Finish One Week Of Work Today - Life Changing Advice To Get Your Life Back

00:00:00.000 | Well, it's hard to believe that it's been a month since my book, Slow Productivity,

00:00:05.420 | The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout was published.

00:00:10.000 | And one of the advantages of it having been a month is that I have in those weeks, intervening

00:00:15.460 | weeks done a lot of interviews about this book, which means I have some data.

00:00:20.080 | In particular, I have some data about what ideas from this book seem to be catching people's

00:00:24.540 | attention.

00:00:25.860 | So what I want to do today is isolate what I think is the single most discussed suggestion

00:00:32.500 | from this book based on what interviewers want to talk to me about.

00:00:37.880 | It is a suggestion, a strategic suggestion that promises essentially right away to significantly

00:00:45.960 | reduce the sense that you're frantic and busy all the time, running on a treadmill of digital

00:00:52.140 | freneticism and yet getting very little actual accomplished during the workday.

00:00:55.820 | It's a solution that overnight can make that problem significantly reduced in your life.

00:01:03.060 | So here's what I'm going to do.

00:01:04.060 | I'm going to look a little closer at this problem of digital busyness and get to the

00:01:09.000 | core of it.

00:01:10.800 | Why are we like this?

00:01:12.200 | Then I will give you the big suggestion from my book that's been discussed more than any

00:01:15.240 | other idea so far during my publicity tour.

00:01:18.960 | And then I will talk about tactical suggestions for how to implement this idea in your actual

00:01:24.200 | work life.

00:01:25.200 | I'm going to break this into two parts.

00:01:27.520 | Tactical suggestions for implementing it as an individual, even if you have demanding

00:01:31.460 | bosses and clients who aren't on board and tactical suggestions for implementing this

00:01:35.480 | if you're a team, you can get even extra power if a team works together all on the same page.

00:01:41.160 | All right, let's get into it.

00:01:43.040 | All right.

00:01:44.040 | So what's the problem that we're going to face here?

00:01:46.280 | This idea that you're frantic all day long, jumping from email to slack in and out of

00:01:50.720 | meetings all day, exhausted and yet feeling like very little is actually being accomplished

00:01:58.920 | on the projects that you need to do, that you're as busy as you've ever been.

00:02:03.040 | And yet progress on your work has never been slower.

00:02:05.560 | Now, if we're going to solve this, we need to know why this problem has become worse.

00:02:11.080 | Now, as longtime listeners of this show know, I'm a technologist, I'm a computer science

00:02:15.640 | professor, I try to understand these issues through the lens of technology interacting

00:02:21.080 | with us, our society and cultures in unexpected ways.

00:02:24.120 | And I think this is almost entirely an issue of a techno-human interaction.

00:02:29.680 | All right.

00:02:30.680 | So two things happened, both coincident with what I call the front office IT revolution,

00:02:37.240 | the arrival in the nineties of personal computers on the desk of knowledge workers, followed

00:02:42.480 | in the 2000s by networks and then wireless networks and mobile computing.

00:02:46.240 | So the front office IT revolution, two things came along with this that created the sense

00:02:53.040 | of frantic busyness in which very little was getting done.

00:02:56.440 | One, I think this is probably the least reported.

00:03:00.480 | It ended specialization.

00:03:01.480 | Let me be a little bit more clear about this.

00:03:05.000 | We've forgotten about this because we're so used to it, but it's very important.

00:03:09.320 | Pre-front office IT revolution, work tasks were more specialized.

00:03:14.120 | There was enough custom knowledge and tools and friction involved in doing most things

00:03:19.520 | in the office that we tended to specialize.

00:03:23.040 | Different support staff would work on different things.

00:03:25.360 | If you were an executive knowledge worker, you would be thinking more about strategy,

00:03:31.520 | for example, but you didn't type things and you weren't able to make flight reservations.

00:03:37.620 | And certainly you couldn't put together slides for a presentation.

00:03:40.440 | You need a graphic department to do that.

00:03:42.160 | There was all sorts of different people that work together.

00:03:44.880 | Things were more specialized.

00:03:45.880 | Then the personal computer came along and he said, look, this is going to be a productivity

00:03:51.720 | miracle.

00:03:53.720 | And they were right in the very narrow sense that the personal computer took many of these

00:03:58.360 | things that were happening in the office and made them more efficient to do.

00:04:04.080 | Typing is much easier on a word processor.

00:04:05.880 | Now really anyone can do it.

00:04:07.020 | You can fix mistakes.

00:04:08.980 | It's not you, when you're typing onto a typewriter paper, you really need to be good at typing.

00:04:13.020 | Otherwise you're going to be constantly whiting things out, compute.

00:04:15.440 | You could fix your mistakes on it.

00:04:16.680 | You could format things yourself.

00:04:18.400 | You can build slides.

00:04:19.840 | You can do your own presentations.

00:04:21.080 | You can send your own communications.

00:04:22.680 | You can, you don't need voicemail.

00:04:24.160 | You don't need a secretary.

00:04:25.160 | You can send emails and wait for those emails to come in.

00:04:27.840 | We get intra-office intranets where now I can log time sheets and book travel and fill

00:04:34.120 | out compliance forms.

00:04:35.520 | It made lots of things doable by everybody.

00:04:39.820 | So what happened with this revolution?

00:04:42.560 | We fired all the support staff and said, who's left?

00:04:44.640 | Just do everything now.

00:04:46.400 | So the amount of work possible for each individual left in knowledge work after the front office

00:04:53.080 | revolution skyrocketed.

00:04:55.920 | The sheer diversity of different things you might do during your days compared to like

00:05:00.720 | the Mad Men days of the 1960s to 2006 is vast, vastly increased.

00:05:08.680 | All right.

00:05:09.680 | The second thing that happened coincident with the front office IT revolution is digital

00:05:14.520 | networking reduced the friction of trying to assign some of this work to someone else.

00:05:21.040 | So now there's a vastly larger pool of things people can be doing.

00:05:24.000 | It's no longer, hey, Don Draper, go build this ad campaign for Kodak and let us know

00:05:29.360 | when you're done.

00:05:30.360 | Let's build this infinitely many smaller types of things we can ask people to do.

00:05:34.520 | Digital networks reduced the friction of actually assigning work.

00:05:38.800 | There is no social capital cost or minimal social capital costs when I'm just writing

00:05:42.840 | abstractly into a screen.

00:05:44.480 | Hey, Don, can you throw together some numbers for the Q2 report?

00:05:48.440 | Send.

00:05:49.440 | I don't have to see your face.

00:05:50.800 | I don't have to see this as a transaction in which I'm asking for a valuable resource

00:05:54.840 | of you.

00:05:55.840 | I don't see this as a favor.

00:05:56.840 | It's an abstraction.

00:05:57.840 | Send.

00:05:58.840 | Boom.

00:05:59.840 | It's also much easier, right?

00:06:01.840 | As soon as I think of something, I could get it off my plate.

00:06:05.560 | I can play obligation hot potato by just type, type, type, type, type, send, and I don't

00:06:09.840 | have to worry about it.

00:06:11.280 | In a pre-digital network era, it might be a while till I see you again.

00:06:15.440 | Maybe we have a meeting scheduled tomorrow.

00:06:17.640 | So I need some way of keeping track of what's on my plate and what needs to be done.

00:06:21.120 | And once I'm more organized about things, I might actually start consolidating things

00:06:24.240 | and taking things off my plate or being smarter about how we organize our efforts.

00:06:28.440 | But in the digital network age, I don't have to do any of that because as soon as something

00:06:32.120 | appears into my cognitive world and becomes causing stress, I can get that hot potato

00:06:36.400 | out of my hands in seven seconds of typing.

00:06:38.600 | And so we became less organized, less considered about tasks, and just started throwing them

00:06:44.720 | off left and right.

00:06:45.720 | So we put these two things together.

00:06:48.120 | The amount of possible work for a knowledge worker to do increased.

00:06:50.700 | The amount of possible work that was on the knowledge worker's plate increased.

00:06:54.280 | We got overloaded.

00:06:57.160 | This then created, so this is not directly the problem we talked about, which is busyness,

00:07:01.800 | but it created that problem.

00:07:04.320 | And it created that problem because, of course, the reality of anything that you have committed

00:07:08.640 | to do, a project, a task, whatever size it is, is that it brings with it its own administrative

00:07:14.800 | overhead.

00:07:17.080 | You have to talk about it, you have to collaborate about it, you have to gather materials for

00:07:19.920 | it.

00:07:20.920 | And in the age of the front office IT revolution, this administrative overhead became more disruptive

00:07:25.920 | and time-fracturing than ever before because it could be sending emails back and forth

00:07:30.000 | throughout the day.

00:07:31.000 | This was one of the most attention-fracturing possible means of collaboration.

00:07:35.400 | Asynchronous back-and-forth conversations that require you to constantly be checking

00:07:38.600 | channels and inboxes so that you see the next message in time to reply.

00:07:41.800 | We also had the digital meeting revolution.

00:07:44.320 | It's never been easier to throw a meeting on people's calendars, to throw around invites.

00:07:47.520 | The cost of setting up meetings really reduced.

00:07:50.840 | So now we're paying this administrative overhead on more things than ever before, and the impact

00:07:55.080 | of this administrative overhead is more invasive and intrusive than ever before.

00:08:00.320 | This is what has caused our current problem with frenetic busyness.

00:08:03.080 | Why we feel like we're answering messages and in meetings all day but getting very little

00:08:06.040 | done is because we have too many things on our plate, and each of these things is generating

00:08:10.400 | its own stream of time disruption that takes our time and attention but doesn't actually

00:08:15.640 | allow us to complete the thing.

00:08:17.040 | It's just talking about the thing, and we end up with days totalized by collaboration

00:08:22.600 | and overhead with very little time left to actually accomplish work.

00:08:26.380 | We have to do it in the mornings.

00:08:27.380 | We have to do it in the late evenings.

00:08:28.820 | This is not just inefficient, as I like to say during my interviews for slow productivity.

00:08:33.280 | It's downright deranging.

00:08:37.140 | So digital front office IT revolution causes the problem.

00:08:41.920 | What is my idea?

00:08:42.920 | What is the idea that comes up more often than any other when we talk about this book

00:08:45.740 | on podcasts and radio interviews for solving this problem?

00:08:48.680 | Well, now that we understand it, we know what the solutions will be.

00:08:52.400 | How do you solve busyness?

00:08:53.520 | You don't, as many people suggest, try to go after the symptoms and say, "We're going

00:08:59.880 | to have rules to try to put moats around, protect us from the busyness and this administrative

00:09:08.240 | overhead."

00:09:10.000 | Better expectations on email.

00:09:11.960 | Don't expect a reply right away, so that way you can batch your emails.

00:09:16.120 | No meetings on a certain day of the week, and that way you can have a day free of the

00:09:19.440 | meetings.

