Can You Apply the Eudaimonia Machine to Deep Work?

00:00:05.000 | Hi Cal, this is Omar Ansari. Hope you're doing well.

00:00:08.000 | So I love your book and I've got the whole team reading it and we've even started a book club at work.

00:00:16.000 | I was reviewing your first principle and it talked about eudaimonia machines.

00:00:24.000 | And you know, the thought occurred to me, these are five rooms and what if we were to transplant these concepts,

00:00:33.000 | these five different stages into weekdays?

00:00:37.000 | And the thought occurs to me because at work we've instituted this no meeting Friday approach.

00:00:44.000 | So we literally have created this space for folks to have deep work.

00:00:49.000 | I'm wondering if we can actually step through the five stages in a chunk like fashion.

00:00:56.000 | This is what we need to work with those three 90 minute sessions on Friday and we build Monday through Thursday to that day.

00:01:05.000 | So I was wondering if you have any thoughts around that approach and any ideas.

00:01:10.000 | Thank you so much and keep up the good work.

00:01:13.000 | Well Omar, first of all, I appreciate the bird sounds in the background.

00:01:19.000 | From best I can tell remotely, it seems like a flock of birds was murdering a deer.

00:01:26.000 | Do I have that right? Or maybe it was a flock of birds was repairing a motorcycle.

00:01:31.000 | But anyways, you brought the bird sound commitment up to a new level.

00:01:34.000 | So I do applaud you for that.

00:01:37.000 | All right, so let's talk about the eudaimonia machine.

00:01:39.000 | Architect David DeWayne's idea of the eudaimonia machine.

00:01:43.000 | I was actually just talking to David earlier today.

00:01:45.000 | He sent me a really cool Emerson quote that I might do something with.

00:01:50.000 | Can we move the eudaimonia machine from spatial to temporal?

00:01:56.000 | Can we move the rooms of the eudaimonia machine into days of the week?

00:02:01.000 | I will say my first instinct here is caution.

00:02:06.000 | If you do, and I'm going to use your example,

00:02:11.000 | if you do something like no meeting Friday,

00:02:14.000 | these have been tried a lot and they failed a lot.

00:02:18.000 | And why do they fail a lot is if you have not fixed the underlying nature of your work

00:02:25.000 | to make that possible, it's going to create problems.

00:02:28.000 | And what I mean by that more specifically is if like most organizations,

00:02:32.000 | you use the hyperactive hive mind workflow as your primary means of coordination

00:02:38.000 | and collaborations that's on the fly, ad hoc, back and forth, haphazard communication.

00:02:41.000 | This is how we make things happen.

00:02:43.000 | When you then try to put in these bigger constraints, such as, you know,

00:02:47.000 | on Friday, we don't do meetings. On Tuesdays, we don't send emails.

00:02:51.000 | It can cause issues because it's actually these impromptu emails and meetings

00:02:55.000 | that makes progress in the work and the work slows down and things can't happen

00:02:59.000 | and the friction builds up and the heat gets hot and then the constraints go away.

00:03:04.000 | So what I recommend is if you're going to do any type of shaping,

00:03:08.000 | temporal shaping of how work unfolds, when communication happens,

00:03:12.000 | when meetings happen, when emails happen,

00:03:15.000 | the rules have to be supported by underlying processes.

00:03:20.000 | You have to have an alternative way for work to happen that's clearly specified

00:03:25.000 | that works just fine if no one has meetings on Friday

00:03:29.000 | or if no one can send emails on Tuesday.

00:03:32.000 | So this is my concern when I hear just a casual idea of like, well,

00:03:35.000 | we could take something like the rooms of the Eudaimonia machine

00:03:38.000 | and make them in the days because that's putting huge constraints

00:03:42.000 | on what is allowed to happen in different days.

00:03:44.000 | And those constraints will fail if you don't rethink from the ground up

00:03:48.000 | how work actually happens so that they can fit within those constraints.

00:03:51.000 | And that's a big point that I want to put out there in my answer

00:03:56.000 | is that the processes for work drive everything else.

00:04:00.000 | You cannot solve the problems that are created as a side effect

00:04:05.000 | of the hyperactive hive mind by just treating those side effects.

00:04:09.000 | You can't say, man, we get too many emails,

00:04:12.000 | so let's put a rule that says let's send less emails.

00:04:14.000 | You can't say, man, we're in so many Zoom meetings,

00:04:16.000 | let's have a rule that says less Zoom meetings.

00:04:18.000 | You're treating the fever without getting to the underlying infection.

00:04:21.000 | In this case, the underlying infection is these haphazard back and forth

00:04:25.000 | on-demand communication sessions are the only way that you have

00:04:28.000 | in your organization to get work done.

00:04:30.000 | So I care more about the underlying processes than the rules you have

00:04:33.000 | for how many meetings we can have, email, et cetera.

00:04:38.000 | That being said, I do like the general idea of finding different ways

00:04:43.000 | of operationalizing the philosophy that is embedded

00:04:45.000 | in David DeWayne's eudaimonia machine.

00:04:48.000 | The machine is a concrete proposal.

00:04:50.000 | It's also a philosophical proposal.

00:04:52.000 | The idea that you could actually think intentionally

00:04:55.000 | about how you actually approach the task of creating value

00:04:58.000 | with your brain and taking the function of the brain

00:05:02.000 | and the human being as an integral part of your thinking

00:05:05.000 | about work phase construction.

00:05:07.000 | When David talks about having a shower you go through ritualistically

00:05:12.000 | before you go into a chamber to really think your deepest thoughts,

00:05:16.000 | this is in part a philosophical acceptance of this is a really complicated,

00:05:22.000 | interesting, deeply human thing we're asking people to do,

00:05:24.000 | and we should maybe give it some ritualistic respect.

00:05:27.000 | So I think more vaguely this is a good idea, that we should have more respect

00:05:32.000 | in how we construct our workdays to actually respect how human beings function

00:05:37.000 | and what we're asking human beings to do and how the human brains

00:05:40.000 | actually operate and what's a good or bad way to work with these brains.

00:05:43.000 | Maybe to add a little bit more of mystery into what we're doing,

00:05:46.000 | to add a little bit more of a code of honor into thinking

00:05:51.000 | or whatever we want to do.

00:05:53.000 | I think this is not a bad idea.

00:05:55.000 | But just keep in mind, again, the scale at which these changes

00:05:59.000 | have to operate is on the underlying processes for how work gets done.

00:06:05.000 | Jumping on Slack, jumping on email, or sending out Google invites for a Zoom,

00:06:12.000 | if this is the primary way that almost all work gets done,

00:06:16.000 | you can't have much success making any other changes.

00:06:18.000 | So if you start with the processes, you can re-mold your work however you want.

00:06:22.000 | You can make your own instantiations of the eudaimonia machine,

00:06:26.000 | of radical novelty, of radical effectiveness, whatever you want to do,

00:06:31.000 | if you're starting your work from the underlying processes

00:06:34.000 | and rebuilding those from scratch to directly support whatever this vision actually is.

00:06:39.000 | [Music]

Can You Apply the Eudaimonia Machine to Deep Work?

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