to work on this.

00:01:29.000 | And this is enough time.

00:01:30.540 | And this is worth it enough to me. Let's do it.

00:01:32.380 | But you cannot get to these answers with confidence

00:01:35.200 | unless you really know what's going on with your current work obligations.

00:01:38.940 | And so that's what I want you to do.

00:01:41.480 | Pull out, capture, configure, control until you are a master of your job,

00:01:46.800 | then work through what are the reasonable scenarios

00:01:50.080 | for me to make progress on the side hustle and evaluate those.

00:01:52.800 | Will it work? And is it worth it?

00:01:56.840 | Is where the achievement, the side hustle will generate,

00:01:59.800 | is it worth it for what I would have to do and be very honest with you, answer it.

00:02:03.440 | And especially at this stage of life, you have young kids at home.

00:02:05.680 | It's completely fine for your answer there to be.

00:02:08.200 | No, it's not worth it.

00:02:10.040 | I've controlled my job. I like having this flexibility.

00:02:12.600 | I want to just use this to do more things in my family or a hobby.

00:02:16.800 | I think that's a completely reasonable solution as well.

00:02:19.080 | But you don't get those options until you know what's going on.

00:02:21.180 | You're just haphazardly busy. Good luck.

00:02:23.980 | You're just going to start doing the side hustle that in a way

00:02:26.340 | that you don't have time for this going to cause stress.

00:02:28.340 | You're going to let it peter out.

00:02:29.940 | So, again, the productivity perspective here says once you have control,

00:02:32.340 | you get autonomy. Autonomy gives you options.

00:02:34.740 | I actually thought when I first read the question, I thought that he had already

00:02:38.680 | started the side hustle and, you know, was working on it for a while.

00:02:41.540 | And then, you know, it's a little hard to tell.

00:02:43.840 | I read the longer one.

00:02:45.480 | He talked a lot about the various things that were.

00:02:47.640 | He was worried about, like his busyness.

00:02:50.740 | And there definitely was a sense of haphazard busyness.

00:02:54.040 | Yeah, but it was a little unclear if he had started

00:02:56.140 | and was feeling overwhelmed by it already, or if he was pretty sure

00:02:59.740 | that if I just started this, I'd feel overwhelmed.

00:03:01.640 | I mean, the slow productivity approach, it can work with a side hustle,

00:03:05.040 | but you really got to evaluate it.

00:03:07.500 | Right. So you could say, like, at some point, it's too slow.

00:03:09.900 | If it's I'm going to work once a month, I'm going to have an hour session.

00:03:12.500 | Like that's too slow. Yeah.

00:03:14.280 | I mean, to me, slow productivity also involves obsessing over quality.

00:03:18.140 | It also involves the reduction of things.

00:03:20.740 | You can give more attention to something.

00:03:22.400 | It's not just about you can fit another thing into your schedule,

00:03:26.140 | because if you stretch it out long enough,

00:03:27.700 | you can find little pockets of time to make progress.

00:03:29.900 | I mean, slow productivity is it's a lot of it's about simplification.

00:03:33.040 | So it can take more of your attention.

00:03:36.280 | Yeah. Obsession over quality so that you can really come at it again and again.

00:03:41.640 | I think just trying to spread something out.

00:03:43.540 | So you touch it here and there.

00:03:45.180 | It's not really a slow, productive approach.

00:03:46.740 | I think it's just a fragmented approach. Yeah.

00:03:50.040 | Yeah. All right. Let's try to fit in one more question here.

00:03:52.880 | All right. Next question is from Andrew, 51 year old biology professor.

00:03:57.740 | I'm a professor because research production is not a shared goal.

00:04:01.820 | I have difficulty getting my colleagues to think creatively about system changes,

00:04:05.980 | even if we might benefit from it all.

00:04:08.280 | It's always easier to do what is easiest in the immediate moment.

00:04:11.240 | Other folks productivity be damned. What should I do?

00:04:14.280 | Well, I include this question in part just because I like professor questions,

00:04:18.640 | but it's another good example for us to apply the productivity perspective.

00:04:24.240 | So what Andrew's talking about is the type of collaboration systems

00:04:27.620 | I detail and motivate in my book, A World Without Email,

00:04:31.620 | where I talk about in the knowledge work context.

00:04:34.280 | There's many informal collaboration styles that are built mainly around

00:04:39.840 | haphazard back and forth messaging that are actually really unproductive

00:04:42.980 | for everyone involved in the long term, even though in the moment

00:04:46.380 | it's easier just to shoot off a quick email than it is to actually implement

00:04:50.580 | some sort of collaboration system like whatever.

