back to indexWhy You Feel Tired, Burn't Out & Overwhelmed All The Time (How To Fix It) | Cal Newport
Chapters
0:0 The operations of overload
2:8 Back and forth interaction
4:18 Cal experience with overload
6:2 Workers and email
10:38 Solutions to overload
00:00:14.460 |
When you get a work commitment that you agree to, 00:00:20.100 |
into two different parts, execution and overhead. 00:00:29.240 |
So if we take an article that you're writing, 00:00:32.440 |
as an example, the execution is actually writing the article. 00:00:38.440 |
The overhead is everything that goes around it. 00:00:50.320 |
The fact checker and I need to get on the same page. 00:00:56.700 |
that surrounds the actual execution of the work. 00:01:00.040 |
Now, when most people think about being overloaded, 00:01:06.200 |
The total amount of things I actually have to do 00:01:09.640 |
has piled it up to a point where I don't even think 00:01:14.040 |
This is the classic understanding of overload. 00:01:18.920 |
When they realize tomorrow, I have to get this paper done 00:01:23.520 |
and I have this test and I have to finish this problem set. 00:01:26.240 |
And if they look at the actual work they have to execute, 00:01:28.200 |
the writing, the studying and the solving of the problems, 00:01:36.180 |
So execution, if you have too much total execution to do 00:01:52.800 |
The source of overload for a lot of knowledge workers 00:01:58.500 |
The coordination and collaboration activities 00:02:02.240 |
that surround the work we do can fragment up, 00:02:06.640 |
can muck up, can make hard to pass your schedule 00:02:30.720 |
And you say, well, maybe we should talk about it. 00:02:39.760 |
There is a lot of back and forth that happens. 00:02:55.720 |
Coordinate overhead also creates just other landmines 00:03:01.600 |
Now we should probably just get together and discuss this. 00:03:21.820 |
makes the environment difficult to pass for execution. 00:03:29.360 |
making it so that very little execution can get done. 00:03:32.800 |
You can fill up a schedule with overhead much quicker 00:03:36.960 |
than you can fill up a schedule with execution. 00:03:39.960 |
Most of the things we actually do in knowledge sector jobs, 00:03:48.320 |
doesn't really take up much of your schedule. 00:03:58.020 |
And then we pepper this overhead with that overhead 00:04:06.160 |
and more meetings to jump from one after another. 00:04:26.040 |
And I said, look, I have these big things I'm working on. 00:04:30.880 |
Let's deal with this in May once all that's done. 00:04:33.840 |
And any one of these things in isolation is not that big. 00:04:37.400 |
if you add up the time required in executing the task, 00:04:54.560 |
I put onto my schedule was incredibly manageable, 00:05:03.840 |
and service these requests and conversations, 00:05:05.880 |
and then went away for an hour and came back, 00:05:07.640 |
and 16 more messages had shown up in my inbox. 00:05:10.260 |
It's why I was finding days where it was meeting, 00:05:11.980 |
meeting, meeting, meeting with 30 minutes here, 00:05:17.000 |
why do I feel so busy when I'm not working on anything? 00:05:32.920 |
when I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal, 00:05:46.240 |
So I'm gonna load this article up on the screen here. 00:05:49.640 |
It's from May 9th in the Wall Street Journal. 00:05:53.040 |
You can watch this if you wanna watch and see the article 00:06:08.300 |
I'll annotate what I'm showing on the screen right now. 00:06:24.020 |
Pretty self-explanatory, so I won't dwell on this, 00:06:29.280 |
Microsoft is analyzing the activity of workers 00:06:43.480 |
how thousands and thousands of knowledge workers, 00:06:51.000 |
draw from a pretty wide variety of data points 00:06:53.700 |
to figure out how are people spending their time. 00:07:00.800 |
What this means is people who are primarily using 00:07:03.640 |
Microsoft apps for their business software needs. 00:07:07.560 |
These are the users you wanna focus on for this study. 00:07:10.400 |
Because if the users are using other software, 00:07:13.580 |
then that's not gonna get picked up in the data. 00:07:17.760 |
Microsoft now can really tell how do I spend my time. 00:07:29.540 |
of 8.8 hours a week reading and writing emails 00:07:39.280 |
because that's what Microsoft would know about. 00:07:49.040 |
is spent reading emails and being in meetings. 00:07:52.360 |
Now, if you could guarantee that you would consolidate 00:08:01.800 |
But of course, that is not how that time is distributed 00:08:08.640 |
is spread throughout the 40 hours of your week 00:08:11.800 |
in such a way that you always have to come back 00:08:24.360 |
it gets sprinkled and peppered throughout your schedule. 00:08:26.960 |
So you can get to that point of overhead saturation. 00:08:29.960 |
We have one other data point here I wanna point to. 00:08:46.160 |
of the time they were using Microsoft software 00:08:53.240 |
is during the time where they were using Microsoft software, 00:08:56.300 |
the majority of that time was talking about work. 00:08:58.680 |