00:09:20.440 | You have an instinct to treat the symptoms, but this doesn't work because this administrative

00:09:24.160 | overhead is actually needed.

00:09:26.520 | You've agreed to these projects.

00:09:27.640 | This is how these projects make progress, and if you're not able to be involved in the

00:09:30.960 | conversations and have the meetings and the emails, things stall, and it's a problem.

00:09:34.120 | So these type of treating the symptoms approaches don't work.

00:09:37.040 | We need to treat the actual underlying problem, and here there's no shortcut to the solution

00:09:41.760 | of reducing the number of things creating administrative overhead.

00:09:46.860 | That is how you solve the problem of frantic deranging busyness.

00:09:50.540 | Have less things generating administrative overhead.

00:09:54.220 | It's less about taming the administrative overhead generated by a single project than

00:09:57.680 | it is having fewer projects generating the overhead itself.

00:10:01.120 | Hey there, I want to take a quick moment to tell you about my new book, Slow Productivity,

00:10:07.560 | The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout.

00:10:12.080 | If you like the type of things I talk about on this channel, you're really going to like

00:10:16.060 | this book.

00:10:17.460 | It distills all of my ideas into a clear philosophy combined with step-by-step instructions for

00:10:23.840 | putting it into action.

00:10:26.000 | So to find out more about the book, check out calnewport.com/slow.

00:10:32.060 | Everything you need, you can find there.

00:10:33.760 | All right, thanks.

00:10:34.760 | Let's get back to it.

00:10:35.760 | Now, of course, the radical way to do this would just say, like, I work on two things.

00:10:38.960 | That's it.

00:10:39.960 | And just say no to everything else.

00:10:41.900 | The problem is very few of us can do that.

00:10:45.800 | You have to be very high up or very autonomous in your work.

00:10:49.560 | You know, I'm a novelist.

00:10:50.560 | No, I'm just writing my next novel.

00:10:52.340 | Get out of my face.

00:10:53.760 | They can do that.

00:10:54.760 | Almost no one else can.

00:10:55.760 | So this brings me back to the idea then.

00:10:57.520 | So what is my strategy if the solution is going to be reducing the number of things

00:11:02.560 | generating administrative overhead, but we can't just say no to most things?

00:11:06.320 | What is the slow productivity solution that could actually work?

00:11:09.240 | All right, here it is.

00:11:10.520 | It's pretty straightforward.

00:11:13.340 | You have two statuses for work that you've agreed to.

00:11:16.960 | So let's just imagine a list of things you've said yes to.

00:11:19.920 | There's two statuses, active, waiting.

00:11:25.760 | The projects labeled active, you're actively working on.

00:11:29.560 | They can happily generate administrative overhead and you will pay that administrative overhead.

00:11:34.260 | People can send you emails about it.

00:11:35.600 | You can set up standing meetings to talk about it.

00:11:38.080 | You're actively working on it.

00:11:39.880 | Everything else, the projects that are labeled waiting, do not generate administrative overhead.

00:11:46.200 | They are waiting for their turn in your active spot.

00:11:48.840 | And as soon as you finish a project that you're actively working on, you pull something new

00:11:52.640 | from that waiting list into your collection of active projects and now we can talk about

00:11:57.560 | it.

00:11:59.320 | But if it's in the waiting thing, no, we're not working on those yet.

00:12:03.760 | These are over here.

00:12:05.420 | We're waiting for it to come.

00:12:07.840 | Now for this to work, you have to be very clear about this, right?

00:12:12.080 | So as we get into the details of how to implement this two status workload management system,

00:12:18.240 | it doesn't work unless everyone knows what you're up to.

00:12:20.200 | So you have to be super transparent.

00:12:22.240 | Here are my list.

00:12:23.320 | Here's how I work.

00:12:24.440 | Here is your thing.

00:12:25.680 | It's here.

00:12:26.680 | It's in position six on the waiting list.

00:12:27.880 | You can watch it.

00:12:29.440 | You have to have extreme clarity for the people involved so they know when to start doing

00:12:33.660 | administrative overhead with you.

00:12:35.000 | And more importantly, you've assured them, I have not forgotten about your thing.

00:12:39.800 | Your thing is on this list and you can check as much as you want and watch it march towards

00:12:43.680 | active and when it gets to active, I'm going to execute it.

00:12:46.840 | You don't have to worry.

00:12:47.840 | This has been forgotten.

00:12:49.840 | And that's, what's going to be important here.

00:12:51.160 | That clarity is going to solve the problem that they really have, which is, I don't want

00:12:55.240 | to have to worry about this task.

00:12:58.800 | All right.

00:13:00.560 | So this is what we're going to need.

00:13:02.440 | True statuses, clarity for everyone involved about the status of what you're doing.

00:13:07.080 | This can make a huge difference essentially right away.

00:13:11.600 | Think about why, right?

00:13:12.600 | I mean, if you take the amount of administrative overhead you're paying from, let's say, ten

00:13:16.200 | projects and collapse it to three, that's a factor of three or greater decrease in the

00:13:21.880 | amount of emails you have to send and meetings you have to attend, a factor of three or greater

00:13:25.520 | increase in the amount of time you have to actually work on projects.

00:13:28.080 | Now you can start getting things done fast.

00:13:29.680 | You can do them at a high level of quality.

00:13:32.640 | You're accomplishing more than you ever have before, but it's going to feel much better.

00:13:35.280 | All right.

00:13:36.280 | So how do we actually implement this?

00:13:37.800 | Well, let's start about talking about how we might do this as an individual, just doing

00:13:41.520 | this on your own.

00:13:42.520 | All right.

00:13:43.520 | As I talked about first, there has to be clarity.

00:13:45.160 | So you need a shared document or Trello board or whatever tool you want to use that is shared.

00:13:49.680 | So you can point people right away.

00:13:51.440 | Okay.

00:13:52.440 | This is where your project is.

00:13:55.280 | Watch it march up to queue.

00:13:58.080 | So what I like about using a Trello board for this is you can have a Trello column for

00:14:02.020 | actively working on, and you have a Trello column for queue of projects I'm waiting to

00:14:08.000 | execute.

00:14:09.000 | And this is an ordered queue.

00:14:10.600 | The thing at the top is the next thing you're going to pull in when you finish an active

00:14:15.240 | project and the thing behind right below it, that's the thing after that you're going to

00:14:18.440 | pull it.

00:14:19.440 | So this is an actual ordered queue.

00:14:20.760 | Then you can have a column for a back burner, right?

00:14:25.580 | And what this is for is like a boss or a peer is like, "Hey, we should really think about

00:14:29.740 | doing blah."

00:14:30.820 | And you know, we're not really ready to work on blah.

00:14:35.220 | And they don't really want you yet to do it.

00:14:37.340 | They just sort of had the idea and you need to give them the respect if I'm taking it

00:14:40.300 | seriously.

00:14:41.300 | So you need a place to put that, but that's not a queue that things are being pulled off

00:14:43.740 | of.

00:14:44.740 | It's just a stake in the ground, as David Allen would say.

00:14:47.580 | You could do this with a shared document too, just three headings.

00:14:50.180 | Why I like Trello is you can flip those digital cards over and add information to it and attach

00:14:54.240 | files to it.

00:14:56.180 | So now you have a place because it's all shared for whoever assigned you this work.

00:15:02.660 | You can add the stuff they send you about it.

00:15:04.620 | You can add it to that card.

00:15:05.980 | They can go directly and add stuff to that card as well as they think up like, "Hey,

00:15:09.300 | I want you to remember this or when we get to this, let's not forget this."

00:15:12.540 | You have a place for that to go.

00:15:14.700 | And I have to emphasize this.

00:15:16.820 | This is like the key point I have to emphasize about the interpersonal dynamics of this suggestion

00:15:21.860 | I'm talking about.

00:15:23.940 | You have to know what game you're playing when you're working at one of these knowledge

00:15:28.880 | work jobs.

00:15:30.760 | The game you're playing, like what it is that your colleagues and bosses wants from you.

00:15:36.840 | It's not what they want is fast email responses.

00:15:39.920 | That's not the game you're playing.

00:15:42.000 | That's not the problem you're solving for them.

00:15:43.640 | Their problem is not how do I get responses to my emails right away?

00:15:46.800 | How do I get people in the meetings as soon as possible?

00:15:49.300 | That's not the actual problem they have.

00:15:50.800 | The problem you can solve for them is, "I have this thing that it needs to get done.

00:15:55.960 | I can't do it myself and I don't want to be stressed about it.

00:16:00.440 | I want this off my plate in a way that I can trust it's going to be taken care of."

00:16:06.960 | That's the problem you're solving for other people.

00:16:09.280 | So when they can see, "Here it is, it's in Cal's column and it's in position three,"

00:16:14.280 | you're solving that problem for them.

00:16:15.760 | More importantly, when they think of something else, "Hey, remember this thing we're going

00:16:19.440 | to do?

00:16:20.440 | I just have three more examples.

00:16:21.920 | I asked you to update the website with client testimonials," you put it in your queue of

00:16:26.080 | things that are waiting.

00:16:27.080 | "Oh, you know what?

00:16:28.080 | I just got a testimonial from another client.

00:16:31.600 | We should make sure we put this in here," or, "Here's another idea I had."

00:16:34.400 | When you're using something like a Trello card, you can receive that information and

00:16:37.200 | say, "Great, I've just added it to the card," and they can see all this stuff is being attached

00:16:41.920 | to this card, the files, the text, the links, and here's the information.

00:16:46.680 | It's all building up here, and this project is moving up this queue of things that Cal's

00:16:51.920 | going to work on next, and all the information is there.

00:16:56.320 | You're solving the problem for your colleagues or clients of, "I don't have to worry about

00:17:00.240 | this."

00:17:01.460 | So having a place where not only they can see their work is waiting to get done, but

00:17:05.560 | a place to put all their thoughts about their work, the files, the notes.

00:17:09.520 | You can tell them to do that directly, or if they send it to you, you can just add it

00:17:12.180 | to a card.

00:17:13.180 | That's not a big deal to add information to a card.

00:17:14.920 | If it's your boss, you should do that for them.

00:17:16.800 | None of this is a big deal.

00:17:19.020 | They're happy that this is being taken care of.

00:17:23.040 | You have this transparency.

00:17:25.680 | Now what you have to do is work really hard on the things that are in the active list,

00:17:30.360 | and you have to let people know when you pull a new project into the active list.

00:17:33.960 | This is critical.

00:17:34.960 | You've got to email whoever is involved in that, whoever assigned it to you, whoever

00:17:38.640 | else you're working on, and say, "Hey, I'm actively working on this now.

00:17:41.900 | It's on my active list link.

00:17:44.580 | I'm all in on this.

00:17:45.600 | Let's rock and roll.

00:17:46.600 | Let's meet.

00:17:47.600 | Email me."

