Cal Newport:

A World Without Email

episode 135

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to the moonshots podcast. It's episode 135. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. That's right. The fastest gun in the west when it comes to email mark. Good morning. Good morning, Mike. That was good. That was a good one. I like that the, the fastest gun in the west sending all the emails, but I hope that when I do send those emails, it's with a litter sense and a little bit of a mind inefficient.

Oh, efficiency, intentionality.  We're in for a huge change up  after our fabulous rising star series. Mark, where are we going today? Well today, Mike, where are you going to a classic moonshots hero of ours? I suppose, an individual that we've, we've covered. We've done a series on before, back in the day, we've constantly referenced a lot of his tips, [00:01:00] tricks, hacks, and advice for living an efficient life.

And that is author and professor Cal Newport and his brand new book (buy on Amazon), which came out in March, 2021, a world without email dun dun dun. Impossible. Awesome. All of that, that thing is everywhere. Isn't it? My, yeah, it is. And, and, you know, the rest of the title for the book, re-imagining work in an age of communication overload.

I mean, whoa, there's this, that's, that's a good teaser for the entire show information and communication overload. I mean, I feel like I'm living that every. Yeah, I I'm really glad he wrote this book and what it promises for both of us and all of our listeners is we, again, to go deep into email and we are going to try and get on top of this thing, because I think it's on top of us.

Don't you mark? Yeah, it really is. And like you said, at the beginning of the show, it's, it's a totally [00:02:00] new direction for us. We've recently covered, you know, Abby and tarlob and Joe Rogan. And previous to that, we've done a series on John Peterson. These are a lot of, a lot of tips and inspiration and the pivot today I'm really excited about because it's very, very close to my heart and it's very relatable, this feeling of having lots and lots of things.

On your kind of virtual to-do list informed by email. I mean, I'm, I'm in need of this episode, Mike I'm in need to go and find out what a world without email could be like. Well, that's great because I know you have admitted previously on the show that  email, do you have a bit of a weak spot when it comes to email?

Would that be? I really, I really do. You know, more so than social media  more so than anything else, digital, I think my addiction listeners is to email it is to this idea of constantly [00:03:00] checking when I'm out and about when I'm at my desk, when I'm  you know, transporting myself from place to place. I, this idea of constantly having a connection to my projects and the customers and the clients and the teammates for me feels needed.

But the truth is as we'll dig into today in today's episode, Is is questioning whether that is the case. Am I efficient because I'm checking my emails all the time. Let's find out. Well, look, I think the  the, the first principle here is that if you were to do a personal audit of your productivity, how you use email would be the first thing you do for any modern knowledge worker.

Even if you're not a knowledge worker, I'm sure email plays a big role. So today we're going to look at how email has sort of snuck up and, you know, kind of as an [00:04:00] outlier has become the central backbone of modern day work yet. I'm not sure it was really designed to do that. And there's a whole lot of bad habits, challenges, struggles that we have with email as a result.

And it plays a much bigger context into how we spend our time, our attention, our intention, and it's a chance for us. If we want to be the best version of ourselves, we've got to get in control of the beast of email and Cal Newport. One of our favorite moon shot gurus is going to lead us through it. So stay tuned.

Where do we begin this journey into this nasty thing? Exactly. It's, it's a nasty thing, but actually there's a lesson and a thread beneath all of this that I think Cal's going to take us on and help us understand which exists even beyond this, this concept of email. And this first clip we're going to have here is from Cal Newport himself.

Introducing us to what ad hoc communication is. The title of the book would be a [00:05:00] common fantasy for a lot of people in today's world. What do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, this was the joke with my publisher was that the book was going to be shelved in the fantasy section at the bookstore once they saw the title.

 It does seem like a fantasy Intel. We elaborate a little bit what I mean by email, in that title. And when it turns out that I don't mean the technology of email, like those protocols will go away. We all have to send faxes again when it turns out that's not what I mean, but what I mean. A style of work.

That's just driven by ongoing ad hoc communication. Suddenly it seems a lot less fantastical, I hope. And it seems a lot more, not just aspirational but necessary. And when was it for you that this came onto your radar, that instant messaging using platforms like slack and email were becoming a problem?

Well, so all the way back in 2016, that's when I published a book called deep work. And in deep work, I was talking about the [00:06:00] importance of undistracted focus and it was really helping individuals. Like how do you train your ability to focus, make sure that you respect your ability to focus. It's really important for doing a lot of knowledge work.

I was kind of dismissive in that book about why we didn't have a lot of focus work. I said, yeah, we're, we're on email too much. And, and we've become distracted. We've, we've lost sight of how important focus is I naively thought, oh, once people learn. Undistracted work is pretty valuable. We could just change the way we run our organizations.

And what became immediately clear when that book came out is that this way of working that requires us to be constantly tending all of these communication channels as deeply, deeply entrenched and it's systemic and causing a huge issue in the end is much deeper than just, oh, we had some bad habits. So I started working on this book.

It must've been almost immediately after deep work came out because when I went back and looked at my original research notebooks for this book, all right. Original notes and interviews come from 2016. So I've really been working on this for over four [00:07:00] years. Well, he has done some deep work. Hasn't he been working on this for four, four or five years, man.

You know, the thing I want to pull out of that clip is the systemic problem. Okay. So for me, what was really interesting is Cal saying, well, look, you know, I thought, Hey, I wrote this big book on deep book. Like folks, go get focused and do the deep work. But what he's kind of saying, that's not enough. And you and I celebrate deep work a lot on the show.

Don't worry. We've spoken about people work a lot. It's certainly how I know both of us structure our days. And I think the reason for that, at least for me is  the, the focus, you know, I am very guilty. Being distracted by external forces. And that could be a text, a call, an email, whatever it might be.

And that's enough for [00:08:00] me to suddenly blow my complete focus and then I'll lose lots of time trying to get back into that, that initial line of thought. Right? So, so because Cal has written about deep work let's, let's put this world without email and deep work together to make the case for the systemic problem that we all face.

