Ep. 233: Escaping Your Tyrannical Inbox

00:00:00.000 | The actual deep question then that we'll tackle today.

00:00:03.200 | How can I free myself from spending all day in my inbox?

00:00:08.200 | I'm Cal Newport and this is Deep Questions.

00:00:18.600 | The show about living and working deeply

00:00:21.000 | in an increasingly distracted world.

00:00:23.040 | I'm here in my deep work HQ.

00:00:29.360 | I'm joined by my producer, Jesse.

00:00:31.000 | Jesse, a little bit nervous today.

00:00:34.000 | Why is that?

00:00:34.840 | Well, we're kind of under the timing gun

00:00:37.960 | because the restaurant that used to be below us,

00:00:40.460 | as we've talked about on the show, closed

00:00:42.560 | and a new restaurant's coming in, which is good.

00:00:45.160 | And I know the owner, so that's all good,

00:00:47.080 | but they've started construction

00:00:49.280 | and they've given us a little window today,

00:00:51.980 | one hour long, to record our podcast.

00:00:54.800 | They're going to, in theory,

00:00:55.720 | hold back on the ladder of the construction.

00:00:57.320 | So we are under the gun.

00:00:58.280 | We got to nail this thing.

00:00:59.320 | One take, keep it tight before whatever.

00:01:02.840 | Power saws and hammers fill our ears.

00:01:06.120 | One take Tony.

00:01:07.040 | One take Tony.

00:01:07.880 | We got to earn it today.

00:01:08.760 | I think, Jesse, we need to try harder

00:01:10.960 | to become regulars at this new place

00:01:13.360 | than we were at the old place.

00:01:15.280 | Yeah, I mean, you just got to walk downstairs

00:01:16.960 | and walk in the door, right?

00:01:18.120 | But we just got to do it.

00:01:18.940 | I think from the beginning,

00:01:19.840 | we need to instill ourselves as a fixture here.

00:01:22.080 | I know the owner, I probably know some of the staff.

00:01:25.080 | We got to have our booth.

00:01:26.960 | I would love to go there.

00:01:27.880 | Like our pre-recording, our post-recording, whatever.

00:01:30.880 | We didn't do that with the last place.

00:01:32.400 | We only went there a couple times.

00:01:33.560 | So this new place, we got to be regulars.

00:01:36.040 | People got to know.

00:01:36.880 | Can have some fans come by?

00:01:37.700 | Have fans come by.

00:01:38.540 | We'll just hold court.

00:01:39.380 | I want it to be like cheers.

00:01:41.920 | That'd be fun.

00:01:42.760 | You know what I mean?

00:01:43.580 | And we'll be like Norm,

00:01:45.560 | the functional alcoholic mailman,

00:01:48.480 | who sat, he just sat at the bar.

00:01:49.920 | We'll just tell quips as people come in.

00:01:52.680 | We'll quip the people.

00:01:54.280 | It'll be good.

00:01:55.120 | It'll be fun.

00:01:55.940 | I'm excited.

00:01:56.780 | I'm excited for our productivity.

00:01:57.980 | Did you see the,

00:01:59.620 | there's a interview with me

00:02:00.820 | in the New York Times Magazine recently.

00:02:03.620 | So in the,

00:02:04.460 | the mentioned briefly because it's going to set up

00:02:05.760 | what I want to talk about today.

00:02:07.380 | For those who are watching

00:02:09.420 | on a youtube.com/calendepartmedia,

00:02:11.860 | I pulled up the article here.

00:02:14.700 | It's a colorful picture of me.

00:02:15.880 | The title of this interview was

00:02:18.580 | the digital workplace is designed to bring you down.

00:02:23.820 | Most of it is covering the type of ideas I talk about

00:02:27.420 | in a world without email.

00:02:28.340 | We discuss a little slow productivity.

00:02:30.700 | Here's what's relevant to today though.

00:02:32.320 | A reader wrote me and said,

00:02:33.580 | Cal check out the comments.

00:02:36.480 | They're gold.

00:02:37.980 | And I don't normally read comments on things.

00:02:39.460 | You know, I've been in this business long enough

00:02:40.740 | to know not to do that.

00:02:42.220 | But so I was like, okay,

00:02:43.060 | I'll check it out.

00:02:43.880 | And I saw what he meant

00:02:44.960 | because in the comments on this article,

00:02:47.580 | a lot of readers are sharing their stories

00:02:50.100 | and they're sharing stories about

00:02:51.660 | this is what my job used to be like.

00:02:54.460 | Now, after the age of email,

00:02:56.120 | followed by the age of Slack,

00:02:57.280 | this is what my job is like today.

00:02:58.820 | So you get all these case studies.

00:03:00.340 | It's a goldmine of case studies

00:03:01.740 | of the way that digital technologies

00:03:03.500 | entering the office really changed

00:03:05.460 | what work meant for a lot of people.

00:03:09.940 | So inspired by those comments,

00:03:11.600 | I thought what we should do today in the show

00:03:14.600 | is focus on at least something.

00:03:17.180 | It's a broad problem,

00:03:18.080 | but at least one part of a solution to this problem

00:03:20.920 | that might make people who feel deluged

00:03:23.260 | by electronic communication and work

00:03:25.660 | make their working life a little bit better.

00:03:29.780 | So I wanted to choose a concrete goal

00:03:31.880 | that we could work on today's show.

00:03:33.140 | And I wanted it to be a goal.

00:03:34.680 | Here's what I decided.

00:03:36.300 | I wanted it to be a goal about checking inboxes

00:03:40.300 | or checking into chat channels less frequently.

00:03:44.500 | Now, this is a critical issue.

00:03:48.860 | If we could just get that behavioral change,

00:03:51.240 | that single behavioral change

00:03:52.440 | into the average knowledge worker professional existence,

00:03:55.060 | I think it really would make a big difference.

00:03:57.560 | To emphasize how big of an issue this is,

00:03:59.720 | I'm actually loading up on the screen here

00:04:02.760 | an article that I've actually cited quite a bit.

00:04:04.880 | And I've actually talked to the data scientists

00:04:06.600 | who produced this data.

00:04:08.020 | This was all in a world without email.

00:04:09.600 | All right, this is a blog post

00:04:11.360 | from the software company RescueTime.

00:04:13.720 | RescueTime has a software tool

00:04:16.200 | that tracks what you do on your computer

00:04:18.080 | and how long you spend doing it.

00:04:19.520 | Sort of like the screen time feature for iPhones,

00:04:22.560 | though it's been around much longer than that feature.

00:04:25.080 | And the idea is you learn about what you're doing

00:04:27.040 | so you can adjust your habits.

00:04:28.680 | This gives them a huge corpus, however,

00:04:32.400 | of observational data.

00:04:33.680 | Tens of thousands of knowledge workers collecting this data.

00:04:36.600 | So they hired some data scientists

00:04:38.200 | to properly anonymize this data and analyze it.

00:04:42.120 | This was one of the first big findings

00:04:44.400 | the RescueTime data scientists came up with.

00:04:48.040 | And I'm just gonna scroll to the punchline here.

00:04:51.800 | The average knowledge worker checks in

00:04:54.400 | on email or instant messenger every six minutes.

00:04:58.520 | A crazy number.

00:05:01.120 | And again, they got this by just literally watching

00:05:03.520 | exactly what tens of thousands of knowledge workers did

00:05:06.400 | over many, many days.

00:05:07.360 | They were running the software that tracked every program

00:05:09.300 | they used and how long they used it.

00:05:11.100 | I'll show you a chart here as well.

00:05:13.820 | For those who are watching,

00:05:15.320 | this is a histogram of average minutes

00:05:19.240 | between checking communication apps.

00:05:21.040 | That's the X-axis and the Y-axis

00:05:23.160 | is how many of the observed users check that often.

00:05:26.960 | And you see the median is six minutes,

00:05:30.120 | but there is the largest.

00:05:32.080 | So what would that be?

00:05:33.520 | The max, the time between email checks

00:05:38.520 | that the most users actually satisfied was,

00:05:41.640 | I'm looking at it here, one minute.

00:05:44.780 | So that is the most frequent interval observed

00:05:48.680 | between email checks was one minute.

00:05:50.700 | After the median of six, there's just a long tail.

00:05:55.200 | So there's a lot of users that,

00:05:57.280 | a small number of users for these really long.

00:05:59.480 | And honestly, I bet this long tail, Jesse,

00:06:01.800 | where you have one user who checked every 100 minutes,

00:06:04.760 | one user who checked every 125 minutes,

00:06:06.600 | I bet a lot of that is people that were away on a conference

00:06:09.960 | when the data was being collected,

00:06:11.360 | or forgot to turn on the app or something like that.

00:06:13.840 | Anyways, here's the point.

00:06:14.800 | We check email, not a lot, but constantly, constantly.

00:06:19.800 | This is a huge issue because as I emphasize in that article,

00:06:24.800 | as I emphasize in my book, "A World Without Email,"

00:06:28.580 | context switching is expensive for the human brain.

00:06:32.160 | It takes a lot of neuronal machinery,

00:06:34.960 | a lot of cognitive state change

00:06:37.420 | to shift our attention from one target to another.

00:06:39.960 | We're meant to be focused on one thing at a time.

00:06:42.160 | It's not easy to switch.

00:06:43.840 | If you're checking your inbox once every six minutes,

00:06:46.260 | you're constantly instigating these context shifts.

00:06:49.400 | You never actually let your mind settle

00:06:51.160 | on one cognitive context,

00:06:53.360 | so you can't muster your full capabilities.

00:06:56.240 | There's another issue that happens,

00:06:57.520 | and this is an idea I've been developing more recently.

00:07:00.680 | It's not in my book.

00:07:01.680 | I mentioned it briefly in this article,

00:07:02.800 | but I think it's also critical.

00:07:05.520 | When you're looking at, say, an email inbox,

00:07:08.400 | and you see on the screen 20 different emails

00:07:12.480 | that you'll need to respond to,

00:07:14.240 | each of them about something different,

00:07:16.280 | each of them requiring a different cognitive context

00:07:19.160 | to really think about and understand,

00:07:20.880 | when you're seeing those all at the same time,

00:07:23.080 | the standard experience looking at an inbox

00:07:26.120 | overwhelms and freezes your brain.

00:07:28.240 | And I think a lot of people have this experience.

00:07:30.480 | It's like, "Oh, man, I gotta clear out my inbox,"

00:07:32.160 | and you just freeze.

00:07:35.000 | You freeze like, "I don't even know how to get started."

00:07:37.480 | You feel this resistance, you feel this discomfort,

00:07:40.160 | and you jump over to the web

00:07:41.600 | to look up baseball trade rumors,

00:07:44.080 | or you pull out social media,

00:07:45.480 | 'cause your mind doesn't even know what to do with it.

00:07:47.120 | That's because you're literally giving your mind a problem

00:07:50.160 | it does not know how to solve.

00:07:51.400 | You say, "Load up the proper context

00:07:53.640 | "for what we're doing next, please,

00:07:54.760 | "and what are we doing next?"

00:07:55.840 | 15 different things, they're each different contexts.

00:07:58.160 | The mind can't load 15 contexts at a time.

00:08:00.240 | So the inbox by itself is a disaster.

00:08:02.560 | Switching to the inbox once every six minutes is a disaster.

00:08:05.400 | We can't focus, we freeze,

00:08:06.960 | and it makes us subjectively experience

00:08:10.120 | the workday as worse.

00:08:11.480 | It's exhausting, frustrating, and misery-making.

00:08:14.320 | So guys, we're then gonna turn our attention

00:08:16.520 | to reader questions.

00:08:17.840 | I have five questions from my readers and podcast listeners

00:08:20.840 | that all loosely relate to exactly this theme.

00:08:24.200 | So we can take our ideas and put 'em out

00:08:26.440 | and practice them on real people's issues,

00:08:28.160 | and then we'll switch gears

00:08:29.040 | to end with something interesting.

00:08:31.600 | All right, so let's deep dive on this question.

00:08:36.000 | How do I not spend all day in my inbox?

00:08:38.160 | I think the place we have to start

00:08:40.040 | before we get specific with strategies

00:08:43.160 | is asking why is this even a hard challenge

00:08:45.520 | in the first place?

00:08:47.640 | Why can't we just do what Tim Ferriss suggested?

00:08:51.840 | So again, for the people who are watching on YouTube,

00:08:54.000 | youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

00:08:56.520 | I'm loading up a blog post from Tim Ferriss's website,

00:09:00.460 | and what I've loaded up here

00:09:02.800 | is the email autoresponder that in his 2007 book,

00:09:07.800 | was it "The Four-Hour Workweek,"

00:09:10.680 | Tim suggested that knowledge workers use.

00:09:14.780 | Let me read this autoresponder for you.

00:09:17.280 | So autoresponder, this is what anyone who writes you

00:09:19.840 | will automatically get this sent back to them.

00:09:22.960 | Greetings, friends, whoops, email subscription.

00:09:25.600 | All right, greetings, friends.

00:09:27.160 | Due to high workload, I'm currently checking

00:09:29.760 | and responding to email twice daily at 12 p.m. Eastern

00:09:33.400 | and 4 p.m. Eastern.

00:09:35.200 | If you require urgent assistance,

00:09:37.560 | parentheses, please ensure it is urgent,

00:09:39.740 | that cannot wait until either 12 p.m. or 4 p.m.,

00:09:42.480 | please contact me via phone at whatever phone number.