00:17:48.600 | All the stuff that is kind of annoying, it's not so annoying to me anymore because this

00:17:51.400 | is just one of three projects I'm going.

00:17:53.400 | Let's go.

00:17:54.400 | Let's kick it off.

00:17:55.400 | Let's have a meeting.

00:17:56.400 | Let's have a brainstorm.

00:17:57.400 | Let's figure out a plan.

00:17:58.400 | I have a lot of time to dedicate to this."

00:17:59.400 | You just get that thing done.

00:18:00.400 | So you have to let people know.

00:18:01.840 | You got to actually do the things that are active and let people know when you're doing

00:18:04.680 | those things.

00:18:05.680 | As people have gone through two or three of these cycles with you, they're like, "Okay,

00:18:09.600 | I get how this works.

00:18:11.400 | This is cool.

00:18:12.940 | Cal will let me know when my thing is active.

00:18:14.780 | If I think of thoughts and I send it to him, I know it'll be stored.

00:18:17.140 | I trust him.

00:18:19.180 | When this thing gets active, he's going to let me know, and he's going to get after it,

00:18:22.340 | and this thing's going to get accomplished pretty quickly, and it's going to be accomplished

00:18:24.900 | well."

00:18:28.580 | So another thing that this is going to help you is this is going to allow you to avoid

00:18:34.500 | having to do these prioritization decisions in the moment of like, "Is this important

00:18:38.420 | or not?"

00:18:39.420 | Saying yes or no.

00:18:40.780 | This is kind of the problem with a lot of minimalist approaches to workload management.

00:18:47.300 | It's basically so you have to say no more often.

00:18:49.380 | You have to say yes to fewer things, like, "What's the one thing you want to do?

00:18:52.060 | What's essential?"

00:18:53.700 | The problem with these approaches is that's like difficult decisions to make, especially

00:18:57.060 | when it's 4 p.m. on a Friday and you're tired and your boss puts his head in the door and

00:19:02.060 | is like, "I need you to update the bulletin part of the website," or, "I think we need

00:19:06.740 | a better strategy," or, "We need to figure out if we should be using chat GPT."

00:19:10.580 | Whatever they're throwing at you.

00:19:11.900 | It's really hard in the moment when you're exhausted.

00:19:14.760 | They're there.

00:19:15.760 | They want this from you.

00:19:16.760 | The pressure's on for you to do the calculation and say, "No, this is insufficiently important

00:19:21.340 | to the one thing I want to be working on."

00:19:23.020 | It's too difficult in the moment.

00:19:25.500 | This approach allows you to get around that because you can sort of soft commit to one

00:19:30.820 | of these things.

00:19:31.820 | In the moment, it just goes onto your list.

00:19:34.840 | And now, when things are on your list, we can start talking about reprioritization and

00:19:40.440 | deaccessioning, actually taking things off the list.

00:19:44.880 | You can think now about priorities.

00:19:47.080 | When people bring you new things or they're asking you about something, you can talk to

00:19:50.840 | your boss or clients about, "How should we mess with the order of this list?"

00:19:54.360 | I think that's something you want to be doing a lot.

00:19:56.840 | The waiting list.

00:19:58.480 | The column in Trello.

00:19:59.480 | "Hey, where do you want this?

00:20:02.040 | How urgent?

00:20:03.040 | Here's my list.

00:20:04.040 | It's either at the top or in the middle.

00:20:06.120 | Where do you think this should fall?"

00:20:07.120 | You get the stakeholders who are giving you this work involved.

00:20:10.960 | You're often doing this reprioritization.

00:20:12.800 | Now, what's going to happen here is that the things that kind of went on your list

00:20:18.320 | that weren't really that important, it was like in the moment, a brainstorm, or as things

00:20:23.640 | developed, it turned out to be less important than you thought.

00:20:26.080 | They're just going to sort of stay at the bottom of the waiting list because things

00:20:28.840 | keep getting moved above them.

00:20:31.400 | So you need to be willing to reassession or deassession those things.

00:20:34.240 | Maybe move them diplomatically over to the back burner list, and then at some point maybe

00:20:39.080 | take them off that list altogether.

00:20:41.880 | There's a good opportunity here to see what really is important.

00:20:45.380 | If you've been languishing on my waiting queue, it keeps getting moved down, things

00:20:48.880 | getting replaced, then we know that wasn't a right thing to be working on anyways.

00:20:52.400 | So you have to allow reprioritization, and you have to do these deassessioning.

00:20:58.800 | This is what I would do as an individual.

00:21:01.120 | Again, there is some pain in doing this, but it's not as bad as you think.

00:21:04.920 | Blame me.

00:21:05.920 | Say it's a Cal Newport idea.

00:21:09.640 | But I'm telling you, the problem you're solving for your colleagues and clients is making

00:21:13.960 | their life easier.

00:21:16.500 | Knowing you have this way of working, and it produces good results, and I don't have

00:21:20.080 | to keep track of things, I don't have to bother you, I don't have to remember things, I know

00:21:23.920 | how to deal with getting you work, and if I have ideas about that work that I can send

00:21:27.880 | it to you, and I can watch it get captured, eight times out of ten, this is going to fly.

00:21:34.160 | Two times out of ten, it won't.

00:21:35.160 | Eight times out of ten, this will fly.

00:21:37.680 | And it will make your life, if it does fly as an individual, it's going to make your

00:21:40.360 | life so much better, because again, two or three projects worth of administrative overhead

00:21:45.320 | is cake.

00:21:47.120 | You can do all of the 1990s, 1980s-style productivity tips for figuring out the most urgent thing

00:21:53.500 | to work on, and the quadrants, and all that stuff works when you have three projects worth

00:21:59.680 | of administrative overhead.

00:22:01.480 | Not when you have 13.

00:22:02.480 | Then you're just, ah, until blood comes out of your eyes.

00:22:05.400 | Three, you could do that.

00:22:07.240 | What about if you're on a team?

00:22:08.920 | How does this work if you're on a team and everyone's on board?

00:22:11.640 | Well, in this case, and this I detail in particular in the book, because there's a specific case

00:22:17.120 | study of a team doing this in the book, so I write about exactly how they do it.

00:22:21.840 | You have on a wall somewhere, be this physical or virtual, post-it notes for all the project

00:22:27.860 | ideas or feature additions, or whatever your units of work is.

00:22:32.980 | You store them.

00:22:33.980 | Whenever something comes up, we should do this.

00:22:36.220 | We need to update the website.

00:22:37.380 | We need to add this feature to the software.

00:22:38.980 | We need to gather a report of all of the statistics.

00:22:42.180 | Every time an idea for a project comes up for the team, it goes on a wall, be it real

00:22:45.500 | or virtual, in a big column that's for stuff we might do.

00:22:50.860 | So if someone has an idea, they have a place to put it where they know it won't be forgotten.

00:22:54.540 | Two, you have another column in this wall for each of the people on the team.

00:23:00.500 | And when someone is working on something, you move that, be it physically or virtually,

00:23:05.780 | into their column.

00:23:06.780 | So you can see right away, what is everyone working on?

00:23:10.340 | You can also see right away, how much is everyone working on?

00:23:15.220 | And again, you want this to be one or two things, maybe three, depending on what type

00:23:18.320 | of work you're doing.

00:23:20.460 | The final piece of this team-based two-status workload management is that you have a regular,

00:23:25.580 | efficient, highly-structured check-in meeting.

00:23:28.140 | You could do this in the morning or midday.

00:23:29.700 | It could be every day, would probably be good.

00:23:33.460 | Maybe every other day, maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday, where we check in on this wall.

00:23:37.460 | Okay, how is everything?

00:23:39.420 | What are you working on?

00:23:40.420 | I see it on the wall.

00:23:41.420 | How is that going?

00:23:42.420 | Do you need anything from anyone else?

00:23:43.420 | What's holding you back?

00:23:44.420 | Let's figure this all out right now.

00:23:45.420 | We don't have to do a bunch of emails.

00:23:46.420 | You're going to need this information.

00:23:47.420 | You're going to need that.

00:23:48.420 | Okay, let's just write down.

00:23:49.420 | This is your document, like a log of each meeting.

00:23:51.420 | This is all in stone, right, so you can't get away with ignoring it.

00:23:54.500 | Okay, so like Dan, you want to get Laura.

00:23:58.100 | She's going to need this information.

00:23:59.100 | When can you get it to her?

00:24:00.100 | You're going to do it by tonight.

00:24:01.100 | Okay, he's stuck because he's waiting for that.

00:24:02.980 | You figure out who needs what, fine.

00:24:06.180 | If someone is done with something, it is in these team meetings, you look at the big pile

00:24:10.660 | of stuff we could do, and you figure out as a team what things should this person work

00:24:14.180 | on next.

00:24:15.180 | We're going to pull something new to their column.

00:24:17.860 | And this is how you handle work.

00:24:19.700 | So nothing gets lost.

00:24:20.700 | If you have an idea, it goes on the wall.

00:24:21.900 | You know what you're working on.

00:24:22.900 | You get what you need from people.

00:24:23.900 | As you finish things, more things come over.

00:24:25.740 | People are churning through things pretty quick.

00:24:28.840 | But just like with our Trello list, one of the key things about this is you see languishing.

00:24:33.460 | This thing was on the wall for the last two months.

00:24:36.240 | We keep prioritizing other stuff over it.

00:24:38.300 | You know what?

00:24:39.300 | I don't think that was as important as it felt at the time.

00:24:41.100 | Let's take it off the wall.

00:24:42.780 | And you get this deaccessioning based on your implicit aggregate priority decisions.

00:24:50.260 | So real teams use this, right?

00:24:51.820 | Real teams use this.

00:24:52.820 | They used to use Post-it Notes.

00:24:54.740 | If you're a software developer, this sounds familiar.

00:24:56.540 | This is a modification of a Kanban-style Agile methodology.

00:24:59.540 | Yes, software developers are way ahead of the rest of us knowledge workers on this.

00:25:03.820 | So no, this is not an original idea, but you can adapt it to almost any type of knowledge

00:25:07.340 | work, which is the key idea I make in this book.

00:25:13.060 | All right.

00:25:14.060 | So what do we have in common here?

00:25:17.540 | Having two statuses, whether we're in a team or an individual, having two statuses, actively

00:25:22.980 | working on, waiting to work on, a place for the waiting to be, a place to gather information

00:25:26.820 | about the waiting, transparency into what is where so we can have group reprioritizations

00:25:31.300 | and deaccession decisions will drastically improve your life.

00:25:35.420 | Now, again, we want to get to the solution without getting to the core of the problem.

00:25:39.300 | And I'm just going to give this quick aside and then we'll move to questions.

00:25:42.540 | I'll give this quick aside.

00:25:43.540 | But this is one of the big problems we have, I think, dealing with some of the issues in

00:25:46.740 | digital knowledge work is that we don't go deep enough.