If I carve out two or three hour block to really tackle something, let's say I need to ride a masterclass. Let's say we're drafting a playbook for product discovery for a client. And this really needs deep attention. I will carve out this time. I will turn off every mode of distraction. I'll lock myself in the study.

 The door is closed, the lights are deemed, and I go into the main, I [00:09:00] generally find doing this in the morning is best. And so. This is my shot at doing deep work and deep work. If you can plan several of those moments within the week, you know, in my case, I'm pretty happy I can deliver the things that I need to do.

 Now what's really quite interesting is Cal thought, helping people do something like I just explained, like having a really deep session, finding all the practices that you need to have to get the most out of that he thought that would be enough. But what he has realized in the context of his book, a world without email is that there is a much broader systematic sister systemic problem.

Here's what it is. It's even if I do that deeper, I am working across three major continents and time zones. So I receive emails from Asia emails from the U S and emails from  Europe. I am working across 250 plus [00:10:00] employees.  I produce a couple of podcasts. I do a thing or two I'm involved in some community things.

So there is a ton of messages and notifications that surround the deep work that I just mentioned. And what cow's saying is the very inspirational work that he did. Very insightful work he did around deep work, and we've actually done a full breakdown on deep work and many of these other books. So go check out that back catalog@moonshots.io.

If you're interested. But back to the context and the systemic problem is that even if I've done that deep work, I'm getting pinned a million different ways. I am getting notifications, text messages and emails and phone calls. And this is the context of what we call ad hoc communication. And the result of me spinning all those plates of communication [00:11:00] means the thing that is at risk here is my focus.

The thing that is  more larger here is the attention that I have for my work, because I'm jumping from thing to thing. And I think the journey that we're going on mark is that you and I, and all of our listeners, all the moonshot is we're going to work out how to get control of this raging beast of not only email, but everything that is fighting to distract us, to take us away from deep work, from work that matters.

I mean, that is a real promise. Isn't it? That's an exciting concept to try and crack down and listeners, if you are interested in wanting to find out more about county Newport, we've got  an episode on deep work. His book deep work was episode 15, eight, digital minimalism, 59. So good. They can't ignore you episode 60.

And becoming a straight a student 61, but Mike we're really [00:12:00] focusing on the deep work and, and to a certain extent, maybe digital minimalism has some crossovers with the world without email as well. Yeah, it really does. So mark lead us through this journey  of salvation. How do we arise above email?

Where do we start? Well, I like to begin with, with kind of day one, maybe it's my background in history. So before we get into figuring out how we can rectify the situation of focus and email's getting in the way, let's actually start from hearing from Cal, why email took over so fast and understand a little bit about the history of it.

Can you talk a little bit about when email really came onto the scene and how it's evolved since then it came fast. I think that's one of the interesting things I uncovered and the way I studied this actually is I went back into the New York times as business section archive and found every article that mentioned the word email [00:13:00] in any configuration of the term email.

And it changed over time. And so you could see it sporadically appearing as late as the late 1980s, they would put the word email in quotation marks it wouldn't, it would be a capital E desk mail in quotation marks. As late as the late 1980s, they were saying things like, well, this technology is around, but it didn't really live up to what we thought the promise would be.

You get to the 1990 to 1995, as you mentioned, there was this very rapid, very rapid increase where suddenly email becomes this huge mark. It becomes a half billion dollar a year market in just a couple years, it gets labeled the clear killer app of the 1990s. It goes from articles in the late 1980s where they're explaining to people what email is to 1995.

This is one of the, if not the killer app of the entire decade, and one of the most important pieces of software of the entire decade, they said it's spreadsheets in the eighties, email in the nineties. So this is important to [00:14:00] understand. It came really fast and when it came, it took over everywhere. And one of the arguments I make is that it came so rapidly that we didn't really have time to step back and say, huh, how should we use this tool?

What are the side effects of having this tool available? Will this change the way we work? Let's think through like, what's the right way to integrate this low friction communication to what we're already doing. None of that thinking happened. It just rushed through the business sector, incredibly fast overhauled the way we were working.

Often in ways that no one was really planning often in ways, it wasn't intentional. It just took over and transformed all of our lives more or less without our friends. Oh my gosh. When you put it in that context, this is like Corona virus of, of work is just kind of spread without our permission or intention.

Isn't it? Yeah. That's why I like the way that he breaks down this. Albeit it could be a really boring topic. Isn't there the history of [00:15:00] email, but actually it's fascinating. It got introduced as a kind of digital tool. Nobody really knew about it. And within five years from the early nineties to 95, it became huge and people didn't really maybe understand what was going on around them as it was growing in usage and becoming, as he says so huge without our permission suddenly it's now something that 20 years later we're still using.

 Increasingly every, every year upon year it's, it's fascinating how much it got adopted and actually the impact that it ended up having on all of us is, is possibly still being found well. Yeah, I mean, let's put it in some, some contexts like the  we've got some great stats around how pervasive email has become  the average office worker receives 121 emails a day.

I just want you to imagine if you, in your letterbox [00:16:00] at home, you got 121 envelopes right now and you'd be like, what the hell?  I think that's, that's really interesting.  Check this out.  Most people obviously check their email daily, but 19% of people and mark, you might need to confess, this might be you 19% check their email as soon as it hits.

The box. Yep. I'm definitely one of those 19%. Can you imagine how distracted that gets you? Oh my gosh.    And check this out. 9% of us workers constantly check work email outside of working hours. So it's evening with family, with friends, it's the weekend with the kids or doing something like some exercise or whatever.

9% of us workers constantly, constantly check their work email outside of work hours. So here is something that was never designed to be the beating heart of [00:17:00] business. And not only is it the main tool, but it's running rampant through our lives. Yeah. Well, it is the classic definition of a, of an addiction, right?