Only 43% of their time they spent using that software 00:09:07.880 |
This is subjective description, which I think is apt. 00:09:14.840 |
that digital overload is hurting innovation and productivity 00:09:19.160 |
a sentiment echoed in numerous workplace studies. 00:09:21.840 |
In a separate Microsoft survey of 31,000 people worldwide, 00:09:26.840 |
nearly two out of three said that they struggled 00:09:30.160 |
to find time and energy to do their actual job. 00:09:36.000 |
So they struggled to find time and energy to do their job. 00:09:41.000 |
Those people were more than three times as likely as others 00:09:44.360 |
to say innovation and strategic thinking were a challenge. 00:09:48.320 |
We have a quote here from the leader of the research team. 00:09:57.740 |
but then they have this other job of communicating, 00:10:01.440 |
Folks, this is exactly what I've been talking about 00:10:11.660 |
It is the overhead of coordinating and collaborating work 00:10:15.040 |
that is causing all of these problems with overload 00:10:26.480 |
And it is very important that we recognize it. 00:10:43.500 |
One of the big discussions right now, of course, 00:10:53.320 |
maybe what we need to help work become more productive 00:11:23.200 |
It is not gonna get to the core of the problem 00:11:31.100 |
on these nuanced, subtle, subjective, interpersonal issues 00:11:41.480 |
This sense of overload is coming from this overhead, 00:11:45.220 |
by just making our software tools more efficient. 00:11:53.000 |
by making the interface for communication faster, 00:11:59.000 |
All of that might help a little bit at the margins, 00:12:10.160 |
How do we take that activity of collaboration 00:12:15.680 |
and make its footprint much smaller and consolidated? 00:12:22.920 |
to create 30 or 40 back and forth emails in four meetings? 00:12:44.660 |
I only have two things on my plate at a time. 00:12:47.640 |
So now the overhead does not destroy my schedule, 00:12:49.720 |
so I can actually execute pretty efficiently. 00:13:04.280 |
Workload management has to be a critical part 00:13:09.440 |
And that's something that's gonna require systems, 00:13:12.720 |
So I think this is where our focus should be, 00:13:16.200 |
but instead, how do we make coordination and collaboration 00:13:23.340 |
And B, how can we have smarter workload management systems 00:13:26.520 |
that keep less on your plate at the same time? 00:13:30.760 |
This is not a dichotomy between workers and management 00:13:39.840 |
No, it's in everyone's interest for us to hold things back 00:13:43.240 |
and only give people one thing to do at a time 00:13:47.280 |
And the total amount of work produced per year 00:14:00.600 |
Overhead is where we have to focus our energy 00:14:05.060 |
So I think that Wall Street Journal article makes clear, 00:14:21.120 |
I mean, I definitely talked about overhead being a problem, 00:14:26.940 |
and a world without email gets into the psychology 00:14:28.940 |
and neuroscience about why all that context shifting 00:14:35.540 |
which is coming out next year, I do talk about this. 00:14:38.420 |
And actually, the terminology I use in that book 00:14:42.660 |
Every obligation brings with it an overhead tax. 00:14:46.140 |
And when the amount of that taxes get to a certain point, 00:14:53.200 |
where now suddenly you're spending so much time 00:15:10.540 |
'cause it'll be a year 'til that book comes out, 00:15:15.900 |
we tend to keep our workloads right at the precipice 00:15:23.060 |
until we're so worried about things spiraling out of control 00:15:28.520 |
this was exposed by the coronavirus pandemic, 00:15:38.060 |
but it added a non-trivial amount of new work unexpectedly. 00:15:44.120 |
it pushed a lot of people right over that border, 00:15:48.000 |
during that first year, year and a half of the pandemic, 00:15:52.280 |
who were doing Zoom meetings eight hours a day, 00:16:01.580 |
over that point where you get fully saturated by overhead. 00:16:08.260 |
I mean, it's a terrible way to actually deploy your resources 00:16:12.020 |
if you have workers who are saturated with overhead. 00:16:19.220 |
where we can tweet indignantly about bad people, 00:16:27.380 |
"If I could just get more overhead on Jesse's plate, 00:16:30.100 |
my plan to kidnap the queen's daughter and get a ransom 00:16:35.060 |
It's not necessarily a mustache-twisting manager. 00:16:51.280 |
we're just gonna push ourselves till we get worried. 00:16:53.860 |
And so we're gonna push ourselves way past the tipping point 00:16:56.700 |
of what's the right trade-off between overhead 00:17:12.700 |
It's where you pass on the manuscript officially 00:17:26.460 |
But don't worry, you'll hear plenty about that next year. 00:17:40.260 |
Like if we're gonna release next February or March, 00:17:43.420 |
the meetings, the sale of the books to bookstores 00:17:47.620 |
that are gonna come out in that time happens pretty soon. 00:17:57.500 |
have everything they need to sell this book late summer 00:18:05.660 |
So the book kind of has to be done before then.