00:25:50.460 | We look at the issue.

00:25:51.460 | Oh my God, I'm getting all these emails.

00:25:53.020 | And we just treat it at the symptom level and we like personify people are being bad.

00:25:57.380 | People have bad expectations and we see it as almost like a bad habit people have.

00:26:04.120 | We were just doing good work and then we have this arbitrary habit of sending each other

00:26:07.380 | lots of emails.

00:26:08.380 | And so just tell people, knock it off.

00:26:10.640 | Don't send so many emails.

00:26:11.640 | I'm only going to answer them once a day.

00:26:12.640 | And of course, this fails, but when we understand the underlying problem, oh, I see.

00:26:18.580 | The front office IT revolution created these massive workload footprints and this fine

00:26:23.680 | grained ability to constantly be dealing with overhead for this massive workload footprint.

00:26:29.960 | We have to reduce the overhead.

00:26:31.320 | We have to reduce the number of active projects we're working on.

00:26:33.980 | That gets to the real solution.

00:26:36.260 | Now you can slow down.

00:26:38.660 | You can slow down your day, even if you are sort of paradoxically accomplishing what you

00:26:44.160 | accomplish at a faster rate.

00:26:46.900 | So there's my big idea.

00:26:47.900 | This come, we've been talking about this and I don't know, I'd say 75% of the interviews

00:26:51.520 | I've done for this book.

00:26:53.380 | This idea of the two status workload has come up as simple as practical.

00:26:58.540 | It gets to the core of an issue in digital era knowledge work.

00:27:02.320 | All right, what I want to do next is move on to some questions from you, my listeners

00:27:06.820 | about related issues.

00:27:08.500 | But first, I want to give a brief word from our sponsors.

00:27:13.660 | In particular, this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp, and we talk a lot about the show

00:27:22.640 | on the show about how to construct a deeper life in this world of constant digital distractions.

00:27:28.820 | It is hard to put together a deep life if your brain is not on board with it.

00:27:35.340 | If you have ruminative thoughts, you have anxiety, you have depressive thoughts, you

00:27:40.620 | have sort of excessive fears about things.

00:27:42.820 | It is very easy, especially in the current world that we talk about on the show all the

00:27:46.880 | time for your relationship with your brain to become strained.

00:27:52.620 | So what you need here as part of any vision of living a deep life is to repair your relationship

00:27:59.300 | with your brain.

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00:28:56.380 | We also want to talk about our friends at ExpressVPN.

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00:29:06.500 | You need a VPN.

00:29:07.780 | Here's why.

00:29:09.460 | When you access the internet, the websites or services that you're accessing are clearly

00:29:15.820 | listed on all of what are called packets, the little bundles of data that you send out

00:29:20.260 | onto the network itself.

00:29:22.920 | Anyone looking at these little bundles of data can see what sites and services you're

00:29:26.300 | using.

00:29:27.300 | So if you're in public, let's say on a wireless Wi-Fi connection, anyone with a radio antenna

00:29:32.320 | can look at exactly what sites or services you're using.

00:29:34.740 | If you're at home, your internet service provider can look at exactly what sites and services

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00:29:40.860 | They can gather this data, they can sell this data to advertisers.

00:29:44.540 | And if you think they're not doing that, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I want to

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00:29:50.140 | A VPN helps you avoid this privacy violation.

00:29:56.380 | Here's how a VPN works.

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00:30:01.180 | instead going to encrypt the real message you want to send and send it to a VPN server.

00:30:06.860 | The VPN server unencrypts it and then talks to that site or service on your behalf, encrypts

00:30:11.260 | the response and sends it back to you.

00:30:14.060 | So now anyone in the coffee shop listening to your Wi-Fi connection or your internet

00:30:17.780 | service provider, all they learn about your internet activity is that you're using a VPN

00:30:22.340 | and you're talking to a VPN.

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00:30:28.940 | If you're going to use the VPN, the one I recommend is ExpressVPN.

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00:31:27.980 | All right, so that's what we have for our sponsors.

00:31:34.380 | Let's move on now to some questions.

00:31:37.300 | I normally, Jesse reads these, so maybe I'll alter my voice for the questions.

00:31:44.020 | If Jesse was here, he would recommend I use my French accent for the questions, but I

00:31:48.700 | will not.

00:31:49.700 | I will resist.

00:31:50.700 | All right.

00:31:51.700 | Our first question comes from Jessica.

00:31:52.700 | Jessica says, I should start with the fact that I am neurodivergent and a very anxious

00:31:58.300 | person, which might answer part of the question, but I wonder how I can make myself stick to

00:32:03.220 | a simple productivity system instead of revamping everything pretty much every week.

00:32:07.860 | I always feel like if I could just find the perfect system, it would fix everything.

00:32:13.300 | Well, Jessica, I don't think your concerns here are specifically due to neurodivergence

00:32:19.420 | or anxiety.

00:32:20.420 | They're common among people who get serious about how they organize their digital era

00:32:26.900 | knowledge work.

00:32:29.180 | Part of the problem is a lot of people put, I would say, too much faith in what their

00:32:35.300 | productivity system can accomplish for them.

00:32:38.380 | But here's the thing, productivity systems, they cannot do your work for you.

00:32:43.680 | They cannot in themselves make you successful at your job.

00:32:46.960 | They certainly cannot fix everything.

00:32:50.300 | The world of digital knowledge work, what do productivity systems actually do?

00:32:53.260 | Two things.

00:32:54.300 | They can help you make consistent and smart decisions about what to work on.

00:32:58.020 | So get you out of that, free you from that mode of reactivity of just, oh my God, something's

00:33:02.740 | due.

00:33:03.740 | Someone just emailed me.

00:33:04.740 | I'm just trying to answer these incoming pings and put out the rapidly growing fires.

00:33:08.560 | They can also help you avoid unnecessarily wasting your time and attention.

00:33:13.580 | So I'm going to be more careful about how I deal with my brain.

00:33:17.300 | I don't want to context switch too much.

00:33:19.180 | I'm going to sort of build my scheduling and approach to work and my processes around one

00:33:24.060 | thing at a time, consolidating context switching, et cetera.

00:33:29.420 | So smart decisions, planning, and help you avoid unnecessary drags on your time and attention

00:33:35.380 | so you get more out of your brain.

00:33:36.380 | And this is more of scheduling and processes.

00:33:40.680 | If you have ideas for both of those goals that are working for you, then you're getting

00:33:46.220 | most of the benefits a productivity system can get.

00:33:49.940 | Now if you tune up the system, it'll be useful, but it's not going to be night or day.

00:33:56.420 | Night or day is having something in place, planning that's smart for making decisions

00:34:01.300 | and scheduling and process things in place to help you not waste unnecessary time and

00:34:07.300 | attention.

00:34:08.300 | Like going from zero to that is a huge win.

00:34:10.820 | Beyond that, it's like two users taste.

00:34:12.940 | It can kind of make a difference.

00:34:13.940 | It's not going to be night or day.

00:34:15.300 | So if you have something in place for both of these, and given that you're a long-time

00:34:18.220 | listener of the show you do, you're getting 80% of the benefits.

00:34:22.140 | Now what about those other 20?

00:34:24.020 | Tune in once a quarter.

00:34:25.500 | Once a quarter, be like, "Hey, what's working?

00:34:26.980 | What's not?"

00:34:27.980 | And make some tune-ups.

00:34:28.980 | Don't have high expectations, but you do want to check in semi-regularly because you want

00:34:32.480 | to prune things out of these two points that aren't really working or wasting your time.

00:34:37.060 | Or if there's a new type of challenge within these two points that has emerged that's not

00:34:40.460 | being addressed by your current systems or processes, you might want to tweak something

00:34:44.300 | or add something new.

00:34:45.300 | And this will help, but I would see this more like the key thing is I'm going to use a horticultural

00:34:51.460 | metaphor here.

00:34:52.460 | The key thing is you plant a tree, the tree that yields the fruit of consistent smart

00:34:56.900 | decisions and unnecessary wasting of time and attention.

00:35:01.540 | That's the big deal is planting the tree, having the tree, having those fruits.

00:35:06.180 | Now over time, you want to prune it.

00:35:08.420 | If you don't prune it, it's going to grow wild and maybe it's going to no longer produce

00:35:12.780 | any fruit.

00:35:13.780 | So you can't just put something in there and let that go for the next five years.

00:35:17.100 | But if you're just semi-regularly pruning this, a tree will keep growing and it'll keep

00:35:20.380 | delivering your fruits in some years better than others.

00:35:22.420 | That's the way to think about this.

00:35:23.980 | Don't put so much on the details of your system.

00:35:26.300 | Yes, you need a system, but those are the two things that can do.

00:35:29.300 | It can't do your job for you.

00:35:30.300 | It can't make work easy.

00:35:31.300 | It can't be I start turning this crank and on the other end, I'm the president.

00:35:34.780 | It's not the way it works.

00:35:36.100 | Work is hard.

00:35:37.100 | In the end, you still have to give concentrated cognitive effort to things that are difficult

00:35:40.780 | to produce things that are valuable.

00:35:42.440 | That's going to feel the same no matter what productivity system you have.

00:35:45.180 | That's going to be hard no matter what productivity system you have.

00:35:47.900 | You basically just want to try to clear out some of the biggest obvious obstacles to doing

00:35:52.340 | that in a sustainable fashion.

00:35:54.420 | All right, our next question is from DK.

00:35:59.020 | DK writes, "I often have a large block at 90 to 120 minutes of time at the start of

00:36:05.940 | my day.

00:36:07.500 | I want to use this time more efficiently, but it often gets eaten up by setting up the

00:36:12.280 | rest of the day.

00:36:13.560 | Even if I've completed a weekly and/or daily plan, I end up preparing for meetings, triaging

00:36:18.840 | my messages, or getting caught up on Slack threads.

00:36:22.160 | How can I be more effective at the start of my day?"

00:36:24.840 | Well, DK, I have three ideas for you.

00:36:28.720 | One, prepare the day before for what you're going to do at the start of your day.

00:36:34.680 | Mark off that time like a meeting on your calendar, and have a set place you're going

00:36:40.440 | to go to do that work that's different than where you do Slack, that's different than

00:36:44.200 | where you think about your meeting prep.

00:36:46.480 | Your day starts off not, "Okay, let's just rock and roll on all my channels and then

00:36:49.920 | get to work."

00:36:50.920 | No, your day starts off, "I'm going to my writing set, I'm going to the coffee shop,

00:36:54.080 | I'm doing my 20-minute thinking walk to get going, and I have everything right here to

00:36:58.600 | start working on this code, this memo, this business strategy, whatever, this big project."

00:37:02.480 | And it's scheduled, and that's what I do.

00:37:05.560 | And you're going to be nervous about it.

00:37:06.600 | What if I'm missing things?

00:37:07.600 | What if in that first 90 minutes, really critical things happened, and you know what?