Like, say your you're on your weekend. You're relaxing your hanging with your family, your kids, and you're distracted. You're putting yourself, remember this is statistics based on choice. You know, people don't have to check their work emails as well. Mostly you don't have to check your email outside of working hours, but you are inclined to you feel as though it's the right thing to do.

And that I think is it's kind of like an addiction, isn't it? You constantly want to be almost reassured when I check my emails on the weekend or in the evening in the evenings, after I've closed the laptop and I'll go on my iPad or phone, I'll be doing it for, for relief. I'll be looking for reassurance that something hasn't come in that needs immediate time.

So I'll be referring back [00:18:00] to it thinking, okay, well, I wonder let's just double check. Let's just make sure that so-and-so got what they needed. Let's make sure that the email I sent wasn't causing any confusion and it's the referring back to it consistently, I think is where that inefficiency can start to come from.

Well, let's, let's just put this in context of this systemic problem that we face is the average user. Okay. So now I'm going to jump away from email for a second. And another thing that's taking over people, those lives is how often do you think the average user checks Facebook a day mark? Oh, it's gotta be more than twice.

Maybe two, three times. I reckon. 13 to eight times. I didn't now listeners. That was a, that was a genuine reaction. I didn't know that that [00:19:00] was, that was how, yeah, so here's the thing. This is why this systemic problem is so important to get on top of.  Because we're just, I mean, we are getting blitzed here  from every, from left, from right from top, from bottom.

And, you know, we have talked about  in the echo total show of the monkey mind, right? So the mind has a habit of, you know, running away with things with all of this stimulus. It is gonna go bonkers and it's going to be very hard to do focus, work, and cow has some thoughts on that. So let's have a listen to Cal Newport and the context of his brand new book, a world without email.

Let's listen to him talking about the hyperactive hive mind by 2000. Yeah. You have people complaining about overload? It did not take very long before. We felt completely overwhelmed by the amount of email that we were answering. It was in the ma of this newly emergent email overwhelm [00:20:00] that we then throw smartphones into the picture.

And what this did is it extended the temporal boundaries of this hyper communicative approach to work so that now you could be a part of all this back and forth before you got to the office, you could be a part of all this back and forth when you're home in the evening on the weekends, when you're at your kid's soccer games on vacation.

And so it was a really unfortunate, I think, coming together of technologies because we got this workflow, which I call the hyperactive hive, mind, everyone just works things out on the fly ad hoc communication that emerged. Metastasize got overwhelming. And almost immediately after that, we found a way to take that hyperactive hive mind with us everywhere.

We went. That combination, I think has led since in the last 10 to 15 years, in a real sense of exhaustion and unhappiness with a lot of knowledge workers with their relationship with these tools in their work. Yeah. It's just like now we're, we're creeping into nights and the weekends and there's just, there's no [00:21:00] barrier.

Yeah. And here's the, here's the key part. I think this is foundational to the, the optimistic vision I ultimately give we, when we think about improving these habits, I think we too often just focus on ourselves and our own personal habits and we think, well, I just need better hacks if I just didn't check email on weekends, that'd be better.

If I batched, when I checked my emails, that would be better if I just promulgated clear expectations about response times, that would be better. We sort of put it on ourselves, but one of my big arguments is the reason why we don't gain any traction. With these hacks and this tips, and this advice is because what we're not realizing is the underlying workflow by which we are collaborating in most of these teams and organizations is one that depends on unstructured back and forth ad hoc communication.

So as long as this hyperactive high mine workflow is basically the primary way that you collaborate. You can't get away from it. And then when you, you try to get away from it. When you say I'm going to do a Tim Ferriss auto responder [00:22:00] twice a day, that's all I'm going to check email. It doesn't stick because actually you have to check email more because you have two dozen different ongoing processes.

Each of which has their own asynchronous conversation going back and forth. And you cannot let those all die for four hours because it's going to slow down. Other people, everything is going to stop. And the, the big sort of foundational message of my optimistic vision. Forget the hacks up here. When we're thinking about our relation to the inbox, we have to replace the processes down here.

We have to actually, she replaced the hyperactive hive mind with specific alternatives that specify for this type of work, how we communicate about it. Here's how we share information about it. Here's how we coordinate about it. Here's how it works. We have to create these processes that are explicit alternatives that just, Hey, let's just rock and roll and email.

If we're ever going to escape from our inboxes. And so I call that optimistic. I mean, it's harder, but it helps us explain why we've had no success. Just trying to at the upper levels, I always need better advice. We need better habits. We need better hacks Merlin. Mann's inbox [00:23:00] zero. We can solve this problem.

Now we've got to fix the processes. That's hard, but if you do it, you can signify frequently reduce the pressure of the inbox and get to the world without email I'm talking about, which is a world, not where email doesn't exist, but where emails like your physical mailbox, maybe once a day, you check it.

There's some stuff in there. It's convenience better than a fax machine. But it's not at the center of how you actually collaborate and get things done. Huge, huge, huge reality check. Right? Isn't it? Yeah. He kind of poses a dilemma to us, right. That we live in this ad hoc collaborative. Well, we need these ad hoc back and forth, but we can't let email be the mechanism for that.

And that was kind of the promise of slack, wasn't it? Yeah. Like I think slack tried that, but they said  well, you know, well with less email or whatever they promised, but it kind of just was a none of their inbox in the end. Wasn't it? It's kinda the same, you know, as, as, as Calgary who was out. And I think you touched on [00:24:00] this earlier as well.

The, whether it's email or slack or instant messaging, it's still very.  Instantaneous, distracting and ad hoc. So again, as cow calls out, if you had a mailbox like your letterbox and you receiving all of these different communications from all these different people, think how overwhelming that would be, whether it's slack, email, or text, it's enormously overwhelming.

And it leads to that unhappiness, those barriers get broken down. You don't have enough rest or enough time to do that deep work. It's it's far too distracting. Exactly. Right. So, so let's actually dig into this a little bit.  And  I think we've made the case that there is this  you know, this overload  and.