00:09:46.400 | Thank you for understanding this move

00:09:48.280 | to more efficiency and effectiveness.

00:09:49.800 | It helps me accomplish more to serve you better.

00:09:52.960 | So why can't we just do that?

00:09:54.400 | I don't wanna spend all day checking my inbox, I won't.

00:09:57.220 | I'll check it twice and I'll have an autoresponder

00:10:00.040 | and that way people will know,

00:10:02.260 | so people won't be upset about it.

00:10:04.120 | This strategy of just deciding to batch your email

00:10:09.140 | was tractable back when email was new.

00:10:13.720 | And I think this is very important

00:10:14.960 | when we evaluate Tim's suggestion here.

00:10:17.800 | This came out in a book in 2007

00:10:21.000 | that he wrote in 2005 to 2006,

00:10:23.720 | talking about his experiences in the workplace

00:10:26.280 | in 2003, 2004.

00:10:28.700 | 2003, 2004, that early 2000s that he's writing about,

00:10:32.360 | the motivation for his book,

00:10:33.840 | that was pretty early in the period of ubiquitous email,

00:10:36.800 | early in the period of email

00:10:38.080 | integrating itself into our workflows.

00:10:39.880 | You could get away with that.

00:10:41.320 | Oh, this is how I check my email.

00:10:42.800 | Now, I think a lot of people,

00:10:43.800 | there was a meme online of people

00:10:46.320 | sort of rejecting that autoresponder,

00:10:48.100 | like, look, if I use this autoresponder,

00:10:50.800 | I would get knives thrown at my eyes or whatever.

00:10:53.260 | That's just the wording thing.

00:10:54.960 | Yeah, there's a tone to it

00:10:56.560 | that some people say is disagreeable.

00:10:57.840 | You could wordsmith that, whatever,

00:10:59.460 | make the tone very agreeable for your particular context.

00:11:03.260 | That used to work.

00:11:04.480 | Tim was right to suggest it

00:11:06.420 | when he was thinking about 2003, 2004.

00:11:09.080 | 2023, that would not work.

00:11:12.760 | And I think we all recognize

00:11:13.680 | if we just said I'm gonna check twice a day,

00:11:15.560 | it would be a disaster.

00:11:17.800 | So why is that?

00:11:20.280 | Well, that's because as email

00:11:23.300 | became increasingly integrated into the workplace

00:11:26.320 | and Slack came later and other types of tools like Teams,

00:11:29.700 | we developed a mode of collaboration

00:11:32.160 | that I call the hyperactive hive mind.

00:11:34.760 | Now, we've talked about this on the show before,

00:11:37.200 | so I won't go into too much detail.

00:11:38.220 | My whole book, "World Without Email" is about this,

00:11:39.980 | so I won't go into too much detail.

00:11:41.400 | But just as a refresher,

00:11:42.840 | the hyperactive hive mind is a mode of collaboration

00:11:45.500 | in which you work most things out on the fly

00:11:47.580 | with ad hoc back and forth messages,

00:11:49.620 | either an email or an instant messenger services.

00:11:52.900 | So now if we're trying to figure something out,

00:11:55.200 | we will just start sending messages back and forth.

00:11:59.360 | When I see a message from you, I'll reply to it.

00:12:01.120 | You'll reply at some point.

00:12:02.040 | I'll see that, I'll reply to you.

00:12:03.640 | And we figure this thing out.

00:12:04.560 | We just rock and roll.

00:12:06.000 | That is the hyperactive hive mind mode of collaboration.

00:12:09.280 | If you were using the hyperactive hive mind

00:12:11.440 | mode of collaboration,

00:12:12.920 | following Tim's suggestion of just declaring 12 and four,

00:12:17.000 | that's it, is disastrous.

00:12:19.760 | Because the emails coming into your inbox

00:12:22.800 | are not these one-time requests

00:12:25.320 | that you have a couple of days to respond to

00:12:26.920 | or a few hours to respond to.

00:12:28.240 | It's message three of seven

00:12:30.800 | that has to bounce back and forth

00:12:32.480 | so that a decision can be made before the end of business.

00:12:35.800 | You can't wait three hours for your next reply

00:12:38.400 | 'cause that's not enough time

00:12:39.280 | for the next reply to come back

00:12:40.360 | and then you reply to that and then they reply to you

00:12:41.840 | in time for the decision to be made.

00:12:43.640 | If we have to figure out

00:12:45.540 | what is our plan for picking up the client tomorrow

00:12:47.600 | from the airport and it's noon today

00:12:50.120 | and it's gonna take five back and forth messages,

00:12:52.920 | I can't wait till four,

00:12:54.240 | check my inbox once and then be done

00:12:56.040 | because we will not reach a decision

00:12:57.700 | and that client won't get picked up.

00:13:00.080 | So the hyperactive hive mind makes batching difficult.

00:13:03.340 | Now we can actually find this shift.

00:13:05.020 | We can find this reality in data.

00:13:07.280 | I'm gonna load up one more thing on the tablet here.

00:13:10.200 | This is a academic paper.

00:13:11.840 | We're jumping ahead now to 2016.

00:13:15.120 | We're gonna look at an academic paper

00:13:16.600 | that was written by Gloria Mark from UC Irvine.

00:13:21.320 | 2016 paper, this was I believe published in CHI.

00:13:26.320 | So the Human Computer Interaction Conference.

00:13:30.760 | It's a well-known human interaction conference venue.

00:13:34.440 | All right, so here's the paper.

00:13:35.520 | It's called "Email Duration, Batching, and Self-Interruption

00:13:39.040 | "Patterns of Email Use on Productivity and Stress."

00:13:41.720 | And just right here in the abstract,

00:13:44.000 | we see they tested email batching.

00:13:46.280 | So telling people to just check email twice a day

00:13:49.160 | and no other times.

00:13:52.160 | And what they found, and I've highlighted this on the screen,

00:13:54.800 | batching email is associated with higher rated productivity,

00:13:58.040 | but despite widespread claims,

00:14:01.620 | we found no evidence that batching email

00:14:05.120 | leads to lower stress.

00:14:07.020 | If you actually dive into the paper,

00:14:09.080 | you find for groups of subjects

00:14:12.120 | that have certain personality traits

00:14:13.400 | that actually significantly increase stress.

00:14:17.320 | So it did not make people's lives less stressful

00:14:20.520 | to get out of their inbox.

00:14:22.120 | Now why is this?

00:14:22.940 | If we argued this inbox checking is a stressful thing,

00:14:26.340 | we freeze when we see all those messages,

00:14:28.000 | the context switching back and forth

00:14:29.380 | makes it subjectively feel worse.

00:14:31.040 | So if we get rid of all of that by batching,

00:14:35.000 | why is our overall stress level stay high?

00:14:37.600 | It's because the hyperactive hive mind.

00:14:40.480 | If your office, like in this paper,

00:14:42.600 | runs on the hyperactive hive mind,

00:14:44.000 | you feel stressed because you know about all the things

00:14:45.880 | that are being stalled because you're not in your inbox.

00:14:49.080 | You know that you're screwing people,

00:14:50.580 | decisions aren't getting made,

00:14:51.920 | that you are a source of annoyance.

00:14:53.560 | That's highly stressful.

00:14:55.100 | It's why they found when they dived into this research

00:14:57.500 | that people who are more conscientious

00:14:59.240 | about this type of thing get even more stressed.

00:15:01.740 | So the more you worry about what other people

00:15:03.360 | think about you, the more stressed you are gonna get

00:15:06.800 | deploying that particular strategy.

00:15:08.960 | So we can't just say, check email less, check Slack less.

00:15:13.680 | We have built our offices around the need

00:15:15.640 | to check this constantly.

00:15:16.900 | So if we're going to get to our goal,

00:15:20.160 | we're gonna actually have to change some things.

00:15:22.380 | We're gonna have to introduce new ideas and strategies

00:15:24.500 | if we're gonna accomplish the goal of checking email less.

00:15:26.600 | And otherwise, in other words, I should say,

00:15:29.340 | checking email less is the end result

00:15:32.280 | of a lot of other changes.

00:15:33.680 | That is a flip about how most other people think about it,

00:15:36.080 | where checking email less should just be

00:15:37.400 | the first change you make to make your life less stressful.

00:15:39.560 | That won't work.

00:15:40.400 | We have a lot of work to do.

00:15:42.140 | So what I wanna suggest is three main strategies.

00:15:44.920 | We'll go through 'em.

00:15:45.800 | Three main strategies to help transform your work

00:15:49.740 | sufficiently away from the hyperactive hive mind

00:15:51.920 | that you can check your email less.

00:15:53.120 | And then I'll have one fallback bonus strategy

00:15:55.640 | in case none of that works.

00:15:57.320 | All right, number one, piece of advice number one,

00:16:02.180 | write better emails.

00:16:04.040 | All right, this is a technique that I actually

00:16:06.440 | first introduced in Deep Work, my 2016 book, Deep Work.

00:16:11.440 | I called it process-centric emailing.

00:16:14.480 | And the idea was you put more information

00:16:17.860 | in the emails you send about how you

00:16:21.620 | and the person you're talking to are gonna collaborate

00:16:24.580 | to accomplish whatever goal you're writing about.

00:16:27.320 | So instead of just rock and rolling,

00:16:28.680 | I'll just send you something and just let's start

00:16:30.160 | a conversation going back and forth,

00:16:32.040 | you write off the bat, say,

00:16:33.280 | this is how I think we should collaborate about this.

00:16:36.200 | And you give a plan in that initial email

00:16:38.940 | that reduces the need for lots of unscheduled emails

00:16:41.320 | going forward.

00:16:42.160 | Let me give you an example.

00:16:44.200 | Here is a standard email, a non-process-centric email,

00:16:47.300 | a bad email to send.

00:16:48.720 | Lisa asked us to present our merit simplification plan

00:16:52.960 | at the faculty meeting on Friday.

00:16:54.800 | What do you think we need to change

00:16:56.840 | in our old slide deck before we do that?

00:16:59.680 | That's a very standard email,

00:17:02.760 | but you have just initiated with that

00:17:05.520 | an open-ended back and forth message exchange,

00:17:08.600 | which by itself is gonna require

00:17:09.900 | that you check email all the time.

00:17:11.600 | Here, by contrast, is a process-centric alternative

00:17:16.120 | response to that message.

00:17:17.500 | Lisa asked us to present our merit simplification plan

00:17:21.040 | at the faculty meeting on Friday.

00:17:22.640 | Here is what I propose.

00:17:25.000 | I uploaded the latest draft of our slides to Google Drive.

00:17:28.700 | I'll look through them and add any updates or comments

00:17:30.840 | by close of business on Monday.

00:17:33.000 | Jesse, you then have the token

00:17:34.640 | until close of business Tuesday to review it.

00:17:36.480 | And then Caleb, you can take the token on Wednesday,

00:17:39.560 | put any changes you want

00:17:40.600 | before the close of business on Wednesday.

00:17:42.420 | Let's then meet on Thursday to discuss all of those notes

00:17:45.320 | and decide any changes we wanna make for the final version.

00:17:48.620 | I put three times below,

00:17:50.800 | just reply all with which of any of those work,

00:17:53.040 | and I will see you then.

00:17:54.240 | Now that email is a pain to write.

00:17:57.880 | You can't just, "Uh, what do you think?"

00:18:00.360 | Boom, and it's out of my inbox temporarily

00:18:02.300 | like we normally do.

00:18:03.140 | You have to actually sit here and think this through.

00:18:05.280 | But this may have just saved you

00:18:08.240 | basically any other email exchange between now

00:18:10.680 | and when that presentation happens on Friday.

00:18:12.880 | You know what you're doing, they know what they're doing.

00:18:14.880 | They'll reply all with times.

00:18:16.760 | So you can see that and say,

00:18:18.000 | "Okay, here's a time we're doing it."

00:18:19.600 | And that's it.

00:18:21.080 | And this whole thing gets done and it gets done well.

00:18:23.960 | And you have not had to keep checking your inbox

00:18:25.680 | to have endless back and forth.

00:18:26.880 | Like, "I don't know, what about this?

00:18:28.200 | Yeah, I was looking at this slide.

00:18:29.240 | What do you think about these changes?"

00:18:30.680 | And now that old way means

00:18:32.620 | you're constantly going back and forth.

00:18:34.100 | You're constantly checking emails.

00:18:35.660 | So yes, what a pain to write this.

00:18:37.460 | This took probably three minutes to think of and write

00:18:40.660 | when the initial response would have take 30 seconds.

00:18:43.320 | However, this probably saved 15 emails

00:18:47.580 | that you would have had to keep checking your inbox

00:18:49.660 | and seen and replied to.

00:18:52.220 | 15 emails, each of which is creating,

00:18:54.260 | let's say 10 minutes of a cognitive context shift

00:18:57.180 | induced overload in which you can't focus and feel exhausted.

00:19:02.080 | That's 150 minutes of reduced capacity

00:19:06.920 | in exchange for three minutes of thinking through an email.

00:19:09.820 | So that's process centric emailing.

00:19:12.180 | We actually have a good question about that,

00:19:14.280 | about process centric emailing being deployed in the wild

00:19:17.520 | and some issues someone's having coming up in the show.

00:19:19.680 | So stay tuned for the question block.