00:37:11.400 | It won't, and you'll be fine, and then you'll stop worrying about it.

00:37:14.360 | People can call you if it's urgent.

00:37:16.480 | They'll respect it like, "Yeah, I start with hard things, then I get after like meetings

00:37:20.480 | in Slack."

00:37:21.480 | They'll be fine.

00:37:22.480 | And you'll be fine.

00:37:23.480 | So you just got to be more definitive about this.

00:37:24.640 | All right, second thing to suggest, do more preparation at shutdown instead of the beginning

00:37:29.280 | of the day.

00:37:30.600 | Over the last half hour of your day, and again, protect this on your calendar, let that be

00:37:34.800 | the time where you're preparing for the next day.

00:37:37.800 | Shutting down open loops.

00:37:38.800 | Do I have what I need for these meetings?

00:37:40.640 | If not, let me schedule time before the meeting to do the prep.

00:37:43.880 | I like my plan for the day, okay.

00:37:46.240 | What am I doing to start the next day?

00:37:47.480 | Great.

00:37:48.480 | Let me gather all my materials.

00:37:49.480 | Great.

00:37:50.480 | Schedule shutdown confirmed.

00:37:51.480 | Check the schedule shutdown box on my time block planner.

00:37:54.880 | Unload from work.

00:37:55.880 | Next day starts.

00:37:56.880 | You get right into the deep work you want to do in that day because you already went

00:37:59.260 | through all the process of looking at your next day.

00:38:01.520 | Do it the day before, not the morning of.

00:38:05.240 | Third idea, do more meeting processing proximate to the meetings.

00:38:09.600 | I'm a big believer of when you schedule a meeting, scheduling time either before, after,

00:38:14.540 | or both.

00:38:16.600 | Time before to prep for that meeting, if you need that.

00:38:20.680 | Definitely time after, 15 to 30 minutes.

00:38:22.760 | Always add that to your calendar to process everything that just happened in that meeting.

00:38:26.520 | All right, let me just stop for a second.

00:38:29.200 | What came out of this meeting?

00:38:30.680 | What decisions were made?

00:38:32.100 | What do I now need to do?

00:38:33.640 | What do I need to remember?

00:38:34.640 | Let me get that into my systems.

00:38:35.640 | Let me update what I need to update.

00:38:37.480 | I promised to contact these three people.

00:38:39.560 | Let me contact those three people.

00:38:40.880 | Okay, good.

00:38:41.880 | I can now shut down that meeting.

00:38:43.760 | If you go straight from a meeting to something else, all of that post-meeting work just sticks

00:38:47.900 | around in your head and causes a problem.

00:38:51.800 | So meetings are not just the time you're talking to other people.

00:38:55.280 | It's the time you're talking to other people and the time you need to make sense of that

00:38:57.680 | and prepare for it.

00:38:58.680 | If you do that on your calendar as well, then you'll feel more sort of in control of what's

00:39:02.720 | going on.

00:39:03.720 | But mainly, you just have to protect that time.

00:39:06.080 | You don't want to be doing Slack and meeting prep during those first 90 minutes.

00:39:09.840 | Don't.

00:39:10.840 | Figure out a way to get that done without having to use your first 90 minutes.

00:39:14.440 | I think the benefit will be worth it.

00:39:16.520 | All right, my next question is from Skeptical Sally.

00:39:20.760 | This is someone talking about their partner.

00:39:22.920 | That's always fun.

00:39:23.920 | Hi, Cal.

00:39:26.200 | My partner is a director of product management at a startup.

00:39:30.120 | And despite having risen through the ranks there, he has yet to be rid of a lot of the

00:39:33.560 | lower level work on his plate.

00:39:36.240 | He also has meetings all day, almost every day.

00:39:39.360 | Many things cannot be done without his input, but he is predictably exhausted all the time

00:39:43.520 | and has no time to do the thinking and writing work compounding the issues.

00:39:48.000 | His most important work is to think so engineers can build the right thing.

00:39:52.240 | And he has no thinking time because of overhead and meeting happy colleagues.

00:39:56.760 | He claims there's nothing he can offload and he can't cancel meetings because too much

00:40:00.360 | won't move forward.

00:40:01.720 | But I don't buy it.

00:40:02.720 | All right, Sally, I don't buy it either.

00:40:05.280 | I mean, here's what I do buy.

00:40:08.020 | And this is a common trap when people are dealing with overload and digital knowledge

00:40:11.600 | work.

00:40:13.280 | The common trap is to say, can I take work in the way I have it unfolding right now and

00:40:19.600 | just start not doing the things that I'm not liking?

00:40:23.400 | Can I just start canceling meetings?

00:40:24.960 | He's like, well, no, because these are projects that I'm supervising and I have to supervise

00:40:29.920 | them and they need meetings.

00:40:31.960 | Or he's like, can I just, uh, can I radically reduce the projects?

00:40:34.480 | Well, for a lot of people that could be, yes, using the system I talked about in the deep

00:40:37.800 | dive of today's episode, you could have active projects and waiting projects.

00:40:41.520 | Managers can't always do that though.

00:40:42.520 | It's like, no, these are the projects going on.

00:40:44.440 | I'm in charge of them, but not in charge of deciding what we do.

00:40:47.640 | And so, no, I can't offload projects.

00:40:48.960 | And then they throw up their hands, but what they don't think about is can I change the

00:40:52.720 | structure in which this work is actually happening?

00:40:55.200 | Not changing what I'm doing, but changing how I'm doing it.

00:41:00.360 | And here we often get significant failures of imagination.

00:41:04.000 | So Sally, here's what I would tell your husband.

00:41:06.960 | Here's what you're going to do.

00:41:07.960 | Two and a half hours every afternoon, maybe three, it's going to be a 30 to 60 minute

00:41:14.280 | office hour block right there in your afternoon, your door is open, you have a Zooms or Teams

00:41:19.820 | turned on with a waiting room and your phone is on.

00:41:23.760 | The rest of this time you have a Calendly, whatever type setup, 15 minute blocks, 15

00:41:29.600 | or 30 minute blocks, you choose which is like 90 minutes to two hours of just boom, boom,

00:41:34.040 | boom.

00:41:35.040 | You can go in there and grab any block you want.

00:41:37.920 | Here now is how you deal with all of your teams.

00:41:42.560 | Teams that just require an answer and they can be answered in a single message.

00:41:46.200 | Hey, what is my budget for this again?

00:41:48.880 | What is my timeline for this again?

00:41:51.720 | When is it?

00:41:52.720 | Have you heard back yet about whatever?

00:41:54.160 | Those can be emailed.

00:41:55.600 | Great use for email.

00:41:56.600 | They show up, they sit until your partner is ready to look at his emails and he can

00:42:00.600 | send back answers and get the information to people, minimal overhead.

00:42:05.000 | Great.

00:42:06.000 | Things that require some back and forth.

00:42:08.480 | Come to my next office hours.

00:42:09.920 | You're never more than a few hours away from my office hours.

00:42:13.160 | Drop by, jump on a Zoom waiting room, 10 minutes.

00:42:15.840 | Let's pound it out.

00:42:16.840 | Like what's going on here?

00:42:17.840 | What's holding you up?

00:42:18.840 | How can I help you?

00:42:19.840 | Hmm.

00:42:20.840 | Hmm.

00:42:21.840 | Okay.

00:42:22.840 | This, this, this.

00:42:23.840 | Good.

00:42:24.840 | Let's go.

00:42:25.840 | You have an issue that's more complicated than that.

00:42:26.840 | No, we really need to think.

00:42:27.840 | Great.

00:42:28.840 | Grab a 15 or 30 minute slot.

00:42:29.840 | You don't even have to tell me, just do it.

00:42:30.840 | The way I do in the afternoons is I just go to these meetings that are scheduled.

00:42:34.120 | We'll rock and roll and have the longer discussions if you don't want to just jump into office.

00:42:37.200 | It's going to take more than five minutes.

00:42:38.960 | Schedule one of those slots.

00:42:39.960 | Guess what?

00:42:40.960 | This is going to handle 95% of what's happening in these meetings.

00:42:46.920 | And yet consolidate all of that to two to three hours a day, leaving your husband's

00:42:51.200 | entire mornings free, right?

00:42:54.280 | This could make a huge difference.

00:42:55.720 | It's not changing what you do, managing products and talking to people about what they need

00:42:58.880 | for their projects, or it's not changing your workload even.

00:43:01.680 | It's how you do your work.

00:43:03.440 | Make a huge difference.

00:43:05.320 | Two, because he's in charge, he's a director here, demand better meetings, too.

00:43:11.320 | All right.

00:43:12.320 | You can come to the office hours.

00:43:13.320 | You can grab one of these slots.

00:43:14.920 | But I'm going to use the Jeff Bezos or General George Marshall approach of here is what I

00:43:20.120 | expect if you were bringing me into a discussion that takes my time, that you have done most

00:43:26.600 | of the work on your own to figure out what's going on, where's the sticking point, where

00:43:32.120 | do I need outside help, what specific help do I need, what's all the relevant information

00:43:38.600 | you need?

00:43:39.600 | Jeff Bezos demands that you send him all of this in a two-page memo a certain amount of

00:43:45.320 | time before any meeting.

00:43:46.560 | So the meeting can be like a laser beam.

00:43:48.520 | This is exactly where we need your help.

00:43:50.120 | You already are briefed.

00:43:51.120 | You already know exactly why we're asking you and what you need.

00:43:53.640 | What's your decision?

00:43:54.640 | This cuts down the time required to meetings to be very short.

00:43:57.000 | It also reduces the number of meetings because a lot of people use meetings as a way, as

00:44:02.080 | like a crew time management tool, like I don't really know what to do next.

00:44:06.720 | I don't have a lot of control over my schedule or time.

00:44:09.240 | I don't really want to sit and think too much about it.

00:44:11.160 | But what I can do is just get a meeting.

00:44:12.600 | Now I put a meeting on the schedule.

00:44:14.800 | I'm no longer stressed about this because I'm like, when we get to the meeting, that's

00:44:17.800 | when the work will happen.

00:44:19.760 | But if you're the director of product management, rather, it's not your goal to do this work

00:44:25.920 | with people.

00:44:26.920 | It's not your problem that people are uncomfortable with, how am I going to remember to make progress

00:44:32.120 | on this project?

00:44:34.120 | It's not your problem that the way they want to work is just put calendar things on and

00:44:37.280 | then get the work done in the calendar things.

00:44:39.260 | You demand, I need that memo.

00:44:41.600 | So maybe now what you do is like, okay, before you come to office hours or schedule one of

00:44:45.360 | these things, like maybe office hours, you can drop by, but these are five minute discussions.

00:44:48.920 | If you want to schedule one of these 30 minute meeting blocks as part of that scheduling

00:44:52.760 | form, you're pointing me towards a shared document that has the full briefing and these

00:44:57.760 | are exactly what we need your decision on.