That's without a doubt, whether, you know, it's the 13 times we checked Facebook or [00:25:00] whether it's the gazillion times we're checking email. Okay. So we're overloaded. But what was quite interesting there is this case that he was making, that we have to kind of work in this ad hoc, collaborative manner. And mark.

I think what we should actually do is define what that is, because if we're going to reroute some of the communication, we should first work out. Well, what exactly  are we talking about here? And  for me, the, the, the flow of  potentially a project starts with someone saying, Hey, we should do this, or we need to solve this problem.

And then everyone says, okay, let's have a meeting to discuss, right. And this back and forth    about, you know, scheduling the time.  And then we all get together, then we've realized, okay, here's the problem. Maybe we need a couple of meetings working in this ad hoc conversational way. Okay. We've agreed on the [00:26:00] problem.

Okay. We've agreed on what the outcomes should be, but we still need to work out how we're going to get there. Then we have another meeting to say, like next steps, what's the process. And then we have to have like a doctor. A brief. And then the brief changes, then we have deliverable documents where people are like, okay, here's a potential program that we could run, or here's a test that we could do.

And those documents need to be reviewed, discussed, enhanced, edited, and so on and so forth. So we don't have a way of working where the answer and the context is explicit and clear at the start it's emergent. And that emergence gets better. As we share ideas, have discussions, make suggestions, maybe we violently disagree along the way.

This is what ad hoc ways of working look like collaboration, problem solving, emergent [00:27:00] strategy. And so at some point a project is complete and you may have hundreds of emails and meetings and so forth. I think. This is the way most of us work and that we are more and more working like this as knowledge workers.

So the conundrum is this emergent, iterative, collaborative ad hoc way of working that cow's pointing out. That's not going anywhere. It's probably well I'm solving, which is at the heart of, and being a knowledge worker. Right? So the challenge is to understand that the email should not be as dominant in our way of working in supporting this ad hoc collaborative way of working.

It should prove a shipper at play a different way, but I think to capture the heart of his book, the first big insight, it's [00:28:00] like, hang on a second. You're using. A tool that is not well suited for ad hoc. And you've put it right at the center. It can play a role, like he talked about like your normal letterbox, check it once a day, but you shouldn't be checking it continuously all the time inside and outside of work.

It's not designed for that. And a lot of things that are happening in email should never have been in email at all. Exactly it is a big wake-up call. Isn't it. It's a big wake-up call, but, and you're right to point out that it's not going to go anywhere. You know, it's still going to maintain and dominance in the way that we all collaborate and work, particularly when people work in different locations now, and now there are more and more platforms popping up and this fear of not replying as, and when you get the email is because it's so easy, you're sending an [00:29:00] email is very, very easy, but you're right.

To have that difficult conversation to raise a concern, or maybe it's a question, whatever it might be that needs to be handled delicately. Sometimes it's kind of easy just to send a quick email. Well, I mean, look, let's talk about the trap of perceived productivity, right? So often you get this distinct feeling that people are sending email, where they're kind of hitting the tennis ball back over the net and saying, it's back on you.

It's your shot.  Classic thing is when people send incomplete work to you, here it is. And you're like, hang on a second. This doesn't seem to be complete. The other thing is when, rather than starting their work, they're just asking a question back when they could have said, look, I've taken a shot at it, but I still have some questions.

So what happens is [00:30:00] people get stuck in, in, in this  linear, back and forth in bonding, bonding bond. When the work's not getting done. But they're perceiving I'm working on it. Yeah. Clarifying. I mean, folks, get on the bloody phone and talk it through now, how stop doing they're being bombed, being bombed, which might take over, but occur over the course of it several days.

 W this is where we are. This is where we are. We have a collaborative ad hoc way of working fundamentally. That's not changing, but we've got a non ad hoc collaborative tool  running the. And cows like ladies and gentlemen, this is your problem and you need to solve it. And it's, it's ramping, isn't it?

Mark. So, I mean, this is something that, that needs a little bit of work. Yeah. It's unstructured. It's unscheduled. I think that's another distinction that I would [00:31:00] place this type of communication versus scheduled phone conversations. And by phone conversations, I would include, you know, zoom, video calls and so on when you're talking to somebody one-on-one or as a team, that's a, that's kind of like a cool isn't it.

So that's struggle. That's scheduled, you know what you're going to be discussing, you know, there's an agenda and there's an objective, but he leaves the core, hopefully on the same page, hopefully they know which direction everybody should be moving towards. But yeah, the email workflow or the cow's pointing out to us, it just is so inefficient.

It leads us to maybe more confusion. Like you say, it leads to delayed start dates and timelines. Deadlines were all thrown off because nobody wants to kind of take ownership. You know, ownership is such a huge part of a lot of the work that we cover in the moonshot show. Isn't it? Ownership of your organization, your structure, your process.

And if you use email in the [00:32:00] way that we're sort of discussing, as you know, I'm going to be up in my hand up Mike. Yeah. I've used email like that before I try not to now use it in such an unstructured way, but  I still fall into the trap. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think we all do because as we've made the case  email is, is really  Systemically everywhere, running everything.

And so that's why we've got to fight the good fight. And it starts with, you know, your personal awareness and your, your  your mindset.  So I mean, this is, we've set the stage perfectly to think about how we might tackle these challenges. And that's what we're going to do in the second half of the show, but what we want to tackle right now, mark, I think we should celebrate those of you who are listening to us, our audience, all over the world, who are joining up as members as we have so much exciting news.

So  we've started [00:33:00] our own little app Patrion  sign up area where you can become a member. And we're really grateful to everyone who's signing up. I mean, it is so great to get your support and we put in so much work into this show, as you can tell every week, or there's so much research and production that gets done.

All of the show notes, get poets, it's all for you, our listeners. So you can be the best version of yourselves. And we really do appreciate it when you become a member, which you can do@moonshots.io, because by becoming a member, you help us pay for our hosting  all over our podcasting services that help with our distribution.