00:19:21.520 | All right, piece of advice number two

00:19:25.560 | for reducing the time you spend in your inbox.

00:19:28.360 | Defer back and forth interactions

00:19:31.040 | to synchrony, synchronous settings.

00:19:33.540 | Defer back and forth interactions to synchronous settings.

00:19:37.800 | I just two things being captured

00:19:40.920 | in this description of the advice.

00:19:44.160 | One is that we're deferring back and forth interaction.

00:19:47.320 | So implicit in that is a value judgment

00:19:50.400 | about what email is good for and what it's not.

00:19:52.720 | And it's important that we get this

00:19:54.580 | out in the open right now

00:19:55.820 | so that we're all on the same page.

00:19:57.760 | Email is great for delivering information to people.

00:20:01.280 | If I need a file from you, email is a fantastic technology.

00:20:05.280 | You can attach that and send it to me.

00:20:07.400 | Email is also great for broadcasting information

00:20:10.040 | or reminders.

00:20:12.240 | Is there a talk coming up this week

00:20:14.040 | that I might wanna know about?

00:20:15.600 | Send an email so I can see that.

00:20:18.000 | Is there a reminder that the parking garage

00:20:19.640 | is gonna be closed early on Friday?

00:20:21.540 | Email is fantastic.

00:20:22.760 | You can send that information to everyone parking

00:20:25.040 | in that parking garage with the press of one button.

00:20:27.520 | It's fantastic for broadcasting information.

00:20:29.880 | It's fantastic for sending files.

00:20:31.560 | It's also good for questions that can be responded to

00:20:34.820 | with a short answer.

00:20:36.180 | So maybe you heard the parking garage is gonna be closed,

00:20:40.200 | but you don't remember if it was Friday or next Friday,

00:20:42.520 | you can email me and say,

00:20:43.360 | "Hey, Cal, is the parking garage closed this Friday

00:20:46.200 | "or next Friday?"

00:20:47.180 | I can respond to that quickly.

00:20:48.440 | Yes, no, it's next Friday.

00:20:50.420 | When I get a chance, I can see that respond to it.

00:20:52.080 | That's a fantastic use of the technology.

00:20:54.200 | It's easy for me to respond to.

00:20:55.640 | It's not particularly urgent.

00:20:57.240 | You get the information you need.

00:20:58.840 | Neither of us has to spend much cognitive overhead.

00:21:01.380 | The place where email drags us down,

00:21:04.160 | as we've now been elaborating,

00:21:07.420 | is when we have to do back and forth interaction,

00:21:09.760 | where there's gonna be many emails back and forth

00:21:11.760 | to resolve something.

00:21:12.920 | This is specifically where we need a better solution.

00:21:15.960 | Process-centric emailing helps.

00:21:17.600 | This piece of advice gives another suggestion,

00:21:19.480 | which is move the back and forth out of the inbox

00:21:21.960 | and into a synchronous setting.

00:21:24.520 | And that's the second piece I wanna highlight

00:21:26.160 | about this piece of advice.

00:21:27.600 | Synchronous means a place where we're going back and forth

00:21:30.840 | in real time.

00:21:33.200 | So we're actually talking with each other in the same room

00:21:36.840 | or on the same phone line or in the same conference,

00:21:40.160 | but we're going back and forth in real time.

00:21:42.080 | That could even be, and this confuses people,

00:21:44.840 | but that could even be over a tool like Slack.

00:21:48.080 | You and I have any back and forth conversation.

00:21:50.160 | We're both there on Slack at the same time

00:21:52.400 | is a perfectly reasonable use of Slack.

00:21:56.560 | The key is we're going back and forth.

00:21:59.080 | We've agreed when we're gonna talk

00:22:00.280 | and we figure it all out right there.

00:22:01.720 | So we can get the 15 back and forth messages or chats

00:22:04.120 | can happen right there in 15 seconds.

00:22:07.480 | All right, so how do you do this?

00:22:09.800 | Three tactics I'd like to suggest.

00:22:11.760 | One is my favorite, which is office hours.

00:22:14.820 | I have been preaching this since 2016.

00:22:18.560 | I think 2016, I wrote a Harvard Business Review article

00:22:21.720 | about this and I've been talking about it ever since.

00:22:24.600 | All professions that work in office buildings,

00:22:27.440 | you should have office hours.

00:22:28.880 | This days on these times I'm available.

00:22:32.000 | My office is open, my phone is on.

00:22:33.880 | I have a Zoom conference activated.

00:22:36.720 | Defer back and forth conversations to these office hours.

00:22:39.640 | The email comes in, hey, what should we do

00:22:41.480 | about the merit thing we're presenting on Friday?

00:22:44.680 | You say like, yeah, great question.

00:22:45.740 | Let's figure that out.

00:22:46.580 | I have some questions.

00:22:48.240 | Just stop by one of my upcoming office hours.

00:22:49.840 | We'll work it out.

00:22:51.560 | And you can push so many things into those office hours.

00:22:54.100 | Yeah, let's talk about, hey, when you get a chance,

00:22:55.440 | come to one of my upcoming office hours

00:22:56.560 | or give me a call during my office hours.

00:22:58.880 | We'll figure that out.

00:23:00.100 | And it is so much more efficient

00:23:01.880 | to just give five minutes back and forth

00:23:04.380 | in time you've already set aside

00:23:06.040 | than to initiate those back and forth emails.

00:23:08.480 | The phone call deferral is another very effective tactic.

00:23:13.600 | Say, ah, it's a good point.

00:23:15.200 | Call me when you get a chance.

00:23:17.840 | Yeah, let's discuss this on the phone.

00:23:18.960 | Just give me a call.

00:23:19.800 | I'm usually, you know, usually you can catch me whatever

00:23:22.120 | in the afternoons.

00:23:23.800 | The phone deferral tactic works for two reasons.

00:23:26.840 | One, 50% of the things coming towards you will disappear.

00:23:30.920 | And if it's someone from generation Z

00:23:34.260 | trying to get in touch with you,

00:23:35.100 | let's revise that to 95% of interactions.

00:23:38.600 | 'Cause they don't wanna call.

00:23:39.440 | I don't wanna do that.

00:23:40.360 | It's not really that important.

00:23:41.480 | I'm just, you know, internet, internet, phone,

00:23:45.920 | tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

00:23:47.120 | And then they do like a synchronized dance

00:23:48.920 | and put on their Oculus goggles

00:23:52.040 | and ironically watch cartoons.

00:23:55.060 | I don't know what generation Z does, Jesse.

00:23:57.040 | I don't know. Synchronized dance.

00:23:58.680 | Isn't that what you do on TikTok?

00:24:01.040 | I think so.

00:24:01.880 | According to TikTok, like most people--

00:24:02.720 | I only know what TikTok about through you.

00:24:04.440 | Oh, then you know nothing about TikTok.

00:24:06.660 | Whatever.

00:24:08.440 | Coming from the guy who wrote a whole New Yorker piece

00:24:09.840 | on TikTok.

00:24:10.680 | Something about dancing.

00:24:13.360 | The kids are dancing and I don't know,

00:24:16.400 | they're all hopped up on marijuana.

00:24:19.360 | When I was young, we had to kill, this is true.

00:24:24.320 | We had to kill a German soldier on our walk to school

00:24:27.160 | up a pill every day.

00:24:29.440 | And there was a war going on.

00:24:30.520 | Anyways, the point being, call me.

00:24:33.880 | Some percentage of the things go away.

00:24:37.140 | The things that remain are now dispatched

00:24:39.560 | much more effectively.

00:24:41.360 | I know it's a pain when that phone rings,

00:24:43.120 | you're like, oh, I have to answer this.

00:24:44.320 | But honestly, if you answer that,

00:24:45.660 | and in two minutes you figure something out,

00:24:48.400 | you've saved yourself maybe five to 10 emails,

00:24:50.800 | each requiring five to 10 email checks.

00:24:52.960 | The overall amount of stress is much less.

00:24:57.560 | And so anyways, I work with some people,

00:24:59.640 | I have at least one person in mind

00:25:00.800 | who uses this all the time and I appreciate it.

00:25:03.200 | He often says, just call me, just call me.

00:25:04.840 | 'Cause we have complicated things to work out.

00:25:07.460 | And we work it on the phone,

00:25:09.320 | and usually it takes five minutes.

00:25:10.680 | And email it would have been,

00:25:11.720 | in some of these cases, impossible.

00:25:12.840 | It's nuanced, it's complicated.

00:25:14.520 | So defer to the phone.

00:25:16.000 | Finally, you can maintain your own

00:25:17.360 | internal to discuss list, TO discuss list.

00:25:21.880 | So if there's individuals you do a lot of business with,

00:25:25.140 | colleagues that you talk to a lot,

00:25:26.600 | a manager, a department chair,

00:25:28.680 | someone who's on a committee with you,

00:25:30.280 | and you talk to them a lot, just maintain a list.

00:25:32.600 | I do this in Trello of,

00:25:34.640 | oh, here's something I wanna talk to them about.

00:25:36.240 | Let me just put it on the list.

00:25:37.380 | Oh, here's something else that comes up later.

00:25:38.760 | Let me put this on the to discuss list.

00:25:41.000 | And then next time you talk to them, you say, great,

00:25:42.540 | I have like five things I wanna go through.

00:25:45.020 | And if you don't have something on the books,

00:25:46.260 | but you see this list is getting big,

00:25:48.380 | you just email them and say, hey, I'm gonna call you.

00:25:51.220 | Let me just warn you, I have a lot of things to go through.

00:25:52.580 | I'm just gonna call you.

00:25:53.520 | Unless I hear otherwise, I'm gonna call you at like three,

00:25:55.300 | and then like keep trying every half hour or something.

00:25:56.980 | I have a lot to discuss.

00:25:58.060 | And then you get through a lot of things at once.

00:26:00.140 | So aggregating on your end,

00:26:01.820 | things to discuss with the same person,

00:26:03.340 | and then going through all of them at once.

00:26:05.580 | I do this all the time as well,

00:26:07.300 | especially my administrative roles at Georgetown.

00:26:09.380 | All right, so defer back and forth interactions

00:26:12.380 | to some sort of synchronous setting.

00:26:15.660 | Short questions, announcements, broadcast,

00:26:17.440 | email's great, don't complain about it.

00:26:19.820 | And I gotta say, Jesse, like one of the things that,

00:26:22.780 | I'm always, it doesn't upset me,

00:26:24.180 | but it happens a lot when I'm talking about email,

00:26:27.420 | is people, when someone comes back and it's like,

00:26:30.720 | yeah, I'm telling you, man,

00:26:31.560 | I grew through emails out of control.

00:26:34.020 | I get all of these advertising emails.

00:26:38.740 | I get all these promotional emails,

00:26:40.020 | or people like BCC, me on too many announcements.

00:26:42.740 | That's not a problem.

00:26:44.420 | I am not stressed out by having a lot of LL Bean emails

00:26:48.660 | or campaign email.

00:26:50.460 | It's annoying, you delete them or filter them.

00:26:52.420 | That's not stressful.

00:26:53.580 | What's stressful is having a lot of emails

00:26:54.940 | that require you to respond.

00:26:56.140 | So that's what I'm focusing on.

00:26:57.740 | All right, final piece of advice here, deploy processes.

00:27:03.300 | All right, so we've process centric email,

00:27:07.300 | that's process lightweight.

00:27:08.620 | Defer things to synchronous settings,

00:27:10.420 | that's process lightweight.

00:27:11.740 | For what remains, you might consider

00:27:13.660 | actually putting in place hardcore,

00:27:16.660 | actually specified, we've written it down,

00:27:18.940 | all the stakeholders agree on it,

00:27:20.920 | collaboration processes that are customized

00:27:23.380 | to the specific thing that you are doing.

00:27:25.720 | This is the big idea from my book, "A World Without Email",

00:27:29.420 | is that ultimately the things you do again and again,

00:27:33.220 | the collaborative things you do again and again

00:27:36.060 | in a professional setting should have clearly defined

00:27:39.180 | processes for how that work unfolds.

00:27:41.080 | It shouldn't just be, we'll figure it out with emails

00:27:44.060 | and send each other random Zoom invites.

00:27:46.200 | You should figure out here's how we do this work.

00:27:48.100 | And as long as you are being clear about

00:27:49.580 | here's how we do this work,

00:27:51.140 | you can engineer those processes

00:27:53.540 | to not require a lot of unscheduled messages

00:27:56.540 | that have to be received and responded to.

00:27:59.340 | So for example, our ad agency, Jesse, right?

00:28:02.100 | Our ad agency built what I think is a very nice process

00:28:06.040 | for interacting with us about the ads we do.

00:28:09.260 | There's a lot of back and forth that has to happen, right?

00:28:12.100 | Can you tell me when this ad aired?

00:28:13.700 | What were the numbers?

00:28:14.580 | Here's the scripts.

00:28:15.740 | They built a very nice process based around notion

00:28:18.660 | where every ad read has its own database entry

00:28:23.380 | that can show up in a calendar

00:28:25.940 | or can show up in a list of everything that that client,

00:28:28.980 | every ad read we've done for that client,

00:28:30.720 | all of the relevant information is attached.

00:28:33.380 | After each episode, there's a process where you go through

00:28:35.980 | and you add the timestamps.

00:28:37.260 | There's a process for when and where

00:28:38.860 | you add the upload numbers.