00:45:00.040 | Here's all the information.

00:45:01.040 | Do I have all the information?

00:45:02.040 | Here's all the information you need to make this decision.

00:45:03.760 | Here's what needs to be discussed in the meeting.

00:45:05.840 | And those meetings become more efficient.

00:45:08.920 | I'm telling you, 95% of your interaction could now happen in two and a half to three hours

00:45:12.720 | a day.

00:45:14.340 | Imagine now what that's going to open up for your partner in terms of the thinking he can

00:45:18.720 | do, the strategy, the leadership he can do.

00:45:21.120 | It also frees up a lot of time for the meetings that won't fit in there.

00:45:23.880 | When the CEO is like, we need you to come to the strategy session, when the big client

00:45:29.400 | presentations in town, now you have the breathing room to do those things because your day is

00:45:34.200 | not with these haphazard meetings that are longer than they need to be and too haphazardly

00:45:39.520 | scheduled.

00:45:40.520 | All right.

00:45:41.520 | So, so point them towards me, Sally.

00:45:42.920 | I think his life could be a lot better.

00:45:44.920 | All right.

00:45:46.720 | Here's another question from Glenn.

00:45:48.120 | Ooh, another, it's another husband-wife question.

00:45:52.520 | My wife and I run a small accounting and bookkeeping business.

00:45:56.460 | It's just the two of us.

00:45:58.400 | We deliberately decided when we started, we did not want to manage other people and instead

00:46:03.040 | reverse engineered how much we need to make and what that would look like for client load.

00:46:08.320 | My question is, given the nature of our work, which is repetitive and predictable, what

00:46:13.320 | kind of system would you recommend to track our tasks for each individual client?

00:46:17.520 | And can the task system interface with a calendar?

00:46:20.160 | My ideal system allows for a note section for when I meet with clients, I can store

00:46:23.880 | key information for the individual client.

00:46:26.160 | Again, something self-contained for tasks, deadlines in the calendar, in theory, all

00:46:29.880 | integrated with each other plus notes.

00:46:31.760 | Well, first, Glenn, I like the mini case study in here.

00:46:36.680 | More people should do this.

00:46:37.760 | This is sort of a lifestyle centric career planning type move.

00:46:41.360 | What do we want our life to look like?

00:46:43.720 | What role does work play in that, right?

00:46:45.240 | So you built the business to directly support what you want your life to look like.

00:46:52.080 | Enough clients you don't have to worry, but not so many clients that it's a hassle.

00:46:54.960 | No one you have to manage.

00:46:55.960 | You're really trying to hone in on what's important, what's not.

00:47:00.280 | It's very different than the standard approach of like, how big can I make this business?

00:47:03.840 | Which for most people will just be a lot of stress.

00:47:05.320 | All right.

00:47:06.320 | To your specific question, my concern here, it's not really a concern, but I think you

00:47:10.800 | want a complicated system.

00:47:13.280 | You want some sort of like Zapier enhanced Notion workflow setup that is going to do

00:47:18.660 | everything for you.

00:47:21.560 | This goes here, this automatically goes there, but you're not the right use case for that.

00:47:26.200 | Like when I'm thinking of like a cool Notion workflow, like the use case is usually a situation

00:47:32.760 | where the complexity, the information is very complicated.

00:47:35.480 | There's a lot of information associated with what's going on and you need to be able to

00:47:40.120 | find information and put it in the different views.

00:47:43.480 | So like information rich, information complicated setups are where you want to have these sort

00:47:50.520 | of database driven, customizable data systems, right?

00:47:54.680 | Like our ad agency uses these systems for managing all the advertisers because there's

00:47:59.800 | like a lot of information from these advertisers that they need to work with in different ways.

00:48:04.880 | So like they can show us, for example, a work table where just show Cal and Jesse the advertisement

00:48:13.040 | reads happening for this week's episode.

00:48:15.920 | And here are the scripts for it.

00:48:17.800 | But we can also then say, let me take this advertiser that I'm doing a read for next

00:48:21.720 | week and let me see a break that out now and show me all of the ad reads I've done for

00:48:25.600 | them in the last, let's say six months.

00:48:28.160 | Now, so when you need to be doing these sort of complex interactions with data, these systems

00:48:33.000 | like air table or notion, these integrations can be incredibly useful, but your company's

00:48:37.560 | too simple for that.

00:48:39.080 | It's too simple for it.

00:48:41.120 | Now you could build one of these systems if you like it, but it's not like this is holding

00:48:43.680 | you back.

00:48:44.680 | So like in your case, what would I do?

00:48:47.200 | All right.

00:48:48.200 | You need some sort of a place for holding tasks or information for each client.

00:48:53.560 | Like it could be a Trello board.

00:48:54.560 | It could be a folder on Google drive.

00:48:55.960 | All right.

00:48:56.960 | We know here's what's pending.

00:48:58.600 | Here's like what we're working on right now.

00:49:00.160 | The deadlines, we can attach files to things.

00:49:03.600 | We have notes relevant to the client.

00:49:05.160 | They're all in this one place.

00:49:06.160 | Every client has their own board or directory fine.

00:49:09.640 | Then basically what you need to do, and I know this is not exciting, is have an all

00:49:14.320 | hands on deck meeting, which means you and your wife, Glenn, on Friday afternoon, and

00:49:19.000 | you look through your clients.

00:49:21.120 | What's okay.

00:49:22.120 | What's on their to do list?

00:49:23.120 | What do we finish?

00:49:24.120 | These things are active.

00:49:25.120 | What things need to be done this upcoming week?

00:49:26.120 | And you make your plan for the week.

00:49:27.120 | It's a weekly plan.

00:49:28.120 | And this stuff goes on the calendar or in a weekly plan document.

00:49:31.280 | All right.

00:49:32.280 | This is due this day, this day.

00:49:33.280 | When are we going to do this work?

00:49:34.280 | And maybe you're putting a lot of this work on your calendar.

00:49:36.000 | Like this day, we're working on this client.

00:49:37.440 | We're doing on this.

00:49:38.440 | You kind of build a plan for the week based on looking at what's going on with your clients.

00:49:41.560 | I mean, without too many clients and without complicated data, that's fine.

00:49:46.840 | The only other thing I would add into it, because you noted your work is predictable,

00:49:51.400 | is do autopilot scheduling to the degree possible.

00:49:54.080 | Hey, we always have to file these type of things on the third Friday of every month

00:49:59.560 | for our clients.

00:50:00.560 | Like this is when we do that work.

00:50:03.000 | Thursday morning, we always have four hours blocked off.

00:50:06.760 | And me and my wife sit there and we go through and do all this filing.

00:50:09.280 | Right.

00:50:10.280 | And we've thought about how to make this a little bit more efficient now that we're caught.

00:50:12.800 | So we don't have to think about, oh my God, this client needs this done.

00:50:14.920 | We just know that always happens in this time.

00:50:17.120 | And maybe we have like check-in calls we need to do with various clients.

00:50:20.680 | We like to do them like once a month.

00:50:22.880 | And so we do those Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons and we kind of have a rotate.

00:50:27.880 | We have a way, like those are always calls and we just sit there, we have our coffee,

00:50:31.320 | we go from call to call and we make sure everyone has a recurring call.

00:50:34.560 | So you can have these autopilot schedules for the regular occurring work.

00:50:38.200 | Here's when and how we get it done.

00:50:39.560 | So you don't have to be making decisions.

00:50:41.380 | You don't have to worry about falling behind and realizing something is due and it gives

00:50:44.880 | you a consolidation of like effort so you can look for ways to be more efficient.

00:50:49.040 | So when you have like the same two days, you always see your client calls, you might eventually

00:50:52.360 | build a smarter system for how do we schedule these.

00:50:55.960 | And maybe we want a Calendly and maybe we want a reminder system and you begin to find

00:51:01.360 | efficiencies when you consolidate like work with like work, right?

00:51:05.680 | So I think you need a good place to store information, tasks, and their status for each

00:51:08.600 | client.

00:51:09.600 | You need to do a serious weekly plan, you need like two hours for this every Friday.

00:51:13.800 | This is a big part of your business.

00:51:15.480 | Make a plan for the week or two ahead.

00:51:17.880 | Use some autopilot scheduling for the repetitive work.

00:51:20.080 | That's probably what you need because bookkeeping is, again, it's not a situation where you

00:51:24.120 | have complicated changing data that you necessarily need to see in different views to figure out

00:51:27.800 | what to do.

00:51:28.800 | Let's do one more question.

00:51:33.980 | This one comes from Scott.

00:51:36.640 | Scott says, "What does Cal see in terms of the productivity potential of Apple Vision

00:51:40.680 | Pro as a way to create a virtual shed for a deep work session?"

00:51:46.720 | Well, Scott, I've been writing about this issue for years.

00:51:51.520 | The term I coined for this is immersive single tasking.

00:51:56.380 | The idea of using virtual environments as a way to help increase your focus on working

00:52:01.700 | on a single task.

00:52:04.800 | So I've written about this on my newsletter essay, my blog newsletter for years.

00:52:09.600 | I did some writing on the New Yorker for this.

00:52:11.280 | I did a New Yorker piece back during the pandemic where I worked in a virtual world using a

00:52:17.400 | tool called Immersed, which at the time was the number one productivity app in the Oculus

00:52:23.000 | app store.

00:52:24.000 | And I talked to the founder of Immersed.

00:52:25.640 | It was interesting.

00:52:26.640 | And I did some work in, I guess you would say it's like a pagoda in a sort of mountainous

00:52:34.120 | rainforest with fire pits crackling and the rain falling outside or whatever.

00:52:40.160 | I'm really interested in this idea because we know, I mean, I talk about this a lot in,

00:52:45.360 | look, I'm going to keep holding this up, everyone who's watching, slow productivity.

00:52:48.440 | I talk about this in slow productivity.

00:52:50.920 | Environment matters.

00:52:52.760 | We know this, but environment matters for cognition.

00:52:54.840 | Like the environment you're in can help put you into the right mind state to do certain

00:52:58.920 | types of cognition more focused and more effectively.

00:53:01.320 | And I am really interested in virtual environments being used to try to get this effect.

00:53:07.200 | We're getting close to it.

00:53:08.400 | Like there was a couple of problems I identified early on that have been solved or are being

00:53:13.680 | close to being solved.

00:53:15.840 | So one of these problems was resolution.

00:53:18.720 | You know, if I'm taking notes or whatever, or writing on a whiteboard, solving a math

00:53:23.280 | equation, in the virtual world, I need to see that really high resolution.

00:53:26.360 | I need to be able to read things and write things.

00:53:28.800 | That problem has been solved.

00:53:30.480 | The current generation of VR, as well as sort of AR and MR things like Apple Vision Pro,

00:53:36.160 | it's there.