 And  we've got quite a team working on this, so that.  Really, really appreciated that support.  You can become a member and  mark, I think what is it? It's like a dollar a week, a dollar a show. That's [00:34:00] pretty good. Isn't it? Yeah. A dollar a show and listeners, you have our word for it. It's a pretty exciting.

Series actually. I mean, we, as you can hear Mike and I, we get pretty animated and get pretty passionate in our weekly show, but this was another level. Wasn't it? Mike getting into the master series and approaching it in a slightly different way. Taking the lessons. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, sorry. Just to jump into for a bit of context there.

What Mark's talking about is something that our members get. So  why don't you set it up first?  You just need to, to share with them what this moonshot master series is and how it's formed. You're totally right, Mike. Thank you. There you go. Listeners. You could hear me getting so excited. I didn't even explain what I was talking about.

So for those who have joined us on Patrion, you can come and join us via moonshots.io and become a member. Click on the member button at the top of the screen, you can join us as we go into a deep [00:35:00] dive, into new exciting masterclass. We're calling the moonshots master series and within the master series, Mike, you and I would dig into ways to improve ourselves the way we think about our work and our approach to leadership.

And every month we're going to publish a new episode. In addition to our weekly moonshots series that is specifically deep diving into growth areas, such as personal transformation, problem solving and decision-making and leadership. And our first episode, Mike, how was a good one? It was good, fun digging into motivation, something that's so intrinsic to how we all work nowadays, our focus and our drive.

And we touched on a number of different mediums and formats within the master series. That you can join via patron and moonshots.io that we haven't been able to do in our weekly session. Right. Right. Well, it's, it's  the [00:36:00] luxury that we're afforded by having done 135 shows, we've sort of discovered a secret source of patent haven't we, I mean, w because we've done so many for our first moonshot master series, we were very, very fortunate.

 We were able to dig around and discover  a really      breadth of  clips and thinking around motivation. We literally handpicked the best shows that we've ever done, where you literally went and found an amazing collection of expertise of innovators  academics, cracking through motivation.

And we were able in one show mark in one show, who are we able to include in this master series? We went through some of our most popular superstars like David [00:37:00] Goggins, lady Gaga, Gary V, to really understand where motivation comes from, you know, where does it start and how to get inspired, to become motivated.

And you can't just assume that you have motivation. You've got to work on it. That was something else that we discovered in the show. We use some  some profound academic work there's self-determination theory. We broke back down and we finished it off with like a, a nice little pallet cleanser of James clear and Jordan Peterson really bringing it home around motivation.

So here's the thing  for you, our listeners, if you become a member, you will get access. Exclusive access to the moonshot master series, where we turn the show upside down. We don't just study one person. We bring together all the work on a particular theme. So you get in 90 minutes, a [00:38:00] master class that will give you inspiration.

It will give you understanding, but it will help you make it a daily habit for you all in service of you being the very best version of yourself. So head over shuts.io, become a member. It's like a dollar a show, and you still get this show as well. I mean, you get two shows. I mean, that's such a great deal.

Moonshots, moonshots dot. Become a member and you will get to enjoy the moonshot master series of which we are going to publish a teaser of that  a couple of days after this show. So if you're listening to this show  stay tuned because a few days after you will get a teaser for our moonshot master series on motor vacation.

Woo. I'm excited. And I hope listeners, you are too. It's going to be a wild ride. It is. And I feel like now that we have made the case for the master series, Coincidentally about motivation. [00:39:00] I am very motivated to find out these two cracking principles that are going to help us lead us to salvation, to save us from the arch enemy, which is an email.

So mark, where do we begin on these new principles that Cal Newport has created? Yeah, there's some fascinating principles that county pool goes into with regards to  email and what he was just touching on in that previous clip. Mike, about the hyperactive Hine hive, mind thinking, how can I change my workflows and processes?

And there's a couple of big principles that we're going to dig into on the show today. And this first principle is called the attention capital principle, and there's a fantastic  YouTube. Who's going to break it down for us. This is from early our breaking down cow's advice. And this first principle that we're going to hear about is the attention capital princes.

The attention capital principle basically say that if we can find better and more sustainable workflows, we can significantly increase the productivity of knowledge workers and you want to optimize workflows [00:40:00] around protecting people's attention. And the analogy he uses in the book is comparing it to the factory worker and how Ford revolutionized productivity in the manual labor markets.

And he feels like we are doing a similar revolution in the knowledge markets where we are currently very inefficient. There's two paths when it comes to protecting people's attention, it is either making systemic changes, which is what a company can do. But what most of us have to deal with. Making our own personal changes.

One thing he suggests when making personal changes is that you shouldn't announce it to the world. You should just try to make a change that is reasonable, and that gives you more time to focus and your attention should be on never dropping the ball and delivering value. And if you manage to do that and people know they can trust you, then they won't complain.

If you take an hour or two more to respond to emails or slack, a more sustainable way of working. That's that already sounds pretty good, but Hey, how exciting is this [00:41:00] idea that  we have to look at our attention as a resource and that  much like Henry Ford did with the idea of a factory setup revolutionize the way we produce things.

We are due for a revolution on the way we produce ideas. And that is with our attention. I mean, I think that's the logic structure, isn't it? Yeah. It's, it's a little bit of a  cognitive thing. Isn't it. If you replace the Ford motor car delivery line with your mindset, think about your focus and your approach to work and questioning.

Okay. What is what I'm doing right now? The most efficient way to do. Probably not. There's always ways to make things more efficient. So think about it. Like you say, as a resource, it's finite, it's an exhaustible and Mike [00:42:00] we've, we've all got to that point where you, your brain almost starts to shut down.

You know, maybe you've done so much work where you've had so many different distractions and you've had one of those days where you haven't really, you feel like you've done a lot, but you haven't really finished anything. You start to get really tired don't you. And that attention capital suddenly feels very, very, you've used so much of it.

