Help! I'm Drowning in Work | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, so we have another question here from Mel.

00:00:05.760 | Mel says, "How do I get out of the urgent quadrant for long enough to hire or outsource

00:00:12.660 | work and implement productivity systems?"

00:00:15.040 | All right, so she elaborates, "I manage my husband's medical practice.

00:00:20.600 | I am burnt out and cognitively depleted by the volume, time sensitivity, and unrelenting

00:00:24.840 | nature of incoming work.

00:00:26.040 | I spend all my time in the urgent quadrant and in hyperactive hive mind.

00:00:30.040 | I don't have the option to leave the job.

00:00:31.720 | I can hire and outsource to some extent when I'm able to make time for it, but how do I

00:00:35.120 | get out of the urgent quadrant for long enough to recruit and train staff and to implement

00:00:38.320 | sustainable productivity systems?"

00:00:40.600 | Mel, I talk about exactly this problem in my book, A World Without Email.

00:00:48.220 | It is, I describe as an insidious negative feedback loop.

00:00:52.880 | And here's what happens, and here's what's happening to you, but it's very common.

00:00:58.000 | When you become too hyperactive with the hyperactive hive mind, so that the sheer quantity of work

00:01:05.680 | that you're trying to organize in this very inefficient way with ad hoc, unscheduled back

00:01:09.880 | and forth messaging, when that gets to a certain point, you have so little breathing room,

00:01:16.840 | just trying to keep up with all these unscheduled back and forth messages, that there's no free

00:01:21.200 | time or energy to actually put in place the alternative systems that could reduce all

00:01:26.720 | of these unscheduled messages, these unscheduled ad hoc messages.

00:01:30.760 | So when it gets too bad, you strip yourself of the time and energy required to make it

00:01:35.360 | better.

00:01:36.360 | So it's an insidious negative feedback cycle.

00:01:38.960 | And Mel, that's what you're in right now.

00:01:41.800 | So what's the solution here?

00:01:44.060 | You have to temporarily but drastically give yourself some breathing room by dramatically

00:01:48.300 | reducing the amount of things that you're trying to coordinate in this inefficient manner.

00:01:54.840 | So you do these drastic emergency reductions of what's on your plate.

00:01:58.920 | That gives you breathing room to look at what remains and figure out sustainable systems

00:02:04.120 | that don't require you just constantly being on email, constantly being on Slack, constantly

00:02:09.040 | checking your phone.

00:02:10.040 | And then once these systems are in place, then your breathing room gets much bigger

00:02:14.440 | because the things that remain have now been, from a cognitive perspective, made much more

00:02:18.560 | tractable.

00:02:19.720 | You're able to add stuff back because now the systems are there, but you have to pull

00:02:23.600 | things away and it's going to feel painful.

00:02:25.760 | It's going to feel weird.

00:02:26.760 | It's going to feel like you're leaving money on the table.

00:02:29.460 | You have to do that.

00:02:31.640 | And then things come back once you have the actual systems in place.

00:02:35.260 | Now the added benefit of this approach is when you add things back, you maybe don't

00:02:38.680 | add back everything.

00:02:41.240 | Maybe when you're trying to add things back, you say this one type of business we do is

00:02:45.520 | not easily tamable by systems to get rid of unscheduled messages.

00:02:50.600 | It's this particular client or type of work that requires and demands this berating constant

00:02:56.000 | communication.

00:02:57.180 | And now it's really clear, well, that type of work is not compatible with the type of

00:03:01.440 | way we want to work.

00:03:02.440 | Let's not add it back.

00:03:04.240 | Let's get rid of that type of business.

00:03:06.000 | So it also gives you a chance to clean house as you're thinking about all the different

00:03:11.000 | type of business you do.

00:03:12.000 | So what this means for your husband's medical practice, for example, is cut back on clients,

00:03:18.480 | cut back on surgeries.

00:03:19.480 | Like there's going to be a period where you say we're cutting back.

00:03:22.120 | You're not stepping away from existing things, but you're going to put a hold on bringing

00:03:25.540 | on new things for a while.

00:03:26.540 | You're going to have a six month period where you fall back towards a baseline and make

00:03:30.540 | less money and miss out opportunities, but allows you to actually build in better systems,

00:03:37.840 | hire new staff, train that staff, figure out how to make sure that you are not context

00:03:41.440 | shifting every two to three minutes, that you're not constantly email, that you're not

00:03:44.240 | constantly on text messaging.

00:03:45.720 | And here's the thing, who cares about six months worth of money?

00:03:47.960 | What's the point?

00:03:48.960 | That's a miserable existence you're talking about.

00:03:50.480 | And your husband's probably burnt out too, because it bleeds over.

00:03:53.200 | He has too much work.

00:03:54.280 | It bleeds over to his practice.

00:03:56.280 | That's the way you have to do it.

00:03:58.240 | You have to make a dramatic temporary reduction if you're going to get the breathing room

00:04:01.240 | required to build up systems that will be sustainable going forward.

00:04:05.120 | The money will come back, but with much less stress once those systems are in place.

00:04:08.760 | So that's what I recommend.

00:04:10.400 | It's time, Mel, to do something radical.

00:04:14.360 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Help! I'm Drowning in Work | Deep Questions Podcast with Cal Newport

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