00:04:52.740 | There's a shared document where the thoughts go.

00:04:55.120 | And on Monday night, I review that and then I put the notes using track changes.

00:04:59.680 | And you have till Wednesday, close a business to react to them.

00:05:02.020 | And then we have a standing meeting on Thursday morning.

00:05:04.140 | Those type of systems get you away from constant back and forth messaging.

00:05:08.540 | But they're a little bit more work in the moment.

00:05:10.140 | Andrew is saying, I can't get fellow professors to do this

00:05:12.940 | because we're not all working towards the shared same goal.

00:05:16.240 | It's not everyone in my department is working on getting this new product out.

00:05:19.680 | We're each working on our own thing.

00:05:22.040 | And so we're not that interested in being

00:05:24.620 | collectively focused on improving how we collaborate.

00:05:29.040 | So, Andrew, my productivity perspective here is you have to shift

00:05:35.140 | the scope that you're thinking about productivity.

00:05:37.820 | If you are a professor at a research institution,

00:05:42.840 | you need to think about yourself as a standalone business

00:05:47.780 | and the other professors in your department and other professors

00:05:51.040 | that you interact with and other departments,

00:05:54.280 | you know, the H.R. department, the whatever, like other whatever

00:05:58.040 | you would call them, groups within university, like their own businesses

00:06:00.720 | with which you have various professional relationships.

00:06:03.680 | You're Ford and you work with Firestone Tires,

00:06:09.240 | they're two separate businesses, but you know, you guys have a contract

00:06:13.020 | and a relationship to get the tires for your car manufacturing plant.

00:06:16.320 | But you're not the same company.

00:06:17.720 | So you have to think of yourself almost as like a standalone silo.

00:06:20.540 | So when you're thinking about systems internally is where you're really

00:06:23.880 | trying to get a handle on what is my work, what do I work on?

00:06:27.540 | What are my quotas? What do I not do?

00:06:29.320 | When do I get this work done?

00:06:30.580 | How much time do I have available?

00:06:32.040 | How do I want to use this time?

00:06:33.480 | And you're keeping track of all that and have all your complex systems.

00:06:36.240 | Then when you're interacting with the rest of the world, it's well,

00:06:38.680 | you have sort of interfaces with interacting with these other standalone

00:06:42.420 | entities, and I don't know, they're bothering you with emails.

00:06:45.620 | You could just do what you need to do with that.

00:06:48.080 | Just process centric emailing might work there,

00:06:50.520 | where you never formally develop a new

00:06:52.820 | collaboration system with someone else.

00:06:55.620 | You just sort of tell them in your response.

00:06:57.780 | Yeah, great. We should think about this.

00:07:00.420 | Put any thoughts you have in this Google Doc that I started.

00:07:03.320 | I will review it if I have any questions because you're a professor.

00:07:07.520 | I know you have clearly posted office hours.

00:07:10.380 | I will actually just come to your office hours next week and we'll talk about it.

00:07:14.720 | Let's sort of put a process into the communication.

00:07:17.160 | And there it is. You're not calling it a process.

00:07:19.720 | You're not negotiating about it. You're just saying it.

00:07:21.880 | Certain types of work like this is very disruptive.

00:07:25.220 | This person just constantly wants to email things.

00:07:28.280 | OK, I'm not doing that.

00:07:30.480 | I'm not going to work on that person.

00:07:31.560 | I'm going to leave that committee. You have all this autonomy.

00:07:33.420 | This is like a company saying we're going to get out of selling at souls

00:07:36.720 | because there's not a lot of profit there.

00:07:38.160 | We're going to focus more on, you know, selling Ford focuses or whatever.

00:07:42.560 | You think of yourself like a standalone business

00:07:45.220 | that interfaces with other organizations and you do your best

00:07:48.420 | to keep those interfaces as non disruptive as possible.

00:07:51.620 | So you need to be more ruthless, Andrew.

00:07:54.180 | That's, I guess, what I would say.

00:07:56.080 | Your department is not your team members.

00:07:59.220 | They're your colleagues.

00:08:00.460 | You're collegial to them.

00:08:01.380 | You enjoy them, but you're all your own standalone entities

00:08:04.280 | trying to figure out how to exist in the same academic sphere

00:08:09.620 | while still accomplishing your internal objectives.

00:08:12.380 | So I don't know, maybe it maybe I'm being a little bit Darwinian there,

00:08:17.520 | but I think it's the best academia really is.