Then now your focus is just getting lower and lower and more narrow, narrow. And it does feel as though it's it's like fuel, you know, it kind of, or your CPU, it starts to so write down. Yeah. So there are so many things you can do  to  improve your attention. Let's let's just park  The deep work, because we've done a show on deep work.

And I, and I want to make sure that we focus the allocation of our attention.  Think of it is a precious resource. Imagine that we start every single day [00:43:00] with a fixed amount of attention. Let's say 100 units. Let's take a cow's inspiration here and let's work through this together. Mark, let's imagine you and I both start the day with a hundred units of attention.

How do you. Protect and nurture that attention to distribute it across your personal and professional life in a balanced way, in a, a big word here seems to be sustainable. I think after the progress of technology and then being hit with, you know, quarantine and work from home, I think we're all feeling a little burnt out.

So this sustainability is about redefining the way we work so that we can be more satisfied, more fulfilled in the things that we do at work. And so how would you start the process mark of protecting your intention for a day? Let's imagine there's [00:44:00] a day, let's say it's today. How going to nurture, protect that attention and make sure that it is given to the right things.

What are some of the things you might do to. Nurtured to protect that your attention, your, your concentration, your intention, I think to, to  try and  consciously avoid going down the, the deep work consideration or recommendation. I think prioritization is another word that I would try and use. What I mean by that is try to understand and challenge yourself to identify what are the most, what I'm fat.

Mike, what you and I, we were talking about this the other day, most urgent versus important items on your agenda. So very good. Yeah. So that's the Eisenhower matrix, right? Exactly. Not falling victim for only urgent things, which would be a classic email thing. Wouldn't it it'd be classic email thing because it's [00:45:00] unstructured.

So it comes in, it's kind of like something getting thrown over your fence. You've got to go and attend to it. Let me go and see somebody is knocking at the door. I better get up and go and see who it is. Getting an email for me. It kind of feels a bit like that because it drags you away from something else.

So rather than attending, only to the urgent things, and at least in this initial point of view, or at least in this stage, emails are kind of the most important or urgent thing in our minds. Instead of falling into that trap, I'll try and prioritize what needs to happen. What do I need to do? This is number one.

And I think I'm time blocking and allocating those priorities, those important things to your calendar. I think you're really right. That's that would be like starting today. If we were thinking about it from this attention, capital or principal from county Newport, you would think about what is not only urgent, but important for today.

Maybe we would expand a little bit to [00:46:00] having a look at your calendar for the week and allocating time accordingly so that you are attending to things that really matter. I actually, I really liked that and I, I must say that  one of the things I experienced is when I take a good look at my task list and my calendar for the week, and I have gone through it and allocated some time blocks to activities, I literally feel a level of.

Calmness. Like I noticed how much more chill I am because I can see, okay. I've allocated time to doing that then. So it frees me from thinking about it for now, because I know I, yet tomorrow I've allocated 90 minutes for that. So that's cool. I know that's allocated and I know that the time is there. Yeah.

I think that's a huge insight actually, when you, when you do allocate the time and even if it is in the future, [00:47:00] you know, even if you can't get onto it today, instead you put it on tomorrow. Like I say, there is that big relief and you do. I actually experienced it as well. You feel that sense of good I've I've addressed it.

I haven't forgotten about it. I know when I'm going to do it. So now that part of my brain, that 10% or those 10 points of my brain from the 100 are not required on it today, so I can repurpose it for something else. Yeah. There's no anxiety in the back of the mind. Totally.  The other thing  that comes to my mind now that  you know, we've made time for deep work with how to look at the calendar, we've got the important versus urgent.

I actually think that there's a bunch of smaller habits that we can develop  to, to really help us  you know, put our resource of focus and [00:48:00] attention.  Not only to put it to good use, but  like a garden, you need to water it and fertilize it. So  there's a number of things  that I think are important, which is if you want to really.

Think about your attention and focus as a valued resource? I think the first thing is you have basics of good sleep, exercise and diet. I cannot tell you that if, if how important for example diet is before. For example, I was working on a massive report yesterday. I'd done some exercise in the morning. I had done some  some basic  admin and so forth.

And then I launched into this big effort and I deliberately ate a salad. I ate vegetarian and I ate this salad. [00:49:00] It was a medium to smaller size portion. Cause here's what mark, when I eat a light salad, I feel energized and I have literally no post meal lethargy. And so I can just keep cranking this huge report out.

I can just smash it out because if I go for something heavier, like some really good long-lasting carbs, let's say oats or rice, I can feel it in my body. I'm like, oh, and what happens? What wanes, when you, when you've taken heavy meal, your attention, your focus, you know, oh, I can't be bothered now. You know, I'm having a cart.

What do they call it? Yeah. Like a carb coma, right? Carb, coma, carb crash. Yeah. So I think those are really important if you want to be able to focus and think, well, you need to actually have that, that  [00:50:00] that  basic it's almost hygiene cost of entry stuff. Good sleep, good food, good exercise. A good well-structured managed.

 Time  allocation calendar. I think these are all, once you start thinking of your attention as a, as a valued piece of capital, it's like your house, you take care of it, your attention, you take care of it, don't you? Yeah. You really, really do. I think that's such an interesting comparison to think about it as a valuable resource.

And there's another principle there, Mike, that we should get into. And again, it's introduced to us via early hour. Who's done a great breakdown of a, of cows next principle. And this is understanding some of the processes that are attached to understanding or maximizing that say the amount of work that you do get out of that, that finite attention or, or resource.

So this next principle that we're going to be hearing from early [00:51:00] hour is county Newport's process princes. The process principle is basically that we can significantly increase productivity and reduce stress by introducing smarter processes. He outlines three important steps for processes. One is that it should be easy to see who is working a lot too, is that work can unfold without a significant amount of ad hoc communication.