00:28:40.580 | In theory, we can run this podcast

00:28:43.780 | with complicated advertiser demands

00:28:45.460 | without ever sending an email to our ad agency.

00:28:48.860 | There's a process, which is great

00:28:50.620 | because I don't want us to be sending back and forth

00:28:53.460 | a lot of emails.

00:28:55.540 | Feedback documents.

00:28:56.700 | This is just, I'm just throwing out a few examples

00:28:58.340 | of processes here.

00:29:00.060 | Feedback documents are another big one.

00:29:02.260 | So let's say you have a proposal

00:29:04.620 | and your team needs to weigh in on it.

00:29:08.300 | Do you have any feedback on this

00:29:09.300 | before I submit it, et cetera.

00:29:11.100 | Just having a shared document.

00:29:12.780 | You just announce to people.

00:29:15.140 | The shared document, go on in there,

00:29:17.740 | type your name, type your feedback whenever you have it.

00:29:20.140 | This is when I'm gonna take everything in there

00:29:22.340 | and review it.

00:29:24.060 | Again, it seems, why not just have people email you

00:29:26.940 | because it's clearer

00:29:28.980 | and it doesn't require back and forth messages.

00:29:32.200 | Daily standups could be part of a process.

00:29:34.140 | Hey, we're a computer programming team.

00:29:36.220 | By having daily standups in 10 minutes,

00:29:37.820 | we can figure out who's working on what,

00:29:39.300 | what do they need, who needs something new.

00:29:41.620 | We've saved back and forth emails to figure that out.

00:29:43.980 | So 10 minutes, well-structured every day

00:29:46.240 | can reduce 10 not so structured emails

00:29:50.300 | that might have to happen during the day.

00:29:51.540 | That adds up.

00:29:52.920 | That can have a really big difference.

00:29:55.060 | So there's a lot of different things you can do here,

00:29:56.540 | but the key is moving your collaboration methods away

00:30:01.040 | from unscheduled messages and towards something

00:30:03.400 | that is structured enough

00:30:04.940 | that I don't have to keep checking an inbox.

00:30:07.220 | These type of strategies are the type of things

00:30:13.380 | that will aggregate to actually relieving the pressure

00:30:17.500 | of your inbox of your chat channels.

00:30:19.540 | If you're process-centric emailing,

00:30:21.020 | if you're deferring back and forth out of your inbox,

00:30:23.420 | if you have hardcore, well-structured processes

00:30:26.900 | for the things you do again and again

00:30:28.620 | that don't require unscheduled messaging,

00:30:31.480 | you are freeing yourself from the clutches

00:30:33.800 | of the hyperactive hive mind.

00:30:35.160 | Therefore, the number of messages in your inbox

00:30:37.320 | at any one time that is in the middle

00:30:40.640 | of a fast moving back and forth conversation

00:30:42.680 | is drastically reduced.

00:30:44.220 | Most of the messages in your inbox,

00:30:45.680 | your chat channels are now announcing things

00:30:48.440 | or sending you information or questions

00:30:49.980 | that need an answer when you get around to it.

00:30:51.440 | It's not urgent.

00:30:52.620 | If that's the reality of your inbox,

00:30:54.160 | it's not an empty inbox,

00:30:55.180 | but it's an inbox you could check twice a day

00:30:56.700 | and no one would care.

00:30:58.420 | There would be no problems

00:30:59.820 | because the stuff that requires actual quick collaboration

00:31:02.680 | is happening elsewhere.

00:31:04.640 | So those are my three pieces of advice.

00:31:05.760 | So here's my bonus fourth thing.

00:31:07.000 | Let's say none of that works.

00:31:08.640 | Consider re-engineering your job.

00:31:11.240 | Consider changing what it is you do,

00:31:16.860 | your specific requirements,

00:31:18.360 | who you work with, the teams you're on.

00:31:19.840 | Consider trying to change those

00:31:22.220 | so that you can leave the setting

00:31:24.040 | in which hyperactive hive mind is inescapable.

00:31:28.160 | And the point I wanna make here

00:31:29.700 | is that there's a pretty standardized list

00:31:32.740 | that people agree on of attributes of a job

00:31:34.980 | that means a change has to happen.

00:31:36.560 | I mean, in my book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You,"

00:31:37.980 | I had a list of these things.

00:31:39.540 | You don't like the people you work with.

00:31:41.500 | What you're doing doesn't align with your values.

00:31:45.920 | The job you have does not offer you a way forward

00:31:50.220 | to increasingly autonomous or interesting configurations.

00:31:52.700 | It's like highly constrictive

00:31:53.940 | or you have a high ceiling on you.

00:31:55.500 | I listed those three attributes

00:31:56.840 | of "So Good They Can't Ignore You"

00:31:58.300 | as reasons you might wanna switch your job

00:32:01.260 | either to a different job

00:32:02.140 | or really change what you're doing within your company.

00:32:04.500 | We should add this on the list.

00:32:06.060 | Being beholden to the hyperactive hive mind

00:32:10.940 | is a misery-making machine.

00:32:13.020 | Having to constantly check an inbox or chat channel

00:32:15.420 | once every six minutes,

00:32:16.680 | to suffer from cognitive context freezing

00:32:18.920 | when you see 15 emails and all the responses

00:32:21.340 | and you don't know how to do them

00:32:22.220 | and your mind can't handle 15 contacts,

00:32:24.220 | you never be able to actually do anything

00:32:26.940 | close to your full potential

00:32:28.460 | 'cause your mind is constantly muddled

00:32:30.540 | from a proximate context shift

00:32:33.460 | caused by this hyperactive hive mind back and forth.

00:32:35.680 | That is a really negative,

00:32:37.780 | that is a really distressing work environment.

00:32:39.940 | I don't think that is something that we should see

00:32:41.660 | as being completely different

00:32:42.940 | in terms of its degree of difficulty

00:32:44.940 | than an office that is too hot all the time

00:32:47.980 | or that you have an atmosphere of toxicity

00:32:50.820 | where you really just dislike the people you're around.

00:32:53.260 | I think we should put it on the same level

00:32:54.820 | as those type of issues.

00:32:55.740 | It is that subjectively negative.

00:32:58.460 | It is that distressing.

00:33:00.580 | And if your current job, your current team

00:33:03.540 | requires the hyperactive hive mind

00:33:05.020 | and you can't get out of it,

00:33:06.220 | no matter how much you try to re-engineer,

00:33:08.140 | put that on your list of things that makes you say,

00:33:09.700 | "Well, let me do something different.

00:33:11.260 | "And maybe I'll shift to something else in this company.

00:33:12.940 | "Maybe I'll trade accountability for autonomy,

00:33:16.440 | "hold me responsible for my numbers,

00:33:17.720 | "but leave me alone to do my work,

00:33:18.940 | "or maybe I'm gonna leave and go take another job."

00:33:20.940 | But this should be in the way you think about

00:33:22.820 | evaluating how good work is.

00:33:24.540 | It's one of the biggest sources of negativity

00:33:26.580 | that exist in the knowledge work sector.

00:33:28.280 | And it's one that no one actually directly measures

00:33:30.700 | or thinks of as a standalone reason for making a change.

00:33:35.500 | So that's my fourth idea there.

00:33:37.620 | If nothing else works, consider making the change.

00:33:40.680 | And that's what I got, Jesse.

00:33:46.260 | - Good advice.

00:33:47.780 | I love it.

00:33:48.620 | - We could talk forever about email.

00:33:49.900 | So I always try to just focus in on one thing at a time.

00:33:53.540 | I mean, actually, this was almost like a frustration

00:33:56.600 | after that New York Times piece came out,

00:33:58.500 | like a minor, good problem to have type of frustration.

00:34:01.260 | So a lot of people wrote me,

00:34:03.020 | 'cause a lot of people read the Times.

00:34:04.620 | I'm like, "Man, these ideas are great."

00:34:06.740 | Yeah, like I've been thinking,

00:34:07.580 | "This is true for my office,

00:34:08.700 | "and I haven't thought about that before."

00:34:09.900 | And there's like a lot of good responses like that.

00:34:12.100 | The frustration was, "I wrote a whole book about this."

00:34:15.620 | You know, "I wrote a whole book about this."

00:34:17.800 | 'Cause what happened is this book I wrote,

00:34:19.340 | "A World Without Email,"

00:34:20.300 | which I think is really innovative.

00:34:21.620 | I mean, it really introduces this way

00:34:24.060 | of this cognitive centric understanding

00:34:26.580 | of the knowledge work workplace and how to get around it,

00:34:28.980 | came out during the pandemic.

00:34:30.820 | And people were not in the mindset

00:34:33.180 | to think about work processes, right?

00:34:36.860 | Because on the coast, when this came out,

00:34:40.240 | on the coast, people were still,

00:34:42.020 | and their schools were closed,

00:34:43.780 | and it was like they were having nightmares

00:34:47.380 | about like unvaccinated people

00:34:48.860 | breaking into their house

00:34:49.780 | and spreading diseases or whatever.

00:34:51.080 | And in the other parts of the country,

00:34:52.860 | they were all up in arms about how crazy

00:34:54.480 | they thought the people on the coast were being.

00:34:55.820 | So they were sort of,

00:34:56.660 | and so there's like political wars going on about COVID.

00:34:59.420 | And there was a presidential election that just happened,

00:35:02.260 | and January 6th that happened.

00:35:04.980 | Come on, this is not the time to be like,

00:35:07.820 | "Excuse me, how often are you checking your email inbox?

00:35:15.920 | "I have some sage advice, some pragmatic suggestions

00:35:20.920 | "about your collaboration protocols."

00:35:24.420 | Like that would have been a great book for 2003.

00:35:29.420 | People are like, "Yeah, generally we feel good,

00:35:31.960 | "and we're kind of optimistic,

00:35:33.080 | "and we wanna kind of make our lives better."

00:35:36.160 | The early spring of 2021, it was,

00:35:39.420 | people were like, "I'm either gonna be dead,

00:35:42.460 | "or we're gonna be in civil war, or whatever."

00:35:46.640 | Way down the list.

00:35:47.640 | So it was kind of frustrating that people I know well,

00:35:49.640 | who should know, I wrote a, they should know about.

00:35:52.800 | - Yeah. - I mean, I write

00:35:53.640 | a lot of books, so I can't really blame them.

00:35:55.440 | But they're like, "Hey, this is cool.

00:35:56.380 | "I've never thought about this."

00:35:57.340 | It's like, "You didn't read my book."

00:35:59.920 | - So do you find any difference between work email accounts

00:36:03.640 | and personal email accounts, or is it just all the same?

00:36:06.800 | - Yeah, I mean, the thing with,

00:36:09.360 | I think with personal email accounts,

00:36:11.700 | the same issues apply, but the pressure

00:36:13.480 | of the hyperactive hive mind is really diluted,

00:36:15.400 | because people understand,

00:36:16.780 | you might not be able to do personal email during work.

00:36:19.840 | So you could look at how people deal with personal email.

00:36:23.000 | I think people actually naturally drift

00:36:25.000 | towards these anti-hive mind tactics in personal email,

00:36:29.960 | because the hyperactive hive mind just doesn't work.

00:36:32.480 | Like if I'm talking to a friend,

00:36:34.360 | and we have to work something out,

00:36:35.520 | that's gonna take 15 back and forth messages,

00:36:38.400 | that's probably not gonna work in email,

00:36:39.740 | because him and I might not check personal email

00:36:41.700 | except for in the evenings.

00:36:42.600 | Like a lot of people do that,

00:36:43.560 | because they're so busy during the day.

00:36:45.500 | We can't take 10 different evenings of back and forth.

00:36:48.900 | So I think in personal email,

00:36:49.740 | people are much more likely to be like,

00:36:50.900 | "I just gotta call you," or text.

00:36:52.940 | I think a lot of people use text

00:36:54.180 | for the personal interactions.

00:36:55.300 | Like, "Can I just ask you this question?"

00:36:58.020 | And they'll say, "Get on the phone."

00:36:59.380 | So we're used to it in personal email.

00:37:01.100 | Don't expect me to be on this all the time.

00:37:03.000 | The problem with work is that it's plausible

00:37:06.360 | that you could be checking it once every six minutes,

00:37:08.280 | all day long.

00:37:09.120 | - Yeah, and that's-

00:37:09.960 | - Because it's plausible, then everyone's like-

00:37:11.460 | - That's where it's from deep work.

00:37:12.300 | - Yeah, it's like, "Let's just do that then."

00:37:13.620 | It's plausible.

00:37:14.460 | - Yeah.

00:37:15.700 | - All right, well, we have a collection of questions

00:37:17.580 | that all roughly deal with this issue.

00:37:18.920 | Before we get to those questions, though,

00:37:20.180 | let me talk about a sponsor

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00:38:50.120 | What I've been doing with Mint Mobile,

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00:39:01.000 | This is a, I don't know,

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00:39:32.680 | "I need to maybe see a text message

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00:40:18.920 | I look cool with this phone, don't I, Jesse?

00:40:23.640 | - Yeah.

00:40:24.480 | - I look like a cool Wall Street guy in like 1994.

00:40:27.680 | - I was checking it out.

00:40:28.680 | - Sell. - I like it.

00:40:29.760 | - Sell my stock in geo cities.

00:40:33.440 | - I like this phone.

00:40:34.360 | I noticed after I bought it that the numbers are very big.