00:53:37.160 | Like even a couple of years ago when I wrote about this for the New Yorker, that problem

00:53:39.960 | had been solved.

00:53:40.960 | I had three large computer monitors in this virtual world, and I could read them as if

00:53:46.720 | they really were very large computer monitors in the virtual world.

00:53:49.520 | The resolution was there.

00:53:51.620 | The bigger problem is input.

00:53:55.380 | So how do I, if I'm writing, for example, in a virtual world, how do I actually do that

00:54:02.080 | if I can't see my hands?

00:54:03.240 | Like how do I actually get that done?

00:54:06.080 | Here, this is getting solved in a way that is much better than it was a few years ago.

00:54:12.000 | The way Immersed worked, and I never actually got this to work very well, there's a complicated

00:54:16.800 | way of mapping your real keyboard.

00:54:19.840 | You could have your real keyboard in front of you.

00:54:23.080 | Because Immersed was showing, in the virtual world, screens that were coming from your

00:54:27.560 | own laptop.

00:54:28.560 | It was screen sharing from your laptop.

00:54:30.960 | So the VR helmet was creating the virtual world, but the things you were working on

00:54:35.120 | were happening on your laptop.

00:54:36.560 | And you would put the laptop in front of you, but you couldn't see it, because you had a

00:54:39.400 | helmet on.

00:54:40.800 | And they had this way of trying to map the keyboard, where they'd be like, OK, press

00:54:46.880 | the Q key.

00:54:47.880 | I guess it would show you the pass-through camera, and you'd press the different keys,

00:54:50.880 | and it would figure out where in the real space the keyboard was and the keys were.

00:54:55.220 | And then it would show you your virtual hands and the keyboard, a virtual version of the

00:55:00.520 | keyboard that matched up with real world, so you could see your hands and type.

00:55:04.640 | But it was kind of a clunky technology back then, and I never really got it to work very

00:55:08.200 | well.

00:55:09.880 | They're getting much better at that now.

00:55:12.000 | The look forward cameras and something like the Oculus Quest 3 are very high resolution.

00:55:17.120 | They're getting much better at tracking your hands, learning what's in your environment,

00:55:20.880 | like seeing a keyboard, mapping the keyboard, showing where it is.

00:55:24.680 | It can do that more automatically.

00:55:26.160 | The Apple Vision Pro, of course, has the advantage of it's made from the ground up, the mix virtual

00:55:30.520 | with the real world.

00:55:32.580 | So it could take your real desk and then change all the background around it.

00:55:40.040 | So you see your desk and your computer in front of you, but the sound and view is as

00:55:46.040 | if your desk and your computer is at the top of Mount Everest, and it's blowing snow all

00:55:51.000 | around.

00:55:52.000 | So then you can literally see what you're doing there.

00:55:53.280 | So this problem is being solved as well.

00:55:54.920 | So I think we're reaching the point where immersive single tasking, technically speaking,

00:55:59.400 | will have most of the main issues worked out.

00:56:01.720 | Now it's just a sort of cultural habit practice, like will this actually work?

00:56:06.920 | Will this actually, when I can type and work seamlessly, but I'm in a fantastical environment,

00:56:14.080 | will it help me focus better?

00:56:15.340 | Will it help me come up with more creative insights?

00:56:17.000 | And we'll see.

00:56:19.000 | The main thing I learned from that New Yorker piece is the thing that is going to drive

00:56:23.400 | innovation in this category is actually not people wanting to focus, it's people who want

00:56:27.800 | more monitors.

00:56:29.660 | That's why I have faith that we're going to at least give immersive single tasking a good

00:56:34.220 | trial run, is people like having lots of monitors.

00:56:39.280 | And this is something you can offer in virtual workspaces.

00:56:42.520 | This was why Immersed was the number one productivity app, not because people wanted to work deeply,

00:56:46.880 | but because they were at home during the pandemic, they were computer developers, and they were

00:56:50.280 | used to having two giant monitors at work, and at home they only had their MacBook Air.

00:56:54.240 | And when they went into the Immersed world, they could have two giant monitors.

00:56:58.140 | Some people would have up to five monitors.

00:56:59.880 | I saw setups in Immersed where they had one, two, three, four giant monitors and a fifth

00:57:04.620 | up top.

00:57:05.620 | They'd look up to see it.

00:57:07.360 | So it was making people more productive because they wanted their multiple monitors and you

00:57:10.740 | could have them in the virtual world.

00:57:12.700 | But when we're enjoying that benefit, we're going to be experimenting for free with the

00:57:19.080 | additional benefit of, I don't know, if I'm on top of the clock tower at Hogwarts, maybe

00:57:25.800 | I'm writing a better chapter of my fiction book than my one-bedroom apartment.

00:57:33.080 | Or when I'm trying to solve a math equation, if I'm in the Great Hall at Oxford working

00:57:37.800 | on a virtual whiteboard, maybe I'm going to actually get into a flow state easier than

00:57:45.200 | if I'm in my WeWork and just looking around at the different cubicles.

00:57:49.160 | So Scott, I'm interested in immersive single tasking.

00:57:53.080 | Multiple multi-monitors is what's going to be the killer app that pulls people into virtual

00:57:56.960 | working.

00:57:58.400 | But whether they find this extra side effect of the virtual environment being more conducive

00:58:02.840 | to focusing, we'll wait to see.

00:58:04.040 | I want to try this out more too.

00:58:05.360 | I should get a Vision Pro.

00:58:06.600 | I should get a new request.

00:58:07.640 | I haven't worked with this stuff recently, but I think I should.

00:58:10.040 | All right.

00:58:11.040 | That's all I have for questions.

00:58:12.680 | No calls today because, I don't know, Jesse knows how to do that.

00:58:14.760 | I don't know how to do that.

00:58:15.760 | But keep the calls coming.

00:58:16.760 | We'll normally do them.

00:58:18.120 | We got a final segment coming up, the books I read in March.

00:58:20.440 | But first, I want to briefly mention another sponsor that makes this show possible.

00:58:26.040 | That's our longtime sponsors and good friends at ZocDoc.

00:58:29.080 | ZocDoc is not only fun to say, it is also a free app and website where you can search

00:58:35.000 | and compare highly rated in-network doctors near you and instantly book appointments with

00:58:41.440 | them online.

00:58:44.960 | We talk a lot about high technology on this podcast, so I'm often surprised by how primitive

00:58:48.520 | it is to actually set up and find healthcare appointments.

00:58:52.480 | It's a lot of like calling people whose websites you found on Google and they're not taking

00:58:57.560 | appointments or they don't take your insurance or they do, but that's because they're terrible

00:59:02.120 | and no one likes to work with them.

00:59:03.520 | And it's so primitive unless you use ZocDoc.

00:59:06.600 | With ZocDoc now, you can just search.

00:59:08.640 | I'm looking for this type of healthcare provider in my area, takes my insurance, looking for

00:59:14.680 | new appointments.

00:59:15.680 | Oh, here, here, here, and here.

00:59:16.680 | Boom, right there.

00:59:17.680 | Now, let me look at the reviews.

00:59:18.720 | There's real verified user reviews on ZocDoc.

00:59:20.680 | Do people like this doctor?

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00:59:22.800 | Great.

00:59:23.800 | Now, let me book.

00:59:24.800 | Oh, I can do it right now online.

00:59:25.800 | Now, I did the math, two different doctors right now who use ZocDoc.

00:59:31.520 | It not only helps you find them, they also use the software to help you do like the pre-appointment

00:59:35.560 | paperwork.

00:59:36.560 | So you can just get that done before you show up.

00:59:39.240 | It is the right way to seek out and set up healthcare appointments in our current age.

00:59:45.120 | It's one of these ideas that it's surprising why this wasn't just here at like the very

00:59:48.640 | beginning of the internet.

00:59:50.160 | Who knows?

00:59:51.160 | But it is here now and ZocDoc does it right.

00:59:54.440 | ZocDoc is a smart idea.

00:59:57.420 | So go to ZocDoc.com/deep and download the ZocDoc app for free.

01:00:02.480 | Then you go ahead and find a book, a top-rated doctor today.

01:00:06.440 | That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com/deep, ZocDoc.com/deep.

01:00:13.200 | I also want to talk about our friends at Notion.

01:00:18.440 | Look, if you run a business or your personal setup is one in which you have sort of complicated

01:00:26.360 | information that links together in different ways that you need to view in different ways,

01:00:30.640 | Notion is absolutely the best in the business tool for making customized information workflows.

01:00:38.120 | You can combine your notes, your documents, and your projects all together in one beautiful

01:00:42.480 | space.

01:00:43.480 | I even talked about Notion earlier in this episode where I talked about how our ad agency

01:00:47.540 | for the podcast uses it in a beautiful way that allows us, for example, to say, "Show

01:00:53.520 | me all the ads for this episode.

01:00:55.000 | Okay, here's this advertiser here.

01:00:57.240 | Show me all the ads we've done for this advertiser.

01:00:59.720 | Show me all the other advertisers that have this similar attribute."

01:01:02.200 | We get these different ways of working with the data and seeing what we need to see, and

01:01:06.280 | I love the customizability of it.

01:01:08.400 | It's a big idea for my books, like A World Without Email, that you need to build sort

01:01:12.340 | of custom systems and workflows.

01:01:14.840 | Don't just like rock and roll on email and just try to make things work out.

01:01:17.320 | So Notion is fantastic.

01:01:18.320 | But why are we talking about them today?

01:01:20.340 | Because they have a new feature, which I'm really excited about, and this is Notion Q&A,

01:01:29.640 | which uses AI as an AI assistant that helps you answer questions or search for information

01:01:37.280 | inside your existing Notion setup.

01:01:42.160 | So it is a fantastic use of AI.

01:01:44.520 | I'm very interested in these sort of what they call vertical AI applications, where

01:01:48.440 | you're using AI to solve a very specific problem.

01:01:51.600 | And here the problem is, look, I got all this different information spread out in different

01:01:55.040 | formats and they're shown in different views.

01:01:57.440 | And now let's say I have a question like, wait, where's next quarter's roadmap?

01:02:01.800 | Or what about the, I'm looking for the marketing proposal from two months ago that was sent

01:02:06.720 | by this client.

01:02:08.520 | The Notion Q&A AI can just find this stuff for you.

01:02:12.720 | It understands your information and can help you in seconds, dig up that information you

01:02:17.560 | need.

01:02:19.040 | So now you have like the carefully constructed data views that you've built in your Notion,

01:02:23.420 | but you can get information that's not in one of these views or that you forgot where

01:02:27.240 | it is very easily.

01:02:28.520 | It's like this extra little nudge that makes Notion just super useful, right?

01:02:34.640 | So the type of question you might normally turn to a coworker to answer, you just ask

01:02:37.880 | Q&A instead.

01:02:39.420 | You could ask these questions from anywhere in Notion, find exactly what you need without

01:02:43.840 | even having to leave the dock, for example, that you're looking at right now.

