Cal Newport’s System for Getting Information Out of His Inbox

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's do some questions.

00:00:02.300 | I'm gonna do something new.

00:00:03.960 | Why don't we start with a call?

00:00:05.840 | We usually start with written questions.

00:00:07.400 | Let's actually start with a call.

00:00:09.360 | I saw one I liked from Alex.

00:00:11.440 | Let's see if we can find that one lurking in there, Jesse.

00:00:15.280 | - Yep, here we go.

00:00:17.200 | - Hi, Cal, my name's Alex.

00:00:19.200 | I listen to your podcast often.

00:00:21.360 | I've tried to follow your advice

00:00:22.960 | and get all of my important information out of my inbox

00:00:27.680 | and into some sort of trusted system, task list, et cetera.

00:00:32.480 | Here's the problem.

00:00:33.960 | You do that, you make up a task list,

00:00:36.880 | but there's more granular information

00:00:39.120 | that you need for each task

00:00:40.900 | than you're gonna put in a task list.

00:00:43.120 | And where that granular information lives

00:00:45.800 | is in the email trails that gave rise to the task.

00:00:50.320 | So you're going back to the emails anyway,

00:00:52.820 | and you're still living out of the inbox half the time

00:00:56.060 | to try to figure out what to do.

00:00:58.480 | What's your advice on this?

00:01:00.360 | Really appreciate your help.

00:01:01.680 | Love your podcast.

00:01:02.800 | Thank you.

00:01:04.440 | - Well, Alex, this is where Trello

00:01:07.080 | is gonna do a lot of good for you.

00:01:10.320 | So there's three reasons why I like using Trello

00:01:13.520 | when it comes to organizing obligation.

00:01:16.480 | I like that I can have different boards for different roles

00:01:19.280 | so that you don't have to context switch

00:01:20.860 | between different professional and personal roles.

00:01:23.100 | You can just be looking at obligations

00:01:25.440 | that has to do with what you're doing right now

00:01:27.360 | during your day.

00:01:28.680 | Two, I like the categories.

00:01:31.120 | Categories are everything.

00:01:33.400 | Things I don't know what to do with,

00:01:34.960 | things I'm waiting to hear back on,

00:01:36.440 | things I'm gonna bring up at the next staff meeting.

00:01:38.720 | You can have such creative categories.

00:01:40.280 | It really helps organize this information.

00:01:41.920 | But the third thing I like about Trello,

00:01:43.860 | and this is very relevant for your issue,

00:01:46.160 | is the cards can hold large amounts of information.

00:01:50.320 | This is how you get relevant information out of emails

00:01:55.200 | and into a more trusted system,

00:01:56.540 | is you put them on the virtual back of Trello cards.

00:02:01.440 | So when you click on a card in Trello,

00:02:04.040 | you can flip it over,

00:02:05.860 | and on the back of it, you can add notes.

00:02:09.420 | And I will just copy and paste emails,

00:02:13.040 | text of emails out of Gmail

00:02:14.680 | right onto the back of a Trello card.

00:02:16.960 | And if there's a thread of emails that are relevant,

00:02:19.320 | paste one, put a few horizontal dashes to divide,

00:02:22.840 | paste another, a few horizontal dashes,

00:02:24.520 | divide, paste another.

00:02:25.960 | You don't have to format it nice.

00:02:27.200 | Don't waste much time.

00:02:28.080 | Just get it all in there.

00:02:30.280 | You can attach files to these cards.

00:02:32.960 | So people are passing back and forth drafts

00:02:36.040 | of the report that you're working on,

00:02:37.960 | attach it to the card.

00:02:39.080 | That's where it lives.

00:02:39.920 | It lives in Trello.

00:02:40.920 | You can even put checklist.

00:02:43.120 | So maybe I'm looking at a thread of emails

00:02:45.260 | about a visitor coming, let's say, to campus,

00:02:49.080 | and I'm in charge of their visit,

00:02:50.400 | and I've been doing a back and forth with someone

00:02:51.980 | about what do I need to do?

00:02:54.120 | What do I have to arrange for this visitor?

00:02:56.400 | I might extract out of that exchange a list.

00:02:59.520 | You can do checklist on the back of cards in Trello.

00:03:02.160 | One, two, three, four, five.

00:03:03.000 | Or you can actually check things off and see where you are.

00:03:07.300 | That third benefit of Trello is a huge one.

00:03:10.460 | Because again, what it allows you to do

00:03:12.000 | is that when it comes time to work

00:03:13.400 | on a certain role in your life,

00:03:14.880 | so your role as manager, your role as copywriter, whatever,

00:03:18.840 | you go to that board,

00:03:20.160 | and all you are seeing is information related to that board.

00:03:23.200 | And you see everything you need to do

00:03:25.040 | under the categories to capture where it should live

00:03:27.840 | into your current scheme of obligations.

00:03:30.200 | So the zeitgeist there is really clear

00:03:32.120 | and instantly graspable.

00:03:34.280 | And all the information you need

00:03:35.400 | for the various things on this board

00:03:36.760 | are attached right to those cards.

00:03:38.480 | No need to load up email,

00:03:40.180 | no need to see completely unrelated requests,

00:03:42.640 | no need to induce those cognitively

00:03:44.840 | devastating context shifts.

00:03:47.080 | So that's why I'm a big fan of Trello.

00:03:49.520 | Other tools can do this well.

00:03:52.120 | I'm not sponsored by Trello,

00:03:53.400 | I don't have any skin in the game.

00:03:55.520 | I met once, I believe, the CEO of the company

00:03:57.840 | that bought Trello and expressed my admiration,

00:04:00.840 | but there's no formal relationship there.

00:04:02.480 | If you have another tool that does those three things,

00:04:04.240 | that's fine.

00:04:05.880 | I mean, you can simulate this in something

00:04:07.560 | as simple as a Google Doc.

00:04:09.600 | I've seen people who do this,

00:04:10.720 | different docs for different roles,

00:04:12.560 | different bolded headings for different categories,

00:04:16.640 | bullet point tasks below it,

00:04:18.740 | information just indented and pasted right underneath

00:04:23.740 | the corresponding task.

00:04:25.100 | People certainly do this.

00:04:26.380 | One group that does this for sure is developers.

00:04:29.600 | We talked about this in a past episode.

00:04:31.660 | We were talking about plain text productivity,

00:04:33.960 | but we mentioned that the original term life hacking

00:04:37.400 | came from this idea,

00:04:39.580 | it was Danny Lewin talking about it,

00:04:41.120 | that developers would put everything in their life

00:04:43.140 | in one big Emacs file,

00:04:44.380 | just with indentation and numbers.

00:04:45.980 | Everything going on, everything they had to do,

00:04:49.260 | just indent things, have all the information.

00:04:50.860 | So you can do whatever tool.

00:04:52.020 | I just think Trello or Trello-like tools make that easy.

00:04:55.580 | But the key is, Alex, out of your inbox.

00:04:57.580 | Get the information out of there and into a system

00:05:02.120 | that does not force you to have to confront everything else

00:05:04.960 | just to work on one particular task.

00:05:07.820 | (upbeat music)

00:05:10.400 | (upbeat music)

Cal Newport’s System for Getting Information Out of His Inbox

Chapters