00:40:36.880 | So I'm thinking like this,

00:40:37.920 | I think the primary market might've been older people.

00:40:40.040 | - Yeah.

00:40:40.880 | - I like it though.

00:40:41.700 | Keep it simple.

00:40:42.540 | I also wanna talk briefly about another one

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00:41:01.200 | and 40 grams of protein.

00:41:03.480 | I have talked about this on the show a lot.

00:41:05.200 | Here's my strategy for healthy eating.

00:41:08.980 | Automate what you do before dinner.

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00:41:15.000 | So for me, either I skip breakfast or I just Huel.

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00:41:28.680 | I have like two things I eat for lunch.

00:41:30.900 | That I know are good for me.

00:41:32.240 | One comes from one place, another comes from another place.

00:41:34.360 | I have my option, and that's it.

00:41:35.640 | I never think about it.

00:41:37.440 | And then dinner, that's where you can actually,

00:41:39.760 | if you appreciate food, like, okay,

00:41:41.200 | what are we cooking tonight?

00:41:42.240 | And I'm into it, and we bought this fresh fish.

00:41:44.040 | And you can enjoy dinner,

00:41:45.160 | and that's when you can think about enjoy food.

00:41:46.580 | But during the workday, just automate it.

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00:41:52.400 | easy to use meal replacement shake

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00:42:00.520 | Two scoops, and it goes right in.

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00:42:04.800 | And by junk, I mean great things.

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00:42:10.880 | protein, B12, B6, zinc, fiber, right?

00:42:15.060 | So, you know, this is a shake,

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00:42:57.640 | So it's huel.com/questions.

00:43:00.240 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions from our listeners.

00:43:05.080 | - All right, sounds great.

00:43:05.920 | First question's from Sharon.

00:43:07.520 | Why do you recommend setting up different email accounts

00:43:10.760 | as opposed to setting up filters

00:43:12.280 | to auto-sort emails in the respective roles?

00:43:15.720 | - Yes, as long-time listeners know,

00:43:17.160 | I'm a big fan of having completely separate email accounts

00:43:20.080 | for separate roles.

00:43:22.860 | Let me think how many email accounts I have right now.

00:43:24.740 | I have a personal account at Gmail.

00:43:28.800 | I have a calnewport.com account.

00:43:32.040 | I have a Georgetown account and I have a New Yorker account.

00:43:36.600 | So yeah, I have four accounts, all different.

00:43:41.600 | In fact, I have a separate Google Chrome context

00:43:46.120 | for each of those.

00:43:47.320 | Most of these actually require me

00:43:49.120 | to do two-factor authentication.

00:43:50.720 | So it's not easy to log in.

00:43:52.400 | Why do I do that?

00:43:53.600 | Because it's not easy to log in.

00:43:56.280 | If what you do instead is just say,

00:43:59.180 | let me have all these different emails for different roles

00:44:01.480 | come into the same inbox and I'll just filter it

00:44:05.320 | into folders or if I'm using Gmail,

00:44:07.120 | I can filter it into labels.

00:44:08.880 | And then I just have one inbox,

00:44:11.280 | but I've separated things into different folders or labels.

00:44:14.360 | I used to do this.

00:44:15.420 | The problem with it is if I am logged into one email inbox

00:44:20.600 | and I have these five different filters

00:44:22.500 | or five different folders,

00:44:24.440 | I'm gonna click, click, click, click, click.

00:44:26.960 | I used to call it the wheel of checks.

00:44:28.840 | It's psychologically almost impossible

00:44:31.360 | when you've logged into an email inbox,

00:44:33.000 | not to just click, click, click, click, click

00:44:34.280 | and see what's coming to those other ones too.

00:44:35.860 | It's too easy.

00:44:37.520 | It takes too much willpower to not just click once

00:44:39.820 | and see if there's any work-related emails coming in.

00:44:42.280 | So my attempts to try to filter emails in a single inbox

00:44:45.240 | into separate bins did not actually have the desired effect

00:44:48.800 | of me separating these into completely separate contexts.

00:44:51.580 | I would check them all at the same time.

00:44:53.940 | Now that I literally do use separate inboxes

00:44:56.460 | with separate sign-ins

00:44:57.520 | and for some of these two-factor authentication,

00:45:00.300 | I can easily check one from the other.

00:45:04.480 | I go to check this one email,

00:45:06.360 | it's not easy for me to check the other.

00:45:08.280 | I'm gonna have to get a password.

00:45:09.440 | I'm gonna have to type something in.

00:45:10.360 | I'm gonna have to get my phone.

00:45:11.200 | I'm gonna have to press something.

00:45:12.440 | This is really important

00:45:13.600 | because it keeps context sacrosanct.

00:45:16.680 | When I'm working on Georgetown stuff,

00:45:19.280 | I'm just in my Georgetown email.

00:45:21.480 | So my overarching cognitive context is Georgetown-related.

00:45:25.400 | And that's good.

00:45:26.240 | I want to stay in that context

00:45:27.380 | and while I'm working on stuff in that context,

00:45:28.940 | I don't want to also see a deep questions-related question

00:45:32.180 | while I'm in the Georgetown context.

00:45:33.500 | I don't also wanna see an email from my uncle

00:45:36.540 | while I'm in the Georgetown context.

00:45:38.340 | And that allows me to actually accomplish things

00:45:41.340 | when I'm working on it faster and with higher quality

00:45:43.380 | and with less subjective disease

00:45:45.540 | because I'm stuck in there,

00:45:46.860 | I'm staying within the same context.

00:45:48.980 | So if you have different roles,

00:45:49.940 | if you can separate them in a separate email inboxes, do so.

00:45:53.740 | If it's a pain, good.

00:45:55.900 | You want that friction to be high.

00:45:57.660 | I mean, I don't know if this happens for you, Jesse,

00:45:59.140 | but for me, for our calnewport.com account,

00:46:02.820 | it's constantly requiring me to retype in the password.

00:46:05.840 | This happens to me.

00:46:07.620 | - It happens to me too.

00:46:08.820 | - Yeah, like once a week, it'll be like,

00:46:10.060 | we wanna make sure it's still you.

00:46:12.260 | Like it doesn't want you to,

00:46:13.180 | we must have a setting, which I think is good.

00:46:15.580 | It doesn't want you to be logged in too long.

00:46:18.220 | And I have a really complicated password.

00:46:19.940 | And so I have to go and find it and I have to type it in.

00:46:23.220 | And I think that's all great actually.

00:46:24.780 | So now I've learned it's no casual thing to just,

00:46:28.100 | let me just jump over to calnewport.com and check my emails.

00:46:30.340 | Like I might have to go find the stupid password

00:46:31.940 | and do all this stuff.

00:46:32.780 | So I wait to do it until like I'm prepping the show

00:46:35.500 | or doing something specific for the show

00:46:37.140 | and context are kept clean.

00:46:39.020 | So I like that.

00:46:41.740 | I mean, someone should invent like a Gmail plugin

00:46:43.900 | where you have to do 15 pushups

00:46:48.020 | before to log in or something like this.

00:46:50.860 | People get way better at email.

00:46:52.580 | All right, what do we got next, Jesse?

00:46:54.220 | - All right, next question is from Marcia,

00:46:55.740 | an analyst from Minnesota.

00:46:57.740 | When I try to use process centric emails,

00:47:00.060 | I often get feedback like it was too long to read

00:47:03.060 | or I skipped the rest after the first line.

00:47:05.620 | How do I get people to actually read my emails?

00:47:08.780 | - I think you gotta lecture them more, Marcia.

00:47:11.060 | Like you fools.

00:47:13.460 | My emails are gold.

00:47:16.540 | How dare you defile my brilliance?

00:47:18.740 | It's a good question.

00:47:21.180 | So we talked about process centric emails

00:47:23.020 | earlier in this episode,

00:47:23.980 | where you lay out in your email to someone

00:47:26.260 | the whole process by which the collaboration

00:47:28.780 | being initiated by that message will unfold.

00:47:32.540 | Marcia, what you're noting here happens often.

00:47:35.780 | For people who are completely up to their eyeballs

00:47:38.420 | in the hyperactive hive mind collaboration method,

00:47:41.300 | they're just typing emails out

00:47:43.220 | as fast as their keys can hit those keys.

00:47:45.500 | It's all obligation hot potato.

00:47:47.180 | They just like, I gotta get this out of here.

00:47:49.100 | I'll just, you know,

00:47:50.300 | me no like thoughts, question marks, send, right?

00:47:52.580 | Just whatever gets the email out of their box temporarily

00:47:56.220 | and get that little bit of relief they're just doing.

00:47:58.500 | You know, I mean, some emails,

00:47:59.700 | it's just, they just smash the keyboard

00:48:01.300 | and it's just random characters, send, whatever.

00:48:04.220 | They could probably do an anagram

00:48:05.540 | and find a question in there.

00:48:07.020 | For someone who's in that attitude,

00:48:09.780 | a process centric email message is gonna be

00:48:12.700 | like a slap to the face.

00:48:15.780 | Like, am I gonna read, what, what?

00:48:18.340 | I just wanna be, you know, me no think,

00:48:20.940 | Friday Zoom, teams, teams, teams, send.

00:48:24.060 | What, I'm not gonna read three paragraphs.

00:48:25.620 | I can't do that, right?

00:48:26.460 | So it is difficult because they're not used to that.

00:48:29.980 | They're used to everything

00:48:30.860 | as part of a long back and forth conversation.

00:48:32.420 | You wanna get out of there as quick as possible.

00:48:34.380 | So you have two things you can do here.

00:48:36.540 | One, and this is simple, but it really is effective.

00:48:40.140 | Break the process part away

00:48:42.500 | from the colloquial communication part.

00:48:44.780 | So up top, real quick.

00:48:48.260 | Yeah, I agree, we gotta get into this.

00:48:49.460 | Hey, I put below,

00:48:51.660 | I put below how I think we get this done.

00:48:55.380 | See you tomorrow or whatever.

00:48:57.100 | Thumbs up, your name.

00:48:58.380 | So you have like a colloquial message

00:48:59.540 | they're comfortable with at top.

00:49:00.820 | And then you can put, you know, use equal signs

00:49:02.540 | and make like a horizontal line and it's down below.

00:49:05.380 | And then the whole process is listed below.

00:49:06.860 | So it almost feels like an attachment.

00:49:08.900 | Psychologically, that's easier for people.

00:49:10.580 | Oh, there's like a quick message, like, yeah,

00:49:11.860 | let's do it, I put a process we'll follow.

00:49:13.540 | It's attached, see you tomorrow.

00:49:14.860 | And they're like, okay, I get this.

00:49:17.140 | That looks familiar.

00:49:17.980 | Oh, and then down here is something separate.

00:49:19.540 | It's like a multi-step, five-step process.

00:49:21.820 | I'll have to, you know, at some point

00:49:22.820 | go through there and read that.

00:49:25.100 | The second thing you could do

00:49:25.940 | is actually put it in a separate, get it out of email.

00:49:29.220 | Yeah, I agree.

00:49:30.740 | We probably should have a plan for how to do this.

00:49:32.020 | I came up with one, here's the link, it's in Google Drive.

00:49:34.580 | Feel free to edit it,

00:49:35.460 | but otherwise I'm gonna start executing it.

00:49:37.580 | So they can't even see it in the email.

00:49:39.780 | So they can expect, okay, yeah, you know,

00:49:41.380 | me liking, press send or whatever they do, right?

00:49:44.500 | But the information has been delivered.

00:49:45.820 | And then when they go and read it,

00:49:46.700 | they're in a different context.

00:49:47.700 | They're in a Google Doc to read the process.

00:49:49.300 | And they're used to Google Docs being long.

00:49:51.260 | And so psychologically in that frame, it's easier to take.

00:49:54.220 | So separate out the process you're giving people

00:49:58.380 | from the message.

00:49:59.380 | Great, let's try this, see you tomorrow.

00:50:01.020 | And then down below, you can have the thing.

00:50:03.060 | Here's what we're gonna do.

00:50:03.980 | I'm gonna look at this until close of business this day.

00:50:05.860 | You have these days to do it.

00:50:07.700 | Add your comments straight in there.

00:50:09.580 | And then let's have a call on Thursday to discuss it.

00:50:12.340 | Here's the time I suggest, if that doesn't work,

00:50:14.220 | here's three backups, just reply with the right one bolded

00:50:16.860 | or just write it at the top of the doc,

00:50:18.180 | whatever it is, right?

00:50:19.160 | It's separated from your message.

00:50:21.180 | You're treating it like an attachment,

00:50:22.460 | like a document, like a report.

00:50:24.100 | It's the same information, different frame.

00:50:27.820 | People might be more likely to read it.

00:50:30.580 | The final thing I'll say is don't give up.

00:50:32.900 | So you're like, I don't know, now let's just,

00:50:35.700 | like they're kind of just ignoring it

00:50:36.780 | and trying to send messages back.

00:50:38.620 | Be nice, but be like, yeah, well,

00:50:40.980 | just let's follow this process.

00:50:42.700 | Yeah, here I attach the process.

00:50:44.060 | So here's the link to what I think we should do.

00:50:46.820 | And just keep coming back to it.

00:50:48.500 | Like, don't be a pain about it.

00:50:50.420 | Just be like, yeah, here's, I came up with a process.

00:50:52.700 | Here's what I think we should do.

00:50:54.420 | I've did the first step, you know?