01:02:47.240 | And fortunately, you can trust your data is secure because Notion AI is designed to protect

01:02:51.280 | your information.

01:02:53.360 | No AI models are trained on your information.

01:02:56.120 | Your data is encrypted and answers given to you will never be used, will never use information

01:03:01.720 | from pages you don't have access to.

01:03:05.040 | So try Notion AI for free when you go to notion.com/cal, now this is all lower case letters, notion.com/cal

01:03:16.920 | we try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today, when you use our link, you'll be supporting

01:03:21.920 | our show.

01:03:22.920 | So remember, all lowercase letters, notion.com/cal.

01:03:25.780 | All right, now let's move on to our final segment of the show.

01:03:34.740 | This podcast is coming out on April 1, so let's talk about the books I read in March

01:03:38.320 | 2024.

01:03:39.320 | As long time listeners know, I aim to read five books a month and yes, that's what I

01:03:45.200 | did in March.

01:03:46.200 | It was kind of a weird month because I was traveling a lot, a lot of like big books that

01:03:50.500 | I half read and then actually I'm finishing in April.

01:03:55.100 | But anyways, it's an interesting, I ended up with an eclectic list of books for March.

01:04:00.120 | The first was A Short History of England by Simon Jenkins.

01:04:03.320 | I put the word short in quotation marks, it's not exactly a short book, England, it turns

01:04:08.600 | out has a long history, but I wanted to know more about it.

01:04:12.400 | And it was interesting.

01:04:13.400 | It's also, I'll tell you this, like from the American perspective, we're used to our own

01:04:17.520 | history having a relatively simple triumphant list core of we had this revolution based

01:04:24.240 | in these ideals and like we lived happily ever after.

01:04:27.480 | England's history is messy.

01:04:30.200 | It's kings, foreign invaders, tension and wars between like the kings and the people

01:04:40.840 | who were given land from the last foreign invaders who don't like the new kings, a lot

01:04:45.200 | of capriciousness and arbitrariness.

01:04:47.000 | And yet somehow out of all this messiness and ugliness, what emerged in England, and

01:04:50.880 | this is the point Jenkins makes, I thought this was interesting, different than other

01:04:53.520 | places in Europe.

01:04:54.520 | What emerged in England was this like carefully balanced tension between the people and the

01:04:59.680 | monarch and the people for a while, meaning the earls, but then eventually a house of

01:05:03.800 | commons as well.

01:05:05.720 | And they didn't really trust each other and they kind of kept each other in this sort

01:05:08.560 | of messy check in a way where power was way more absolute in other places like monarchical

01:05:14.480 | power.

01:05:15.480 | I thought that was interesting.

01:05:17.200 | It's a messier history, but the messiness actually became a feature, not a bug.

01:05:22.560 | It is why when post-American revolution, you have these sort of revolutionary movements

01:05:27.080 | across the world.

01:05:30.120 | England sort of survives this in a very prosaic way without major reform.

01:05:33.400 | They're not cutting off the heads of kings.

01:05:34.760 | They did do that, but that was in the 17th century.

01:05:37.760 | They're not toppling monarchy and starting a republic and then having that get toppled,

01:05:42.080 | have an emperor come in.

01:05:43.080 | The messiness actually created enough sort of self-regulating, self-reinforcing loops

01:05:49.400 | that they were able to basically kind of adjust and tweak and get through that.

01:05:53.520 | So it's an interesting history, but a long one.

01:05:57.680 | Next book I read was Brian Keating's book Into the Impossible.

01:06:01.520 | Into the Impossible is the name of Brian Keating's podcast as well, which I went on to talk about

01:06:05.640 | slow productivity.

01:06:06.640 | It's a cool interview.

01:06:07.640 | I went for it.

01:06:09.020 | Brian Keating, Into the Impossible.

01:06:10.640 | Brian's an astronomer.

01:06:11.640 | He's at UCSD, an astronomer who also has a public-facing podcast.

01:06:17.200 | This was a cool book.

01:06:19.920 | What I liked about this book, I told Brian this, it's like more people should do this.

01:06:23.480 | He looked in his field.

01:06:24.480 | He's a physicist.

01:06:25.480 | He's like, I'm going to interview seven Nobel prize winners and just learn from them.

01:06:33.080 | What's interesting that they learn?

01:06:34.340 | What interesting advice do they have?

01:06:36.320 | That's the book.

01:06:37.320 | And I told Brian, there should be more books like this.

01:06:41.600 | More like, this is my field, and I've talked to like seven people who are very notable

01:06:45.480 | in this field, and here's wisdom from it.

01:06:46.880 | Let's not lose it.

01:06:47.880 | What did they learn?

01:06:48.880 | There should be a cool series, Barnes and Noble and Amazon, and you just see these monographs.

01:06:55.280 | It's magazine writers.

01:06:56.680 | It's tech CEOs.

01:06:58.040 | Whatever the different areas are, and it's volume three.

01:07:02.240 | Tim Ferriss did some books like this, but there should be more like this, I think.

01:07:06.120 | We don't have to be fancy here.

01:07:08.640 | Tell me about science in your life, and you want a Nobel, like why and how and what's

01:07:12.360 | important in reflecting it.

01:07:13.600 | Let's extract your wisdom.

01:07:15.760 | A quick read, but a good book.

01:07:18.360 | Then I read Sharon Brous, B-R-U-O-U-S's book, The Amin Effect.

01:07:26.220 | So Sharon is a rabbi in the Los Angeles area who started this Jewish fellowship that is,

01:07:33.160 | I don't quite know how to describe it.

01:07:35.720 | It's progressive, but not necessarily in a political sense, though it is, but more in

01:07:39.920 | a religious practices sense.

01:07:41.320 | It's much more emotionally forward.

01:07:46.160 | They dance a lot.

01:07:47.280 | It's a more emotionally salient Judaism.

01:07:49.760 | Anyway, she wrote this book about the Amin effect, talking about essentially, it's based

01:07:56.000 | on the idea of Amin and how this is something that's meant to be said together and about

01:08:00.280 | people coming together to deal with the hardship and challenges and joys of life.

01:08:05.360 | It's a really cool theme, and she has a lot of good theology on it and a lot of good polling

01:08:09.680 | from her own experience, and it was a cool book.

01:08:11.920 | The one thing I will say, I don't know if this is good or bad, I'm just going to say,

01:08:15.560 | is throughout the book, 80% of the examples, it's all her dealing with congregants that

01:08:23.920 | are coping with unexpected and tragic death.

01:08:28.760 | So it's very powerful on the one hand, but on the other hand, you would maybe be looking

01:08:35.520 | for more of a broadness, because in our age of social media, internet isolation, there's

01:08:42.560 | such power in this idea of real community built on real sacrifice, something I talk

01:08:47.000 | about all the time, and how this gets to the core of humanity.

01:08:52.040 | But it's also heavy because it's all about the deepest tragedy in this book, that it

01:08:56.240 | can maybe accidentally create a sense of remove from the advice for your own life if you're

01:09:01.480 | not dealing with a tragic death, and yet you could still benefit from more of a communitarian

01:09:06.920 | approach to socialization.

01:09:08.380 | So if you can kind of get past a little of that darkness, it's a very smart book and

01:09:11.440 | she's a good writer.

01:09:12.440 | Then I read CS Forrester's Sink the Bismarck.

01:09:16.440 | I love CS Forrester's book, The Good Shepherd.

01:09:18.560 | I talked about it on the show.

01:09:19.840 | I think it's like the original techno thriller, beautifully written, it's like an auteur

01:09:24.400 | type of work, all looking at one character, following them real time, it's just a fantastically

01:09:30.560 | written book.

01:09:31.560 | I'm actually looking now for a first edition hardcover of The Good Shepherd because I want

01:09:37.080 | to have it as an artifact, as like one of the first true techno thrillers, like American

01:09:41.480 | techno thrillers.

01:09:42.480 | I know people look at Verne and Wells, but like modern form techno thriller.

01:09:47.420 | So I read this other book, Sink the Bismarck, about the sinking of the battleship, the Bismarck.

01:09:51.080 | I was like, "Let's try this."

01:09:52.080 | It wasn't as good.

01:09:53.680 | It was more disjointed and kind of all over the place and didn't have the rigor of this

01:09:59.360 | perspective narrator rigor and the following and the creation of mood.

01:10:04.800 | So I like The Good Shepherd all the more highly because I think Sink the Bismarck was not

01:10:09.880 | so good.

01:10:10.880 | And then finally, I read Adam Grant's book, Hidden Potential.

01:10:14.280 | I hadn't read Grant in a little while and I talked to him, I did his show, which I recommend

01:10:17.840 | everyone listen to my interview with Adam Grant, talking about slow productivity.

01:10:20.920 | I like Adam a lot.

01:10:21.920 | I just want to catch up on what he's up to.

01:10:24.760 | So Hidden Potential is a classic Grant, you know, drawing from the social psych research

01:10:29.620 | to get at this question of like, how do you unlock your internal potential?

01:10:34.420 | Like what Adam's very good at is here's like the four different ways the research has emerged

01:10:39.720 | that are relevant to this topic.

01:10:41.900 | And let's get into each of those.

01:10:43.260 | I'll give you really good stories, make it seem really applicable.

01:10:46.280 | 30% of the research is his own typically, which is always very impressive.

01:10:50.660 | There's a reason why Adam Grant's books just dominate, like he's sort of taken over that

01:10:54.680 | niche.

01:10:55.680 | I think Gladwell gave it up when he went to work on his podcasting company.

01:11:01.960 | I don't know who else was there, but this niche, I mean, I think Adam Grant is just

01:11:05.600 | the pretender to the throne who has won.

01:11:07.880 | If you want science research, pulling lessons that are like relevant to your life, business,

01:11:14.000 | but also not necessarily business, made accessible, story driven, but with a deep understanding

01:11:19.000 | of the research, he's like killing it with that format.

01:11:21.800 | So way to go, Adam.

01:11:23.560 | Classic Adam Grant book.

01:11:24.560 | All right.

01:11:25.560 | Well, anyways, that's all the time we have today.

01:11:26.720 | We made it.

01:11:27.720 | I don't like doing Jesse-free episodes, but we made it through, but I'm excited for him

01:11:30.720 | to be back next week.

01:11:32.320 | Keep in mind that April 11th date when Jesse and I will be recording a live podcast at

01:11:37.280 | People's Book in Tacoma Park.

01:11:40.160 | Be back next week with another episode.

01:11:42.120 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

01:11:44.200 | Hey, so if you enjoyed our discussion today, I think you might also like episode 275, which

01:11:50.800 | gives a general system for achieving hard goals.

01:11:55.920 | So check that out.

01:11:57.760 | So the question I want to dive into today is how do you follow through on transformative

01:12:03.600 | goals?

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