00:08:19.320 | It's entrepreneurial. Yeah.

00:08:21.840 | You're trying to produce original research. That's the whole game.

00:08:24.020 | If you don't, you get fired. That's the whole game.

00:08:26.940 | And you work with other people.

00:08:28.140 | There's other things you have to do and service you have to do.

00:08:29.880 | But but it's just like Ford has these other things they have to do.

00:08:33.340 | But ultimately, if they're not selling cars, they're out of business.

00:08:35.480 | You kind of have to keep that in mind.

00:08:37.880 | The five books I read in February 2023 as longtime listeners.

00:08:41.320 | No, I try to read five books a month and I report on what those books

00:08:45.740 | are here on the podcast. All right.

00:08:47.980 | So what did I read in February?

00:08:50.480 | Number one, the Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick.

00:08:55.880 | This was roughly speaking, a popular history

00:09:00.920 | of the Royal Society in London.

00:09:03.120 | More generally speaking, it was a book about the rise

00:09:08.080 | of the Enlightenment scientific mindset.

00:09:10.520 | So Dolnick makes this point, but a lot of other authors

00:09:13.980 | to make this point as well.

00:09:15.180 | Isaac Newton was at a turning point.

00:09:17.280 | Isaac Newton was born and came up in a world that was connected

00:09:20.180 | more to Greek thought and mythological thought.

00:09:22.680 | And by the time he died, we were in a world

00:09:26.580 | that had a more empirical mathematical approach to understanding the world.

00:09:31.240 | I love these type of histories.

00:09:32.780 | It's a very readable book, short chapters.

00:09:34.740 | It moves pretty quick.

00:09:36.540 | Not as deep as some other histories I've read on this,

00:09:38.980 | but had a lot of good information.

00:09:40.540 | So a lot of London in this episode.

00:09:43.680 | Yeah. Two questions from London.

00:09:46.640 | A book about London. Yeah.

00:09:49.640 | You know why? It's because I am that article we talked about last week.

00:09:53.140 | And oh, yeah, Times.

00:09:54.880 | Obviously, that's a London based publication.

00:09:56.880 | So last week I was killing it in the UK.

00:09:59.640 | So this podcast, number one technology podcast in the UK,

00:10:03.340 | like number 30 overall podcast, you know, in the UK.

00:10:08.080 | Deep Work at Amazon UK was ranked like 60.

00:10:13.620 | That's so good. Right.

00:10:14.840 | So we've been killing in the UK.

00:10:16.580 | So as you can see, we're

00:10:18.380 | we're pushing all of our content to be UK centric.

00:10:20.480 | A lot of good golf courses around London. Yes, true.

00:10:22.640 | We need we need a podcast out of there.

00:10:26.640 | All right. I also read Wandering Home by Bill McKibben.

00:10:29.180 | I read that years and years ago, but I had a copy of my library.

00:10:32.580 | So I went back and read it and loved it.

00:10:34.580 | Very nostalgic.

00:10:35.940 | I really remember reading that book in grad school.

00:10:38.980 | Bill McKibben, who I really like, I interviewed him for a New Yorker

00:10:42.120 | piece a couple of years ago.

00:10:43.580 | He wrote this cool book where he walked from his house in Ripton, Vermont,

00:10:49.080 | which is sort of one valley over from Lake Champlain in western Vermont

00:10:52.680 | to his house in the Adirondacks.

00:10:56.620 | So the McKibben story is that he quit the New Yorker

00:11:00.920 | and moved to a cabin.

00:11:03.920 | It was really like a rundown house.

00:11:05.760 | Him and his wife, Susan Halperin, who's an excellent journalist.

00:11:08.580 | They moved to this house in the Adirondacks.

00:11:12.080 | And then once they had their kid, they decided they realized like

00:11:14.660 | kids need a school to go to.

00:11:15.880 | So they moved across Lake Champlain to Ripton, Vermont,

00:11:18.220 | which I actually visited there last summer.

00:11:20.820 | It's these cool it's one south of Lincoln.

00:11:23.120 | It's these these cool green mountain towns that are up at elevation.

00:11:26.380 | And really quaint.

00:11:27.960 | Anyways, he walked from Ripton to the old house.

00:11:32.260 | He had a Rondex.

00:11:33.360 | He had someone to roam across Lake Champaign, Champaign, Champlain.

00:11:37.260 | And in doing so, he got a he visited all these places and talked a lot about,

00:11:41.360 | you know, the type of things he writes about in deep, deep, deep economy

00:11:46.360 | that the book, deep economy, sustainable commercial endeavor, et cetera.