00:50:56.340 | And at first they might not do it and be like, okay,

00:51:01.100 | hey, look, I see you didn't do this.

00:51:03.300 | I can assume you didn't have any,

00:51:05.340 | you didn't have any feedback here or something like this.

00:51:07.740 | So I just went ahead and did it.

00:51:09.660 | Or we had, I told the boss, like, we didn't have this done

00:51:12.700 | because you didn't get this done.

00:51:13.780 | Right, so they see there was like

00:51:14.660 | some sort of consequence around.

00:51:15.620 | Again, you're being nice, you're not being a jerk about it,

00:51:17.260 | but you just kind of keep going back.

00:51:18.220 | Like, this is how I work.

00:51:19.100 | I figure out like, what's our steps for doing this?

00:51:22.020 | And then I try to follow the steps.

00:51:23.420 | And if you ignore the steps or skip the steps,

00:51:25.780 | it's not like it just goes away.

00:51:27.020 | It's like, okay, either you get taken out of the project

00:51:29.620 | or the boss has to hear that we didn't get it done.

00:51:31.260 | And eventually you want people to kind of turn around,

00:51:33.660 | but don't give up and just be like,

00:51:34.940 | I guess I'll just go back and hive mind everything.

00:51:36.660 | Right, it's not your problem

00:51:37.700 | that other people are hive minded.

00:51:39.260 | Don't be a jerk about it, but don't give up on it either.

00:51:42.340 | But again, I'm telling you,

00:51:44.260 | dash, dash, dash, and you put the steps below your message,

00:51:47.500 | it seems so stupid, but it can often make a huge difference.

00:51:50.500 | All right, Jesse, where we got?

00:51:54.420 | - All right, next question is from Rochelle.

00:51:57.020 | I've been increasingly hardcore

00:51:58.660 | about implementing your advice recently,

00:52:00.660 | but I've encountered an unexpected side effect.

00:52:03.260 | Some coworkers tell me that they actually prefer

00:52:05.900 | having many email check-ins and get angry

00:52:08.160 | when I jump the gun and start executing tasks.

00:52:11.700 | How can I stay productive and sane without stepping on toes?

00:52:15.140 | - I know what you're talking about, Rochelle,

00:52:19.180 | and I actually have a little bit of empathy for them.

00:52:23.660 | Like I understand their complaint.

00:52:25.360 | Like there's two things going on here.

00:52:28.620 | They have maybe more of a hyperactive,

00:52:31.540 | hive mind approach to collaboration.

00:52:33.140 | We'll just sort of figure things out back and forth

00:52:34.620 | with email, a slower approach.

00:52:35.980 | And you're thinking like, let's just roll.

00:52:37.820 | We're doing a meeting.

00:52:38.700 | Let me just order the food, get the caterer going.

00:52:41.380 | I get that, but they also probably feel

00:52:45.100 | as if they're being cut out of a process

00:52:46.680 | or if mistakes are gonna be made

00:52:47.900 | because they haven't had a chance to talk to you

00:52:49.860 | and you ordered all the food,

00:52:51.620 | but you didn't talk to them first

00:52:53.140 | and they could have told you

00:52:54.300 | that the guest who's coming to speak is vegetarian.

00:52:56.940 | And so we need to order from this other place over there.

00:52:59.620 | So they have legitimate reasons

00:53:01.240 | to want to actually have a chance to talk about things

00:53:05.260 | before action is taken.

00:53:06.980 | So what we have to do is thread this needle,

00:53:09.180 | give people a chance to actually interact with you,

00:53:12.900 | let these things unfold at a pace

00:53:15.420 | that they will follow as well,

00:53:18.080 | without you being beholden to an inbox,

00:53:20.220 | without you having to just sort of like

00:53:21.620 | always be sending emails

00:53:22.780 | and kind of doing things ad hoc, like most people do.

00:53:25.620 | So one thing I'm gonna suggest,

00:53:27.180 | and the first part won't be that surprising,

00:53:30.500 | you figure out upfront, okay,

00:53:31.960 | what are my responsibilities in this thing we're working on?

00:53:35.640 | And figure out some sort of,

00:53:37.160 | and this word's not gonna surprise you,

00:53:39.120 | process by which you're gonna get that work done.

00:53:41.440 | You kind of bring them up to speed.

00:53:42.360 | Okay, here's what I'm gonna do.

00:53:44.160 | I'll take care of the food for this meeting.

00:53:46.080 | I'll take care of the conference room.

00:53:47.500 | I'll take care of getting the promotional materials out.

00:53:51.040 | Here is how I'm gonna do that.

00:53:53.600 | And so you bring them up to speed right off the bat

00:53:56.280 | about when and how you're gonna do things

00:53:58.160 | so that they know the plan up front.

00:54:00.200 | You're moving it out of,

00:54:01.240 | we'll just sort of rock and roll on the fly.

00:54:03.600 | Two, when you send out this process

00:54:07.440 | for whatever collaborative project you're working on,

00:54:10.800 | lean towards what I call feedback options

00:54:14.700 | versus feedback checkpoints.

00:54:17.760 | So a feedback checkpoint is before I order the food,

00:54:22.140 | we can talk to make sure we're satisfying whatever,

00:54:27.340 | dietary needs or see what you think

00:54:29.120 | would be the best food to order.

00:54:30.520 | That's a choke point or a checkpoint I mean.

00:54:32.760 | Everyone has to come together and gather

00:54:34.940 | before you can make progress going forward.

00:54:37.200 | We all have to wait and gather at this checkpoint

00:54:38.920 | and then we can keep moving forward.

00:54:40.520 | A feedback option gives people the option

00:54:44.680 | to provide you feedback, but even if they don't,

00:54:47.040 | you can still move forward.

00:54:48.840 | So here we might say, if you have any thoughts

00:54:53.320 | about the food or what food should be ordered,

00:54:55.360 | I'm gonna order on Wednesday before the event

00:54:58.320 | in the afternoon.

00:55:01.040 | Send me any like issues or dietary restrictions

00:55:04.440 | or whatever by that point,

00:55:06.920 | or I have a document that we're planning the product in,

00:55:09.320 | this is the space for it.

00:55:10.720 | Put that all in there before the time I listed

00:55:12.960 | because that's what I'm actually gonna go in

00:55:14.180 | and make the food order.

00:55:15.200 | You can even set up a reminder about that

00:55:17.960 | to send automatically, you know, the morning of.

00:55:21.760 | Hey, by the way, remember,

00:55:23.840 | if you have any thoughts on the food or feedback,

00:55:25.600 | I'm ordering tonight.

00:55:28.000 | Feedback options work great because people feel included.

00:55:31.600 | If there's something important that they do want you to know

00:55:34.280 | they will then make sure they get you that information,

00:55:37.480 | but it allows you to actually move forward

00:55:39.580 | without being beholden to just going

00:55:41.120 | with back and forth emails, waiting for replies,

00:55:43.040 | being stuck inside your inbox.

00:55:44.800 | 90% of the time, people don't actually have feedback

00:55:47.640 | on these things they wanna give you.

00:55:48.760 | It's just the idea that they might, that upsets them.

00:55:51.240 | I don't like that you ordered this food

00:55:53.060 | without talking to us because what if

00:55:55.200 | we were inviting gremlins and it's after nine,

00:55:59.500 | if they get water,

00:56:00.340 | they're gonna turn into monsters, right?

00:56:01.800 | That's not what's happening, but it could have.

00:56:03.680 | So, you know, I'm upset you didn't talk to us ahead of time.

00:56:07.080 | With a feedback option, you take that concern away.

00:56:09.760 | Like, oh, I could have told you,

00:56:10.920 | hey, by the way, no water, it's gremlins.

00:56:12.760 | You told me how to say that.

00:56:13.960 | You told me when you're ordering it.

00:56:15.340 | You gave me a place to tell you that information.

00:56:16.920 | So I'm not upset about it.

00:56:18.220 | So you wanna have a process,

00:56:20.400 | especially for logistical type gatherings like this.

00:56:23.320 | And I should say, by the way,

00:56:24.280 | I keep using this food example

00:56:25.560 | because in the elaboration of this question,

00:56:28.960 | Rochelle gave a particular example about like ordering food

00:56:32.920 | and her colleagues got mad at her

00:56:33.960 | for ordering it right away.

00:56:35.000 | So that's why I'm using that example.

00:56:37.020 | But use feedback options instead of feedback choke points.

00:56:39.800 | Tell people ahead of time, this is how I'm doing it.

00:56:42.280 | People will be happy.

00:56:43.700 | In the rare cases where you need feedback, you'll get it.

00:56:45.520 | And now you can still execute without having to be stuck

00:56:48.680 | waiting for random emails to come back,

00:56:50.600 | waiting for random email replies to make it back to you.

00:56:53.280 | All right, these are nice and practical, Jesse.

00:56:57.240 | I like these.

00:56:58.080 | It's really in the trenches type of issues.

00:57:01.220 | All right, who do we got next?

00:57:03.680 | - All right, next question's from Rippy

00:57:06.040 | and a board at an Abaris from Minneapolis.

00:57:09.840 | What do you do when you started a correspondence over email,

00:57:12.620 | transferred all relevant information

00:57:14.560 | to another system like Trello

00:57:16.600 | and yet must continue to correspond over email

00:57:19.220 | with your client?

00:57:20.360 | Do you invite them to a shared Trello board

00:57:22.320 | or keep manually transferring information back and forth?

00:57:25.920 | - You manually transfer information back and forth.

00:57:29.480 | So yes, I advise your inbox

00:57:33.300 | is not a knowledge management system.

00:57:35.640 | All the information relevant to understand

00:57:37.320 | everything you're doing and the status

00:57:38.880 | should all be in other types of systems.

00:57:41.440 | Your email inbox is just an interface

00:57:42.960 | to which information comes in and out.

00:57:45.360 | And so it gets transferred out of there.

00:57:47.800 | So I mean, a client writes you and whatever

00:57:50.360 | has some notes for when we update our contract,

00:57:54.000 | I wanna, we should worry about,

00:57:55.380 | so he's an Arborist, something about tree ideas here.

00:57:57.200 | Oh, we should worry about the black elm

00:57:58.420 | or something like that.

00:57:59.260 | And you go to, you have a Trello board for your clients

00:58:02.480 | and you have a column for that particular client.

00:58:05.640 | Maybe it's things to discuss the next contract.

00:58:08.560 | You throw in a card and you copy that stuff out of the email

00:58:10.800 | and you throw it in that card and now it's there

00:58:12.320 | and you can archive that email.

00:58:14.720 | So you're transferring stuff from email to Trello.

00:58:17.640 | Then you're looking at your Trello board

00:58:18.760 | when you're doing your weekly plan

00:58:19.960 | and you see, I'll have to send a contract to this client

00:58:22.840 | and I have all the information there.

00:58:24.040 | And so I'll have to pull all that information out of Trello

00:58:26.480 | and write up the contract and email it to my client.

00:58:29.240 | That's just what you do.

00:58:30.080 | You go back and forth and it's high friction,

00:58:32.260 | but I don't mind, so what?

00:58:34.260 | I don't want email to be super low friction.

00:58:38.120 | And this is the biggest issue we have

00:58:41.600 | with the fact that our primary technologies

00:58:45.520 | by which we organize ourselves as human in the workplace

00:58:49.120 | come from engineers from a setting

00:58:52.640 | where the most important thing is efficiency.

00:58:55.120 | I want my processor to tick faster.

00:58:57.240 | I want the predictive pipeline to be longer.

00:58:59.400 | I want the microseconds per operation

00:59:02.320 | to be even smaller, right?

00:59:04.760 | I mean, when you're an engineer,

00:59:06.000 | especially in digital engineering,

00:59:07.480 | everything you're looking for speed and efficiency.

00:59:09.760 | How can I pack more bits of data

00:59:12.480 | into the given frequency bandwidth that I have?

00:59:15.400 | More and less efficiency, efficiency, efficiency.

00:59:18.840 | And so we think, oh, how do we make humans

00:59:21.100 | who are working together using the tools

00:59:22.540 | that we're programming more productive?

00:59:24.640 | We got to make things more efficient.

00:59:26.600 | Like our issue is we're not efficient enough.

00:59:28.240 | Maybe we could have an artificial intelligence agents

00:59:30.280 | that could automatically pull the information

00:59:31.980 | out of our email and move it to a Trello card

00:59:33.600 | and it saves us from having to do that.

00:59:34.800 | And that's a minute that otherwise would it take.

00:59:36.480 | That's not our problem.

00:59:38.640 | We are not computer processors

00:59:40.140 | that need to take 20% off our average operation time

00:59:42.880 | so that we can charge a premium compared to our competitor.

00:59:46.680 | We're humans working with other humans

00:59:48.240 | to focus our mind and add value to information

00:59:51.360 | through cognition.

00:59:53.300 | So our issue is not, I'm in email mode.

00:59:57.320 | Let me take this information and transfer the Trello,

00:59:59.840 | see what's going on.

01:00:00.680 | In fact, we want that to take a little bit of time.

01:00:02.080 | We're in that context.

01:00:03.160 | We want to be deliberate.

01:00:04.080 | We want to have a good sense of what's going on.

01:00:05.800 | And then when we work on something,

01:00:07.080 | we just work on that thing.

01:00:08.120 | We get that done.

01:00:08.940 | We come back and forth.