Three is that there is a known way for updating work assignments. As the process progresses, he basically highlights two ways to go about this one is a fully automated process. One way I've seen this implemented is some youth tubers. Use this for editing. Where there is a step-by-step process of who is responsible for doing what's part of the video and the process just takes care of whose job it is to do what, and they don't need to talk or organize about who is doing what, when it just follows the process.

There's other types of work that it would be harder to do an automatic process for things like design or [00:52:00] developing a project that has a lot of back and forth in cases like that. He suggests using boards with columns and cards on these columns. So things like Trello or JIRA or flow is something else he mentions.

The main goal here is to get the communication out of slack and email, and instead gather all the communication about specific tasks on the specific cards in the board. This also means that you can make it easier to see what you should prioritize at any given moment, instead of just having a bunch of things coming in from everywhere.

Oh my gosh. Another, this process principle is. So critical because the downfall of the work being distributed into people's inboxes means that let's say you're working on something with me, mark, and there is stuff stuck in your inbox that I don't see that I can't build upon the work that you're doing exactly.

[00:53:00] Right. So if, if you don't have a centralized single source of truth, like Assana Trello, JIRA confluence. If you don't have a centralized place that is the work and you just rely on sending emails back and forth then, well, first of all, you've got a threaded conversation, which is, have you, have you ever had this thing where you're in Gmail and you're like trying to track the conversation?

Let's say it's a five, six thread conversation. I find it really hard to visually go through that. I'm like, where the hell is the content? Like, I can't work out. Who said, what said it's terrible. It's a single source of truth. It works. It's frustrating to understand. He said, she said  but also in threads, not all the attachments will be there.

So if you get introduced, let's say a week or so, or you're onboarding a new team member and the project is  [00:54:00]is already in a flow. If you don't have that single source of truth. Where are they going to get all of the information? It just becomes very, very unclear. And those, I just want to break down three of the mentions that came up in that clip for our listeners, because I know it was quite quick.

It was clarity and find processes that are helped with clarity. Which I think to your point, Mike email threads and so on. There's no clarity there, no ad hoc communication remove opportunities when people can come in with ad hoc communication, which as we know from some of our early eclipse and Cal Newport's book, ad hoc communication leads to frustrations and inefficiencies, and also the third a breakdown.

The third element is you need to find a way to update as you go. And again, to your point, just then Mike, having the ability to update through whether it's a sauna or Trello or confluence, it's, it's clear to me. I know where everything is. I can remove those ad [00:55:00] hoc inputs cause I can see those threads and I can see the way that it's updating, evolving and growing dynamically in a very clear way.

Yes. So, so  build on this is like email is not a single source of truth. It is  a delivery of a message yet we are using it as the work. So a great example would be for this very show, we have a run sheet for every single show, which has all the research and background, the final selected clips.

That's a repository, but we also have a very clear way of working. We have a researcher who works to researching against the shows that we have coming up. We have editorial meetings, we have statistics and analysis of all the analytics that we've got going on. So we know what people are enjoying. My point is this.

You need to be really clear on how you're going to work. My [00:56:00] experience in my career is that very rarely do teams get explicit about the process. They it's sort of an organic unsaid thing and particularly new people. They just have to kind of work it out. Yeah, it's crazy. Isn't it like how, how many times in your career do you see people having explicit conversations about how will we work together?

Not talking about what are we working on and how are we going to approach it? I mean, so much time, you know, it's, it's really challenging to try and do this with new team members, new  companies, clients, customers, partners. It's very, very difficult to do all this. With closed walled gardens, such as email, for example.

Yes. And, and I think the, the best way to make the process principle that county [00:57:00] is mentioning the best test of it is this cam, then your colleagues continue work when you're not answering emails. Yes. That's a good test. Isn't it for that too true. You need a single source of truth, a centralized place, which is, is accessible and is full of up-to-date information.

So if you're working on building a brand new product, the user story has to be well-written and clear and the thinking behind it, and it needs to be there. And if it's not. What's going to happen is people need to be able to search for it and find it. The true test is when people cannot find information quickly, they will resort to email.

Can you please send me how many times did we get those emails? Can you please send me? Well, actually, if you're receiving that, that's telling you that you're not centralizing your [00:58:00] workflow, you're not adhering to this process. Principle. It should be such that your collaborators can continue work because they have the information that they need in a centralized spot.

That's the process principle working well, the process taking care of itself. If it continues, he requires mark. Could you please send me that file again, like these kinds of things or  poor    revision and change management on a doctor. You know, that's when people like, I don't understand. Right? So you, you have to produce work in a centralized place that has contextual, and it has the information that somebody coming in who needs to work independently and autonomously can get the information and say, great.

I know exactly what I need. Oh, it's funny. Isn't it? Because when you do break it down, it sounds so sensible, [00:59:00] unarguably sensible, but for some reason, we're all, or some of us, at least, including myself, you get caught in the same, the same cycle of just relying on email when even though it's so clearly inefficient.

Well, I think it's just in part, because we're falling into the trap of thinking that the email was sufficient, but I think Cal has got a big bucket of ice. He's tipped it on our head and said, No way, baby. This has got to be done in a different way. And I mean, that's the power of he's thinking. That was what was so great about deep work.

That's what's so great about his other books in this book as well is he's really making a case for changing how we work so we can not only be more productive, but I think cow has a big quality effect on, on all of us. And that's why I think he's so special. Don't you, Matt? Absolutely. There's so much we [01:00:00] can, we can get from, from Cal and you know, it's, it's just been fascinating to hear him take his scientific approach and break it down and easy to understand ways that we can action from too.

Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think mark, it would only be fitting to leave the last thought to count Newport himself. So this is his advice on how we should use email now, post COVID post pandemic. What is the best way to use email? Well, I mean, this is part of the reason why email makes us miserable.

There's really interesting research. I talk about where we can study this effect. Of misinterpretation happens all the time. And the problem is, is the sender of an email. When they're sending a message, they're basically hearing this message in their mind's voice. So they're hearing inflection, they know the context, they know it's a joke, they know whatever.