00:11:52.320 | It was really cool book, really nostalgic.

00:11:54.260 | Makes you want to just move to Vermont and drink Otter Creek beer

00:11:57.500 | and hang out at Middlebury.

00:11:58.800 | I know the book I read, you'd appreciate this one, Jesse.

00:12:02.940 | America's Game by Michael McCambridge, the history of the NFL.

00:12:06.260 | The long book, I read it for I'm in a

00:12:10.740 | a dad book group that only reads sports books.

00:12:13.860 | It's a lot of like journalists and stuff that we just don't want to.

00:12:17.400 | We we don't want to read anything that's too close to our work.

00:12:20.160 | Mm hmm.

00:12:21.160 | Anything is too close to home.

00:12:22.100 | So we read sports books.

00:12:23.600 | I like that. Yeah.

00:12:25.240 | I know a lot about the history of the NFL now, at least up until 2005.

00:12:29.840 | It's when this book came out in the early days, like back during Lombardi,

00:12:33.440 | the Canadian Football League was a big, you know,

00:12:36.360 | like it was a definite competitor, like people would go over there.

00:12:39.460 | And that's not mentioned at all in this book. Really? Yeah.

00:12:42.500 | That's an ad.

00:12:44.200 | His historian on early in the week, and they were actually talking about that

00:12:47.840 | because somebody died.

00:12:49.060 | Michael McCambridge, man, you missed.

00:12:51.500 | You missed the big storyline here.

00:12:53.760 | I also read a of the conquest of happiness by Bertrand Russell.

00:12:59.600 | The philosopher, mathematician Bertrand Russell wrote this book.

00:13:04.540 | This would have been in like 19.

00:13:06.900 | I think it's like 1919 or something like that.

00:13:08.800 | Maybe 1930, somewhere in that period.

00:13:11.340 | Maybe a little later than that.

00:13:13.060 | I might be messing it up.

00:13:14.360 | I mean, he died in the he died remarkably late.

00:13:17.160 | He lived a long time.

00:13:19.300 | I'm going to say the 1930s.

00:13:21.100 | It was there's a really nice new edition of this book

00:13:23.200 | that I found that Barnes and Noble and says, OK, I got to read this.

00:13:26.600 | It's like a kind of like a self-help

00:13:28.760 | book, but written before people wrote self-help books

00:13:31.960 | and written by an eminent philosopher, mathematician.

00:13:34.400 | And it's him trying to deconstruct and understand the

00:13:37.440 | the sources of human happiness, as well as the things that pull away

00:13:40.700 | from human happiness and trying to lay out some sort of program

00:13:43.600 | for how you can maximize it in your life.

00:13:45.940 | This is what philosophers used to do.

00:13:48.900 | This is why I really dislike this tendency we have for,

00:13:52.500 | especially the very online types to be very dismissive about.

00:13:55.260 | Well, they're self-help.

00:13:57.660 | They're a guru where you have to like throw this disclaimer

00:14:01.200 | at the front of everything you write.

00:14:02.240 | We're like, oh, I'm no guru.

00:14:04.000 | I'm not.

00:14:04.240 | In fact, I'm I'm terrible and I'm I can barely walk and I'm not giving any advice.

00:14:09.460 | And you really think people are going to applaud?

00:14:10.900 | Like there's all these gurus who are, you know, preying on people.

00:14:13.760 | But look, it used to be professional thinkers and philosophers were like,

00:14:16.500 | this is one of the things I want to do is try to think through

00:14:19.360 | big questions from life and take my swing.

00:14:22.200 | So good for Russell for doing it.

00:14:23.600 | Very readable.

00:14:24.900 | There's some anachronisms in it, but actually otherwise reads as a pretty

00:14:28.140 | modern book.

00:14:28.940 | A lot of similar concepts to the deep life stuff that you talk about.

00:14:31.800 | There's some. Yeah, yeah.

00:14:33.240 | I mean, I get like getting outside and just that stuff,

00:14:35.440 | but also a lot of psychological stuff like jealousy and pride

00:14:39.940 | and trying to understand.

00:14:41.000 | It's interesting.

00:14:42.240 | So it's kind of mental healthy.

00:14:44.440 | A lot of it, the habits of mind that can really pull you down.

00:14:48.840 | I mean, it actually reads pretty relevant, but it is an issue of mine.

00:14:51.600 | Is this like.