01:00:09.780 | So forget this friction stuff,

01:00:10.600 | forget this going as fast as possible stuff.

01:00:13.640 | Don't live in your inbox,

01:00:14.880 | move that information to a system.

01:00:16.580 | It's deliberate, be deliberate.

01:00:18.120 | And if you find there's so much information

01:00:20.840 | going back and forth,

01:00:21.680 | that it's like you're spending all day going in Trello,

01:00:23.680 | that's a hyperactive hive mind problem.

01:00:25.400 | You got to re-engineer your client communication,

01:00:27.360 | your client processes,

01:00:28.280 | so you don't just have emails back and forth all day.

01:00:30.080 | That's a separate problem.

01:00:31.300 | But I am not worried about the fact that you,

01:00:34.020 | stuff in your inbox has to get manually transferred

01:00:36.000 | somewhere else and then manually transferred

01:00:38.000 | from there back into your inbox.

01:00:38.960 | A little bit of friction is not that bad of a thing.

01:00:41.240 | Arborist.

01:00:44.840 | All right, let's,

01:00:46.320 | you can do one more, Jesse.

01:00:47.240 | Let's do one more question.

01:00:48.200 | - Sounds good.

01:00:49.640 | Next question is from Walter G, an attorney from Arizona.

01:00:53.200 | My office promoted me to a supervisor position

01:00:56.440 | as an assistant federal public defender.

01:00:58.920 | The transition has been difficult

01:01:00.440 | because management expects me to be open

01:01:03.120 | to calls and office stop buys

01:01:05.020 | from supervisors between eight and 5 p.m.

01:01:08.360 | How can I find time to work deeply without interruption?

01:01:11.920 | - Well, I mean, Walter, there's two options here.

01:01:16.360 | You either cede the responsibilities to require deep work.

01:01:20.200 | So you make the role purely supervisory.

01:01:24.880 | I supervise people and answer questions,

01:01:27.680 | or you change the policy.

01:01:29.040 | There's not a world in which

01:01:33.440 | the expectations can be,

01:01:35.420 | there's things you need to do for us

01:01:36.980 | that are cognitively demanding,

01:01:38.100 | like writing briefs or preparing cases,

01:01:40.840 | but also your door always has to be open,

01:01:43.340 | your phone always has to be on, right?

01:01:45.420 | I mean, to me, that's like, I'm a baseball player

01:01:47.780 | and the manager says,

01:01:50.420 | "Look, you gotta wear these blacked out goggles."

01:01:53.980 | And I say, "But I can't see when I have them on."

01:01:56.200 | And they say, "Yeah, but they're a sponsor.

01:01:57.500 | It's important that you wear them."

01:01:58.500 | And you say, "Well, I can't play baseball

01:02:00.700 | and wear blacked out goggles.

01:02:02.300 | So we're gonna have to figure out something else.

01:02:04.000 | Maybe I'll put them on in the dugout

01:02:05.400 | when the camera's on us.

01:02:06.280 | And when I'm in the outfield, I'll take them off."

01:02:08.200 | But it's just untenable, something we'd have to give.

01:02:10.740 | That's how I feel about this situation.

01:02:12.700 | Now, a lot of times in these situations,

01:02:16.040 | you have the conversation with your boss in your mind.

01:02:18.960 | And in your mind, you transform your boss

01:02:22.640 | into some sort of fire breathing distraction gargoyle.

01:02:26.080 | Like in your mind, you're like,

01:02:27.160 | the boss is gonna be like, "No, I always must reach you

01:02:32.160 | and then they breathe fire and they melt your computer."

01:02:35.620 | And you build it all up in your head.

01:02:37.660 | And then the reality is if you talk to your boss,

01:02:40.300 | and you do it positively, you say,

01:02:41.300 | "Hey, look, here's what deep work is.

01:02:42.540 | Here's what shallow work is.

01:02:43.940 | I have to supervise, it's very important.

01:02:47.100 | I need to be accessible.

01:02:48.300 | I also have to write briefs and prepare cases.

01:02:50.100 | And that's impossible if I get phone calls during it.

01:02:53.260 | It triples the time and the quality is lower.

01:02:56.100 | How can we figure out a way that we can do both?"

01:02:58.500 | So we can do both.

01:03:00.500 | I wanna write better cases.

01:03:01.400 | I wanna be a better supervisee.

01:03:02.380 | And it's such an easy problem to solve.

01:03:03.820 | And they'll be like, "Okay, fine."

01:03:05.340 | And this is a real solution.

01:03:07.140 | So this is something that a reader actually told me

01:03:09.020 | about an agreement he worked out with his boss.

01:03:13.020 | Two hours in the mid morning, two hours in the afternoon,

01:03:15.240 | those are closed door hours and you're preparing briefs

01:03:17.220 | and the other time you're available.

01:03:18.480 | Or they say, "We'll just tell the supervisees

01:03:21.140 | starting at noon, they can expect that you're accessible."

01:03:24.180 | Like these are like easy solutions.

01:03:25.580 | And you know what?

01:03:26.820 | 9.5 times out of 10, if you come at this positively,

01:03:30.740 | not, "Hey idiot, with your stupid distraction policies,

01:03:35.740 | it's impossible to work here, stop bothering me."

01:03:37.700 | Nothing's gonna happen from that.

01:03:38.660 | But if you come at it positively,

01:03:40.240 | supervising is really important.

01:03:41.660 | I wanna do it really well.

01:03:42.720 | Preparing these cases is really important.

01:03:44.220 | I wanna do that really well.

01:03:46.300 | It doesn't work if the supervise hours are the full time

01:03:48.980 | because then I can't do the cases.

01:03:50.360 | So let's just figure out a way we can do both.

01:03:52.620 | And there's 9.5 times out of 10,

01:03:55.660 | bosses are like, "That makes complete sense."

01:03:57.340 | And there's like 90 reasonable solutions.

01:03:58.780 | And I have a lot of other things going on in my life.

01:04:00.380 | And this is not that important to me.

01:04:01.980 | And like, yes, you could Tuesday, Thursdays

01:04:03.660 | are not supervisor days.

01:04:04.780 | You supervise hours starts at two, whatever.

01:04:07.580 | The solution falls out.

01:04:08.660 | It takes you 15 minutes.

01:04:09.740 | Like, why did I never do this before?

01:04:11.620 | Right, so those are my two point, Walter.

01:04:13.580 | I agree, non-trivial deep work

01:04:16.540 | and nine to five open office hour policies

01:04:19.180 | do not work together.

01:04:20.980 | You're an outfielder with darked out glasses.

01:04:22.820 | But number two, if you have a reasonable positive

01:04:26.020 | conversation focused on how you can be even more effective

01:04:28.340 | for your organization, you will be surprised

01:04:30.460 | by how easy it is to fix that.

01:04:31.960 | It's true, Jesse, people get really worried about,

01:04:37.260 | when you imagine your boss in your mind,

01:04:39.940 | they become like one of history's worst monsters.

01:04:43.660 | The in your mind, you know what I mean?

01:04:46.300 | They're like, you're like, maybe I could have like an hour

01:04:51.300 | where I'm not available for email

01:04:52.860 | because I'm working on something

01:04:54.060 | and that they're gonna be like,

01:04:55.540 | (growls)

01:04:56.380 | you know what I mean?

01:04:57.200 | Like, you're fired.

01:04:59.420 | Yeah, and also we should like genocide redheads,

01:05:02.740 | you know, like their history's worst monster, you know?

01:05:05.440 | And usually they're like, yeah, whatever, I'm busy.

01:05:09.020 | Like, I have a lot of things going on.

01:05:11.700 | Yeah, it sounds good.

01:05:12.740 | I'm gonna switch gears, do something interesting.

01:05:17.460 | First, let me mention another sponsor

01:05:19.820 | that makes this show possible.

01:05:21.780 | Jesse, let me ask you a quiz.

01:05:23.640 | How many people today on my walk

01:05:27.460 | from my house in Tacoma Park to our studio here

01:05:30.060 | in Tacoma Park, how many people do you think stopped me

01:05:32.340 | to comment positively on my shave?

01:05:34.260 | Three.

01:05:36.380 | 17 people.

01:05:38.020 | Three car crashes because people were like,

01:05:40.780 | oh my God, your shave and you know,

01:05:42.980 | crashed into the telephone pole.

01:05:44.980 | And you know how I got this shave?

01:05:47.300 | With my Hinson razor.

01:05:49.860 | All right, long time listeners know,

01:05:52.580 | this is a sponsor I really like because here's the story.

01:05:55.140 | It's a razor, right?

01:05:57.500 | And it's beautiful and it's metal

01:06:01.480 | and it's built with these precision CNC mills

01:06:04.440 | because this is a company that was building parts

01:06:06.560 | for the aerospace industry.

01:06:07.620 | So they have the equipment to build things super precise

01:06:09.680 | and they built this beautiful aluminum razor.

01:06:11.900 | And the way it works is you take a standard

01:06:14.880 | 10 cent safety razor blade, nothing fancy,

01:06:19.260 | not one of these cartridges with 19 blades

01:06:22.360 | that vibrates and has like an artificial intelligent

01:06:24.460 | chat GPT agent that decides how to deflect each blade

01:06:28.300 | as it drives over your face like a Rover,

01:06:31.820 | just a single 10 cent standard blade

01:06:34.500 | like your grandfather would use.

01:06:35.900 | And you put it in this beautiful aluminum razor

01:06:38.940 | and because it's so precisely manufactured,

01:06:41.940 | you tighten it in there and you have just the smallest

01:06:46.640 | little bit of blade edge coming across each edge.

01:06:50.140 | And it's just a little bit,

01:06:51.180 | so you don't get the diving board effect,

01:06:52.460 | which is what causes nicks, which is what causes

01:06:54.860 | whatever you call it on your face, the cuts.

01:06:59.300 | It's nice and stable.

01:07:00.340 | And this one 10 cent blade when put into this fancy razor

01:07:02.920 | gives you a great shave.

01:07:04.580 | And so I love really well-designed products

01:07:06.940 | that look great and last forever.

01:07:08.780 | And in the long run are way cheaper to use

01:07:10.380 | than disposable cartridge based projects.

01:07:13.060 | So I love my Hanson shaver.

01:07:14.500 | I use it every day.

01:07:17.440 | And we have a good deal for you.

01:07:20.540 | But if you use my promo code

01:07:22.020 | to buy one of these beautiful razors,

01:07:25.500 | they'll give you two years worth of blades for free.

01:07:28.260 | So you won't even have to think about

01:07:30.700 | purchasing anything shaving related right for two years.

01:07:35.340 | So I think it's a pretty good deal.

01:07:36.320 | So it's time to say no to subscriptions

01:07:37.940 | and those overcomplicated, plastical, disposable razors

01:07:42.700 | and instead get one that will last you a lifetime.

01:07:45.960 | Visit hensonshaving.com/cow to pick the razor for you

01:07:49.320 | and use that code cow

01:07:50.580 | and you will get two years worth of blades for free.

01:07:53.980 | And the way that works is add the two year supply of blades

01:07:57.260 | to your cart and then use the promo code cow

01:07:59.580 | when you check out and it will reduce the price to zero.

01:08:02.740 | So that's hensonshaving.com/cow.

01:08:04.880 | That's 100 free blades when you head to

01:08:06.660 | h-e-n-s-o-n-s-h-a-v-i-n-g.com/cow

01:08:11.660 | and use that code cow.

01:08:17.500 | I always feel so sophisticated when I use my Henson razor.

01:08:20.680 | It's like metal and nice.

01:08:22.920 | And the only thing I'm missing now,

01:08:25.360 | I want one of those brushes.

01:08:28.080 | - Yeah. - You know what I mean?

01:08:29.040 | Like the depression era men would like put the,

01:08:31.160 | use it to like lather their face.

01:08:33.520 | I think I need one of those.

01:08:34.920 | I also wanna talk about one of the longest standing sponsors

01:08:39.000 | of this show and for good reason,

01:08:40.040 | and that's our good friends at Blinkist.

01:08:44.680 | Blinkist gives you 15 minute or less summaries

01:08:48.760 | of over 5,500 nonfiction books and podcasts.

01:08:53.400 | You can read these summaries or you can listen to them.

01:08:57.420 | And it is in my opinion,

01:08:58.660 | the easiest way to figure out what's going on

01:09:00.780 | with the best new nonfiction books out there.

01:09:04.200 | I'll tell you the way I use it.

01:09:06.000 | And then we can ask Jesse the way he uses it

01:09:08.240 | because I think he has a cool strategy.

01:09:09.320 | The way I use it is when I wanna figure out

01:09:11.980 | whether or not to buy a book I hear about,

01:09:14.380 | I always Blinkist it first.

01:09:15.860 | Where's the Blink, 15 minutes, I put in the audio,

01:09:18.060 | I'm doing the dishes, get the main ideas.

01:09:20.380 | And now I can make an informed decision.

01:09:22.160 | Either, ooh, I wanna buy and read this whole thing

01:09:24.780 | or I don't think I need to own this, but you know what?

01:09:28.000 | I know the main ideas and I can file that away

01:09:30.860 | and use that if I need it.

01:09:32.980 | Jesse, you use the Blinkist, you have a list, right?

01:09:36.940 | This is how you keep track of your books that you hear.

01:09:38.780 | - Yeah, 'cause you hear about book suggestions all the time

01:09:41.820 | on email lists, newspapers, magazines, stuff like that.

