How Can I Find a Work at a Company Where the HyperActive Hive Mind Doesn't Exist?

00:00:00.000 | [music playing]

00:00:02.000 | Hey, Cal, my name is Matthew,

00:00:06.700 | and I currently work in information security.

00:00:09.340 | This is an industry right now that's rife with burnout,

00:00:13.280 | and certainly doesn't help that my current employer

00:00:16.600 | employs the hyperactive hive mind workflow,

00:00:19.940 | which of course has only gotten worse since the pandemic began.

00:00:24.340 | So as you can imagine, there's a sabbatical on the horizon for me.

00:00:29.420 | But my question is, once I'm ready to get back to it,

00:00:32.780 | what are some tips to find companies

00:00:34.720 | that aren't utilizing the hyperactive hive mind?

00:00:37.720 | Or maybe the better question would be,

00:00:40.120 | how do I make sure my next boss is a Cal Newport fan?

00:00:43.220 | Thanks.

00:00:45.760 | Well, yeah, I mean, you certainly should demand that

00:00:48.620 | of any boss that you talk to.

00:00:50.360 | You're like, are you a Cal Newport fan?

00:00:52.560 | And if not, may God have mercy on your soul.

00:00:55.320 | I think that's the way you should talk about it.

00:00:58.260 | Or it's a good question.

00:00:59.660 | It's a good question because it's the issue here,

00:01:01.660 | the boss or the job.

00:01:03.800 | There's not a lot of people right now

00:01:06.120 | that are aggressively trying to bypass the hyperactive

00:01:09.860 | hive mind as a specific goal.

00:01:11.760 | There's more. There's more.

00:01:13.860 | I have been talking about my latest book,

00:01:15.860 | A World Without Email, a lot of C-suite events.

00:01:18.960 | There's definitely a shift going on out there,

00:01:21.200 | but it's still pretty rare.

00:01:23.260 | So if you're looking for a boss,

00:01:24.460 | who's going to talk in terms of how do we avoid unpaid work,

00:01:27.800 | how do we avoid unnecessary context shifts,

00:01:30.200 | how do we build out better systems

00:01:32.060 | to avoid hyperactive hive mind style ad hoc coordination?

00:01:35.160 | There's not that many people talking about it.

00:01:36.720 | So what you might be looking for is a job description

00:01:41.860 | that allows you to bypass the hyperactive hive mind.

00:01:44.920 | And really what you're probably looking for there is autonomy.

00:01:47.260 | But maybe what you're looking for is a position

00:01:49.420 | that is more results oriented,

00:01:51.460 | that is going to give you the leeway,

00:01:52.960 | therefore, to essentially structure

00:01:55.620 | your own communication protocols.

00:01:58.020 | All right, I work on this, then this.

00:02:00.720 | Let's touch base on Mondays.

00:02:02.220 | I'll deliver by Fridays or whatever it is.

00:02:04.360 | So having more autonomy in the job gives you the option

00:02:07.120 | of engineering a work life

00:02:08.620 | that is free from the hyperactive hive mind.

00:02:10.580 | Probably going to be your better bet right now.

00:02:12.320 | If you're worried about the hive mind, you should be.

00:02:15.360 | More autonomous type jobs is going to give you the opportunity

00:02:18.420 | to have more of that freedom.

00:02:20.260 | Your second bet is to look for a boss that is flexible.

00:02:25.740 | And reasonable. And so what I'm looking for here

00:02:28.040 | is someone who maybe they're not thinking about these issues,

00:02:30.680 | but if you deployed some of the tricks I've talked about,

00:02:33.740 | deep to shallow work ratios,

00:02:36.480 | talking about attention residue and trying to get by it,

00:02:39.520 | they might change their mind or adjust.

00:02:42.180 | And you can usually tell that pretty quickly

00:02:44.880 | when you talk to a boss if there's a lot of ego involved.

00:02:47.280 | If there's a lot of I'm really looking around to make sure

00:02:51.080 | that no one is threatening my sense of self

00:02:53.240 | or threatening my position, if you're seeing that going on,

00:02:55.580 | that's trouble, but there seems they're reasonable.

00:02:58.020 | They're confident, but humble.

00:02:59.880 | They really just want to enable their workers

00:03:02.140 | to get the best work done.

00:03:03.380 | So like a really reasonable, flexible person.

00:03:05.380 | And then you can probably start to have these careful conversations.

00:03:09.320 | Here's deep work, here's shallow work, both is important.

00:03:12.720 | How much deep work should I be doing?

00:03:14.680 | Oh, geez, I can't really do that.

00:03:16.120 | So what changes can we make so we can hit that number we agreed on?

00:03:18.840 | Those type of conversations become pretty reasonable.

00:03:21.220 | You might literally give them a world without email,

00:03:24.720 | just so you have a shared vocabulary.

00:03:26.200 | Hey, this is interesting. I don't agree with all of it.

00:03:28.460 | But this is interesting. That, by the way, is the trick.

00:03:30.760 | That is the trick if you want to give anyone advice from a book

00:03:35.000 | or an article that you want them to follow and you agree with it.

00:03:37.660 | Just say, I don't agree with all of it.

00:03:39.700 | And then boom, they're right on your side.

00:03:41.160 | And then you have the shared vocabulary, the shared ideas.

00:03:43.120 | That's not a bad idea. So those are your two options.

00:03:44.860 | Either lean into autonomy and then build up

00:03:47.920 | a really non-hyperactive approach to your work.

00:03:51.120 | How you communicate with the world and track your efforts.

00:03:53.400 | Or look for a reasonable boss.

00:03:54.860 | They might not know anything about the Hive Mind.

00:03:57.200 | They might be sending emails left and right,

00:03:58.860 | but they seem like the type of person that could pretty quickly be open

00:04:02.620 | to the idea that maybe there's a better way.

00:04:04.840 | [Music]

How Can I Find a Work at a Company Where the HyperActive Hive Mind Doesn't Exist?

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