And to them, they vastly overestimate how clear this is, that text [01:01:00] arrives, stripped of all that context, just linguistic contact and the receiver is much more likely to completely miss it. Is he upset? Is he abrupt?  You know  we not only are we bad at reading intention and emails, but cinders, overestimate, how, how clear they're being.

So yeah, this is another problem with email communication. Why again, synchronous stuff is, is vastly better. I think everyone who is going, had to go remote in this pandemic who used to work in an office. Is seeing this it's like, man, you know, we would have just worked. We, this normally would have been discussed in a meeting.

We're now discussing in an email thread and it's more contentious than it needs to be. And things seem more contentious. And that's because we're stripping out all this information that we, we, we have that typically  comes along with our interactions when it's not just through email. So when you're doing something like let's try to move a collaboration to synchronous means and keep email for click communication, be lighthearted, keep jokes in it.

You be jovial. Like you do all the same [01:02:00] things, but still push people towards like, great. This is great. Oh, this is complicated. Yeah. Let's jump in. Let's jump on. Let's jump on the phone and talk about it. Just like grab a slot here. I'm always available from 10 to 11, every weekday, just like jump on my zoom channel.

Well, we'll work it out.  Friendly and nice and whatever your standards are with, with  motor cons or however you typically, you know, you need that because we're very bad at intent, but still move that interaction to the places where it's going to be. This is such a huge, huge one. And what a great clip to close on, because I mean, how many times, Mike, maybe in your past, have you received an email and you've kind of got to read it a few times and think, whoa, am I, am I being harsh?

Have these, have these individual, has this person read it in this aggressive way? Or am I being too sensitive to it? Or maybe I've sent something that I need to send a check. Yeah. I love them. He's describing like [01:03:00] your you're writing the email in your head and imagining all this, all this nuance and flavor and context and color that you're giving it.

None of which none of which gets in the actually email. So when people get it, they're like, yeah, it's so true. And I think, you know, this is the thing with written communication  is it is a Paul. Paul replacement of in-person conversation and problem solving. I totally agree. And it's a challenge that obviously every business and individuals had mostly around the world over the past year or so, isn't it.

 And I, you know, a few practical things here, I would always say whenever you're drafting an email and you find yourself putting in it in draft and coming back to it and being a bit unsure of how to write this or that, that is the tail of don't send the email. You are trying to send something [01:04:00] sensitive interpretive, or maybe collaborative even, and you get on the phone, get on like a zoom, get on if you can get together in person, do that.

 I think, you know, inverse the process, the email should be the summary of the great call you had to work on. Yes. The summary of what you've, where you've discussed. That's nice. Yes. And the email could be, Hey guys, here's the preread before the meeting, before we actually collaborate, but it shouldn't be the collaboration itself.

I mean, this is the poor channel selection we have of using media. The wrong way. Email is not the meat here of the sandwich. It's either the pre or the post.  And don't, don't try and make it do the job of an in-person meeting because it cannot do it. It cannot do it. Yep. Huge. Very powerful, very, very [01:05:00] powerful stuff.

So send mark in, in, in the    in the 12 step program of email anonymous here, how are you feeling?  How have you reexamined your attitudes and use of email? What changes after delving into the world of Cal Newport and a world without email? Well, I think, you know, from a practical perspective, whenever we, whenever I'm in the middle of some deep work and focus, I'll put on the do not disturb settings on my devices, but actually in truth, when I turn them off or when I allow the notifications, I've still got my email.

Constantly pushing emails. So I'll have the Gmail app, it'll be sending me emails. So the first thing I'll do once we wrap today, Mike I'll turn off all notifications for emails and my devices. So that the only way I can do it is if I go and manually refresh. And my reason for that is I think the lesson that I'm taking from today's show and Cal Newport's book, a world without email [01:06:00] is taking ownership, taking ownership of how I interact with the platform and changing the way that I, that I'm using it in order to become more focused and more efficient.

That's huge, man. That's huge.  You know, Turning off the notifications is huge. I I've, I've had done that. I would, I, I just would not trust myself with email notifications. The other thing I did is I took social media of  the home screen of my phone. So it's not there to tempt me.  I'm still working through this attention thing and I'm, I'm doing everything I can.

And  for me, the most profound thing was just how we've all just allowed email to take over the world of business sort of in a unconscious way, but like we've just woken up and gone. Yep. Email's kind of owning everything that totally, totally. Well, mark, thank you to you. [01:07:00] And it is just so good to hear that that notification setting is changing in a matter of minutes, mark Freeland.

Well, well done, and thank you to you. All of our listeners, the moonshot is those of you who are learning out loud with us in an effort in a tip of the hat, to being the very best version of ourselves. And today that was done with Cal Newport, one of our favorites  one of our favorite favorite superstars that we can learn from, and today we studied his brand new book, a world without email, and it does kind of sound a bit too good to be true.

And it started with a journey in understanding just how challenging focuses and all this ad hoc communication can really lead to us being very distracted. And you know what, it's all a result of email being at the heart of business, but it kind of took us. The whole show and it is contributed along with social media, to the hyperactive [01:08:00] hive mind.

Yes, we are running and multitasking everywhere here, there everywhere. And now is the chance using. Well, without email to have a more sustainable workflow because we're due a revolution and that is embodied in two principles, the attention capital principle and the process principle attention capital is all about treating our focus, our energy, our attention as a very, very rare reasons.

And the process principle is having this centralized place way of working and to let the process take care of itself, get it out of the inbox and into the single source of truth. And if we do this, we can use email so much better in a pandemic year in a world of lockdowns in COVID where meetings face-to-face seems so hard.

We can still make better choices. We can use email before or after, but we can still come together. We can [01:09:00] collaborate, we can build great things. And that's what we're here to do on the moonshots podcast. So that's it for the moonshots podcast. That's righ