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Ep. 101 — Does Productivity Impede the Deep Life?

Metadata

  • Author: Deep Questions with Cal Newport
  • Full Title: Ep. 101 — Does Productivity Impede the Deep Life?
  • Category: #Type/Highlight/Podcast

Highlights

  • The Status Meeting - Is It Too Much? Summary: The key thing here is that once you get above even a minimal num ber of commitments in your professional life, you got to get em out of generic communication channels. You don’t wan to say, let’s just have a frenzy and just be busy, and what’ll happen? Ill happen. So externalize, externalize. Andrew, you’re a case study for why the ideas in a world without emal really are critical.... Transcript: Speaker 2 have a status meeting. It happens on these times. It is structured in this way. Before Speaker 1 you show up at the status meeting, you have the Speaker 2 day fore post a up date that Speaker 1 everyone can review. And if you don’t, you can’t come. They last twenty minutes a we go in order. We checkin on what will happen before we we decide what’s happening next. Everyone commits to what they need from everyone else. We write that down so it’s in black and white. We’ll check that in the next status meeting. Let’s roll. If there’s small questions, how do we deal with that that pop up along the way, or brain stormig that has to happen? Well maybe then you also have office ors. Here’s the etiquette. You grab som at their office hours. If you have questions, if you need to talk something through, you grab at their office hours. But you have to externalize how the collaboration happens. That too, can’t just be in your generic communication systems. Now, andrew, you can confront concretely, here’s what’s on my plate. Here’s all the tools. Here’s all that needs to be done. Here’s when we talk about it. Now Speaker 2 you might discover that it’s too much. I Speaker 1 can’t keep track of all this. This is too many projects, or too much on our plate. We don’t have enough personnel. If that’s the case, that’s the case. And just like i was talking about with the student a couple of questions ago, you don’t want to obfuscate that. You don’t wan to say, let’s just have a frenzy and just be busy, and what’ll happen? Ill happen. Face Speaker 2 the productivity dragon. There’s Speaker 1 tin projects, and they each have all these things going on. There’s not enough people to do em. Great. Now we know, let’s Speaker 2 make some changes. Speaker 1 But the key thing here is that once you get above even a Speaker 2 minimal num ber of Speaker 1 commitments in your professional life, you got to get em out of generic communication channels. You got to get em out of informal back and forth. You have to externalize the information. You have to externalize the communication protocols by which questions or answers, rules are assigned and decisions are made. All that has to get structured. All that has to get clear, then Speaker 2 you’ll be able to handle a lot more. And Speaker 1 if you hae more on your plate than you can handle, it will b crystal clear. And now you can make decisions about how to rectify that that are going to be informed by your actual capacityn what’s actually going on, and not just you declaring some sort of time management bankruptcy and veering too far in the direction of doing nothing, or burning out or quitting or making severe changes, drastic moves. So externalize, externalize. Externalize. Andrew, you’re a case study for why the ideas in a world without emal, or for where rather, the ideas in without emal really are critical. Speaker 2 Before we move on, the questions about the Speaker 1 deep life. (Time 0:27:47)