Hey, Cal, my name is Matthew, and I currently work in information security. This is an industry right now that's rife with burnout, and certainly doesn't help that my current employer employs the hyperactive hive mind workflow, which of course has only gotten worse since the pandemic began. So as you can imagine, there's a sabbatical on the horizon for me.

But my question is, once I'm ready to get back to it, what are some tips to find companies that aren't utilizing the hyperactive hive mind? Or maybe the better question would be, how do I make sure my next boss is a Cal Newport fan? Thanks. Well, yeah, I mean, you certainly should demand that of any boss that you talk to.

You're like, are you a Cal Newport fan? And if not, may God have mercy on your soul. I think that's the way you should talk about it. Or it's a good question. It's a good question because it's the issue here, the boss or the job. There's not a lot of people right now that are aggressively trying to bypass the hyperactive hive mind as a specific goal.

There's more. There's more. I have been talking about my latest book, A World Without Email, a lot of C-suite events. There's definitely a shift going on out there, but it's still pretty rare. So if you're looking for a boss, who's going to talk in terms of how do we avoid unpaid work, how do we avoid unnecessary context shifts, how do we build out better systems to avoid hyperactive hive mind style ad hoc coordination?

There's not that many people talking about it. So what you might be looking for is a job description that allows you to bypass the hyperactive hive mind. And really what you're probably looking for there is autonomy. But maybe what you're looking for is a position that is more results oriented, that is going to give you the leeway, therefore, to essentially structure your own communication protocols.

All right, I work on this, then this. Let's touch base on Mondays. I'll deliver by Fridays or whatever it is. So having more autonomy in the job gives you the option of engineering a work life that is free from the hyperactive hive mind. Probably going to be your better bet right now.

If you're worried about the hive mind, you should be. More autonomous type jobs is going to give you the opportunity to have more of that freedom. Your second bet is to look for a boss that is flexible. And reasonable. And so what I'm looking for here is someone who maybe they're not thinking about these issues, but if you deployed some of the tricks I've talked about, deep to shallow work ratios, talking about attention residue and trying to get by it, they might change their mind or adjust.

And you can usually tell that pretty quickly when you talk to a boss if there's a lot of ego involved. If there's a lot of I'm really looking around to make sure that no one is threatening my sense of self or threatening my position, if you're seeing that going on, that's trouble, but there seems they're reasonable.

They're confident, but humble. They really just want to enable their workers to get the best work done. So like a really reasonable, flexible person. And then you can probably start to have these careful conversations. Here's deep work, here's shallow work, both is important. How much deep work should I be doing?

Oh, geez, I can't really do that. So what changes can we make so we can hit that number we agreed on? Those type of conversations become pretty reasonable. You might literally give them a world without email, just so you have a shared vocabulary. Hey, this is interesting. I don't agree with all of it.

But this is interesting. That, by the way, is the trick. That is the trick if you want to give anyone advice from a book or an article that you want them to follow and you agree with it. Just say, I don't agree with all of it. And then boom, they're right on your side.

And then you have the shared vocabulary, the shared ideas. That's not a bad idea. So those are your two options. Either lean into autonomy and then build up a really non-hyperactive approach to your work. How you communicate with the world and track your efforts. Or look for a reasonable boss.

They might not know anything about the Hive Mind. They might be sending emails left and right, but they seem like the type of person that could pretty quickly be open to the idea that maybe there's a better way.