All right. So we have a question here from Caroline. Let's see what we got there. So Caroline asks, how would you teach students not to buy into the hyperactive hive mind? She says, I work as a lecturer in academia in the UK, and the students we have are constantly emailing for support rather than finding out information for themselves.

So Caroline, typically my recommendation there is sender filters. So that's an idea from my book, Deep Work. But essentially, you have various communication channels that each come with a description of how they should be used. And then you just give this information to the people that are going to be interacting with you.

So with students, I think this is quite straightforward. You can be pretty clear about it. OK, for this type of question, this is how you ask it, for this, this is how you ask it. This should happen at office hours. This you can take me-- I have 10 minutes right after class.

These type of quick questions, that's when you should ask me those type of quick questions, et cetera. You just have clarity. Here are the different ways to contact me or the staff. Here are what you should expect and how it actually works. The big fear people have is that, well, it's going to really annoy people.

They'd much rather have constant access. For the most part, that's not true. Clarity trumps accessibility. That's one of the primary ideas behind a lot of my dealing with digital communications. As long as I know how to contact you, and it's not up in the air, and I'm not stressed, I need an answer, and I don't even know if Caroline's going to respond or not.

As long as there's clarity, oh, this is when I ask these type of questions. Here's how it works. Great, I don't have to worry about that anymore. People tend to be OK. Then you'll have 2% of people who will be mad. But here's the thing, Caroline. 2% of people are going to be mad at you no matter what you do.

So you might as well get that madness in exchange for something really worth it. So just be really clear for this type of communication. Here's how it works. When people go around that, you just push them back gently towards the thing that you've planned in advance. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)