01:09:44.940 | So I go get that list, go to Blinkist, read up.

01:09:49.940 | And then if I wanna pursue it further,

01:09:51.820 | kinda like you, do the same, get the book.

01:09:53.660 | - So you have like a queue, you add things.

01:09:55.820 | You have kinda like a queue of books you're curious about.

01:09:57.640 | And then there's other times you're like,

01:09:58.740 | oh, I'm bored or whatever.

01:09:59.980 | Let me just start reading some Blinks

01:10:01.140 | or listening to some Blinks.

01:10:01.980 | You kinda work your way through that queue.

01:10:03.420 | - Yep. - Yeah.

01:10:05.100 | It's a great product.

01:10:05.940 | I mean, look, you gotta read, that's the source of ideas.

01:10:09.300 | How do you know what to read?

01:10:10.660 | There's only two ways to do this, two rules.

01:10:12.300 | Only two rules you need to know.

01:10:13.420 | Number one, read or listen to the Blink.

01:10:16.540 | Number two, if it's written by me, you need to read it.

01:10:21.060 | And you need to buy five copies,

01:10:23.220 | unless it's a world without email,

01:10:24.900 | in which case you need to pretend like it doesn't exist

01:10:26.860 | and then come up to me a year later and be like,

01:10:30.020 | why have you never talked about this before?

01:10:31.940 | I heard this in this interview, this is the best idea.

01:10:34.620 | I would have bought thousands of copies of a book

01:10:37.580 | that would have talked about this,

01:10:38.460 | but you have hold these ideas secret until just now,

01:10:41.180 | 'cause no one knew I wrote that book.

01:10:43.540 | You could read a Blink of the book too.

01:10:44.820 | I think all my books have good Blinks on them.

01:10:46.940 | All right, so anyways, Blinkist is a no brainer for us.

01:10:50.540 | There is though a special offer.

01:10:52.980 | This is one of the things I wanted to mention.

01:10:55.940 | Actually two special offers.

01:10:59.340 | Well, Blinkist is really bringing it in the new year.

01:11:03.140 | Okay, the first thing is a new feature

01:11:04.700 | called Blinkist Connect that is going

01:11:07.800 | to allow you to share a subscription with a friend.

01:11:12.800 | You get two for the price of one.

01:11:15.800 | So I think that is quite nice.

01:11:18.180 | And they also, I think have raised their discount.

01:11:20.580 | So between now and February 28, coming up,

01:11:25.220 | Blinkist has a very special offer for our audience.

01:11:27.260 | If you go to blinkist.com/deep

01:11:28.920 | to start your seven day free trial,

01:11:31.220 | you will get 40% off a Blinkist premium membership.

01:11:35.980 | So after your free trial,

01:11:37.020 | if you decide to go ahead with your premium membership,

01:11:39.740 | if you signed up at blinkist.com/deep,

01:11:41.620 | you'll get 40% off.

01:11:44.780 | That's Blinkist spelled B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T,

01:11:47.340 | blinkist.com/deep to get 40% off and a seven day free trial.

01:11:51.780 | That's blinkist.com/deep.

01:11:53.140 | But that offer, that 40% is only good through February 28.

01:11:56.380 | So time is running short.

01:11:58.580 | And as mentioned for a limited time,

01:11:59.860 | they also have this Blinkist Connect feature,

01:12:03.120 | which will allow you to share your premium account

01:12:05.060 | with a friend.

01:12:05.880 | You'll get two premium subscriptions

01:12:07.740 | for the price of one.

01:12:09.900 | All right.

01:12:11.100 | Blinkist is bringing it, Jesse.

01:12:12.660 | - It's bringing it.

01:12:13.500 | - It's the time to do it, man.

01:12:14.320 | New Year's, everyone wants to start reading more.

01:12:15.980 | - Yeah.

01:12:16.820 | - And Blinkist, like it makes you a better reader.

01:12:18.740 | So I'm a big fan of that.

01:12:20.100 | All right, to end the show for our final segment,

01:12:22.020 | I always like to change gears

01:12:23.620 | and we're gonna do something interesting.

01:12:26.280 | And what I mean by that is I like to pull something

01:12:28.700 | that someone sent me to interesting@calnewport.com.

01:12:32.160 | This is my catch all address where my readers

01:12:34.480 | and listeners have long sent me things they think

01:12:37.480 | I'll find to be interesting.

01:12:39.240 | And I do like to share examples from that.

01:12:41.580 | So I have a particular example I wanna share today.

01:12:45.220 | It is an article that a reader sent to me.

01:12:47.620 | If you're watching at youtube.com/calnewportmedia,

01:12:51.040 | you'll see this on the screen, but I'll also read it.

01:12:54.540 | The article is titled "Aboard the African Star"

01:12:57.620 | by Alex Haley, the novelist Alex Haley,

01:13:00.840 | who wrote among other things,

01:13:02.540 | "Roots," the book "Roots."

01:13:05.860 | The log line here is July, 2020.

01:13:07.580 | That's just when this was reposted.

01:13:08.900 | I'm gonna scroll to the bottom here.

01:13:10.700 | This has the actual attribution.

01:13:14.140 | So this was edited from a talk and it came out

01:13:18.320 | in Reader's Digest in 1991,

01:13:20.380 | four months before Alex Haley's death.

01:13:21.900 | So this Alex Haley wrote this in the early nineties

01:13:24.460 | before he died.

01:13:27.140 | Anyways, here's what was interesting about this.

01:13:30.900 | Haley has a interesting habit to find deep work settings,

01:13:35.900 | settings conducive to deep work

01:13:39.100 | when he wants to work on one of his novels.

01:13:41.320 | I'm just gonna read this to you from the article.

01:13:43.680 | I love how casually, by the way, he is about this.

01:13:46.620 | Usually I go out on freight ships, cargo ships.

01:13:50.020 | I wanna get caught on a liner.

01:13:51.540 | How can you write with 800 people dancing?

01:13:53.900 | But freight ships carry a maximum of 12 people

01:13:55.980 | and they tend to be very quiet people.

01:13:57.800 | I work my principal hours from about 1030 at night

01:14:00.540 | until daybreak.

01:14:02.020 | The world is yours at that point.

01:14:03.540 | Most all the passengers are asleep.

01:14:07.060 | So Alex Haley, to find a space conducive to deep work,

01:14:13.020 | looked around his options.

01:14:16.180 | He said, okay, I could build a special deep work office

01:14:19.540 | in my backyard, maybe convert a shed like David McCullough,

01:14:21.860 | not deep enough.

01:14:23.220 | Or I could go rent an office somewhere

01:14:25.540 | like Peter Benchley did at the Furnace Factory

01:14:29.660 | in Pennington, New Jersey to get away from my house.

01:14:31.380 | And that's where I'm gonna go to write, not deep enough.

01:14:33.100 | He could go rent hotel rooms

01:14:35.780 | and take all the paintings off the wall.

01:14:37.340 | So it's just a white box.

01:14:39.660 | So he can write without distraction like Maya Angelou did,

01:14:42.380 | but he said not deep enough.

01:14:43.740 | He could go out on a fishing boat like John Steinbeck

01:14:47.540 | and balance a notepad on his knees

01:14:49.660 | out in a Harbor to write.

01:14:50.620 | And Haley said, not deep enough.

01:14:53.380 | He said, this is what I'm gonna do.

01:14:55.220 | I'm going to become a passenger on a cargo freight liner,

01:14:59.300 | crossing the ocean.

01:15:00.580 | And not only am I going to sequester myself

01:15:02.540 | on a cargo freight liner,

01:15:03.900 | I'm gonna wait till the nighttime

01:15:05.740 | when the 12 people on this massive boat are asleep.

01:15:08.740 | And at the nighttime on a cargo freight liner

01:15:11.020 | in the middle of the ocean,

01:15:12.340 | that's where I get my writing done.

01:15:14.100 | So I think we just got to clap at some point

01:15:18.580 | or someone who really pushed deep work forward.

01:15:22.020 | The funny thing is where this reference came from.

01:15:25.060 | It's actually John McPhee wrote a book about the ships

01:15:28.140 | where John McPhee actually traveled

01:15:31.020 | on some of these cargo freight liners

01:15:32.940 | and wrote a book about it.

01:15:34.540 | And he just mentions very casually,

01:15:37.420 | oh, by the way, Alex Haley liked to write on these boats.

01:15:41.580 | And that's what sent me down the rabbit hole.

01:15:42.900 | Like, really?

01:15:43.740 | That's a big claim.

01:15:44.580 | And he was right.

01:15:45.580 | He writes at night on a cargo freight liner.

01:15:49.980 | So there we go.

01:15:51.740 | Jesse, we're gonna get the typical complaint email here.

01:15:53.980 | I can just read it now.

01:15:55.380 | That's good for him.

01:15:56.340 | But how am I gonna write in the middle of the night,

01:15:58.580 | in the middle of the ocean on a cargo freight liner

01:16:00.980 | when I have kids?

01:16:02.620 | We're definitely gonna get that email.

01:16:05.300 | My response is screw them, get on the freight liner.

01:16:10.500 | There it is.

01:16:11.340 | I think that's cool.

01:16:12.180 | So as I like to do sometimes in these interesting segments

01:16:14.620 | is when people go over the top with depth,

01:16:16.980 | I just find it fun.

01:16:18.700 | We can't do it,

01:16:19.940 | but it's aspirational to see what they're doing.

01:16:22.980 | I feel like I would get stir crazy.

01:16:25.340 | I don't know.

01:16:26.180 | I'm worried.

01:16:27.100 | Like, what if you were really bored?

01:16:28.900 | Put a row right there, man.

01:16:30.300 | Pull behind it, row behind it.

01:16:33.260 | Get on the ocean.

01:16:34.100 | You could just row and then write.

01:16:35.460 | You could probably get in beastly shape.

01:16:37.300 | That'd be interesting if you're like stuck on your,

01:16:39.100 | I'm one of 12 passengers on a cargo liner,

01:16:41.300 | like going around the Horn of Africa

01:16:42.620 | or something like that.

01:16:43.940 | Yeah.

01:16:44.780 | I'm just gonna bring on like weights and a laptop.

01:16:48.380 | And healthy foods.

01:16:49.220 | And healthy foods.

01:16:50.260 | Yeah.

01:16:51.780 | I think we could sell that.

01:16:53.460 | If we called it like the deep work transit lines

01:16:57.540 | and like got some really cool advertising materials

01:16:59.780 | and people like, this is great.

01:17:00.660 | I'm gonna be in the secluded or whatever.

01:17:02.380 | And they have to show up at like the Port of Baltimore.

01:17:04.500 | And it's just this like terrible rusty.

01:17:06.420 | Give him a t-shirt.

01:17:07.340 | Give him a t-shirt.

01:17:08.180 | Like, here you go.

01:17:09.020 | Thanks for your $12,000.

01:17:10.940 | But anyways, Alex Haley,

01:17:12.260 | we tip our hats to you.

01:17:16.220 | I actually just watched,

01:17:17.420 | I watched a lot of movies.

01:17:19.420 | I re-watched Captain Phillips.

01:17:21.220 | Oh, that's good.

01:17:22.060 | This week.

01:17:22.900 | It doesn't make you like really eager

01:17:26.140 | to follow Alex Haley's model though.

01:17:28.420 | So a movie about pirates taking over a cargo liner

01:17:31.980 | does not make you want to just casually go out

01:17:35.700 | on a cargo liner.

01:17:37.660 | That was a good movie though.

01:17:38.500 | Yeah.

01:17:39.660 | I went down a rabbit hole and listened to an interview

01:17:42.180 | with one of the members of SEAL Team Six

01:17:45.100 | that was deployed onto the Bain Bridge,

01:17:47.780 | the rescue Captain Phillips.

01:17:49.380 | So it's interesting to hear about it

01:17:50.500 | from their point of view.

01:17:51.380 | Actually, the movie got it pretty right,

01:17:54.460 | except for they left out how gross it actually was

01:17:56.860 | inside that lifeboat, which.

01:17:58.700 | Oh, really?

01:17:59.780 | There's a detail I didn't need to know,

01:18:02.100 | but the SEAL Team Six member was like,

01:18:03.380 | you have to recognize that for three days,

01:18:05.980 | that lifeboat had been used as a toilet.

01:18:07.900 | Yeah.

01:18:08.740 | And in the African sun.

01:18:10.100 | So there you go.

01:18:12.980 | Very important information for our listeners out there.

01:18:15.900 | I don't know what got me thinking about it, but whatever.

01:18:18.060 | Anyways, I love interesting stuff.

01:18:19.260 | Interesting@calnewport.com.

01:18:20.460 | If you want to send me things you think I would like.

01:18:23.100 | All right, that's all the time we have for today.

01:18:24.780 | Thank you for listening.

01:18:26.460 | You could watch the episode or clips

01:18:28.180 | at youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

01:18:30.140 | To submit your own questions,

01:18:31.140 | there is a link in the show notes.

01:18:33.500 | We'll be back next week as normal.

01:18:35.820 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:18:38.260 | (upbeat music)

01:18:40.860 | (upbeat music)

01:18:43.460 | (upbeat music)

01:18:46.060 | (upbeat music)

01:18:48.640 | (upbeat music)

Ep. 233: Escaping Your Tyrannical Inbox

Chapters