00:14:52.240 | I'm not impressed by people who have to put these long disclaimers about like,

00:14:57.400 | I'm not a guru who's going to tell you exactly how to live your life.

00:15:00.600 | I mean.

00:15:01.500 | Where are these gurus who are trying to tell people exactly how to live their life?

00:15:05.180 | I think smart people should take swings at.

00:15:07.500 | Here's a big question.

00:15:09.740 | Let me take a swing at like how you might answer it.

00:15:11.780 | People are smart.

00:15:13.240 | They will adapt it to their own circumstances.

00:15:15.500 | They will discount the obvious caveats.

00:15:18.640 | This weird

00:15:20.800 | whatever it is.

00:15:23.580 | Negative reaction that sort of very online elite types have to.

00:15:27.600 | Trying to be instructive or like to tackle big questions,

00:15:32.640 | I don't think it's I don't think it's healthy.

00:15:34.140 | It's similar in sports, how they always say, oh, the naysayers say.

00:15:37.440 | Yeah. XYZ.

00:15:38.940 | I think in online culture, it's very safe to be a naysayer

00:15:41.700 | because you'd be applauded for your world, weary critiques.

00:15:45.040 | People like, oh, that's a good I didn't see that angle of critique.

00:15:47.440 | And there's no real risk.

00:15:48.900 | Yeah. Being a little bit too critical.

00:15:50.400 | I like, well, you know, sophisticated people are critical,

00:15:52.880 | but you're really opening yourself up if you say

00:15:56.380 | this is my thoughts about this or like this is my philosophy

00:16:00.340 | for how you should do something.

00:16:01.400 | I mean, I think it's, you know, it's why I've sold a lot of books

00:16:04.340 | is because I'm not online, so I don't care.

00:16:05.840 | Since like, look, I think this is interesting.

00:16:08.380 | I loved reading this stuff.

00:16:09.440 | I love books like Bertrand Russell's Conquest of Happiness.

00:16:11.940 | Like, let's just get after it.

00:16:13.080 | And I don't care.

00:16:14.840 | So I guess more books for me, if everyone else is afraid of it.

00:16:17.540 | A lot of smart people who could be writing really interesting, cool,

00:16:20.180 | reflective books aren't because they don't want to get yelled out on Twitter.

00:16:22.740 | So, hey, more books for us.

00:16:25.080 | Final book I read,

00:16:28.280 | part of us kind of a holdover from Thriller December Rising Sun by Michael

00:16:32.440 | Crichton.

00:16:33.340 | I'm sure I read that at some point when I was a kid, but I found the paperback

00:16:38.440 | in a newspaper back, and so I read it.

00:16:40.840 | Well, constructed sort of murder mystery thriller.

00:16:44.140 | It's two detectives.

00:16:45.540 | They made a movie about this with Sean Connery and.

00:16:49.240 | God, who was the other person was it Wesley Snipes?

00:16:52.400 | I think it was. I saw that movie like 30 years ago.

00:16:54.700 | Yeah. I have to go back and watch the movie.

00:16:56.840 | I mean, essentially, there it's it's a detective thriller.

00:17:01.180 | These are detectives and they're trying to figure out a murder.

00:17:03.300 | And then there's some like Crichton high tech stuff.

00:17:05.800 | The thing I I didn't really realize this about Crichton until more recently.

00:17:09.680 | He got really reactionary.

00:17:12.740 | This is like a pretty like reactionary kind of anti Japanese book.

00:17:16.400 | Oh, really? Yeah.

00:17:18.780 | Like you're very worried, clearly very worried about the economic influence

00:17:23.240 | of at the then, I guess, the Japan had this massive, like outsize

00:17:27.240 | economic influence.

00:17:28.540 | Not very nice to Japanese people.

00:17:30.540 | I'm thinking about disclosure.

00:17:31.900 | I'm thinking about state of fear.

00:17:33.400 | I was like, oh, he kind of became curmudgeonly his 90s.

00:17:37.200 | So it's it is pretty reactionary.

00:17:39.580 | He just works this stuff into his book.

00:17:43.200 | But but still a good murder.

00:17:45.300 | Good murder mystery.

00:17:46.980 | But, you know, it's interesting layer.

00:17:49.780 | Any of these books, audio?

00:17:51.900 | I'm sure they're all. No, none of these were audio.

00:17:53.740 | So you read them all? I read them all.

00:17:55.880 | Yeah. Yeah, I've been doing a lot of audio books recently.

A Simple Way To Improve Focus & Clarity: Boost Productivity Before 2024 | Cal Newport

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