WEBVTT 00:00:00.936 --> 00:00:02.626 So I'm going to talk about work; 00:00:02.650 --> 00:00:06.436 specifically, why people can't seem to get work done at work, 00:00:06.460 --> 00:00:08.889 which is a problem we all kind of have. 00:00:08.913 --> 00:00:11.076 But let's sort of start at the beginning. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:11.100 --> 00:00:14.706 So, we have companies and non-profits and charities 00:00:14.730 --> 00:00:19.674 and all these groups that have employees or volunteers of some sort. 00:00:20.198 --> 00:00:23.904 And they expect these people who work for them 00:00:23.928 --> 00:00:25.610 to do great work -- 00:00:25.634 --> 00:00:26.976 I would hope, at least. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:29.715 At least good work, hopefully, at least it's good work -- 00:00:29.739 --> 00:00:30.976 hopefully great work. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.048 And so what they typically do is they decide 00:00:33.072 --> 00:00:36.976 that all these people need to come together in one place to do that work. 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:39.975 So a company, or a charity, or an organization of any kind, 00:00:39.999 --> 00:00:44.163 unless you're working in Africa, if you're really lucky to do that -- 00:00:44.187 --> 00:00:46.420 most people have to go to an office every day. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:46.444 --> 00:00:48.380 And so these companies, 00:00:48.404 --> 00:00:50.129 they build offices. 00:00:50.153 --> 00:00:53.049 They go out and they buy a building, or they rent a building, 00:00:53.073 --> 00:00:54.976 or they lease some space, 00:00:55.000 --> 00:00:57.976 and they fill this space with stuff. 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:00.976 They fill it with tables, or desks, 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:03.875 chairs, computer equipment, 00:01:03.899 --> 00:01:06.976 software, Internet access, 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.245 maybe a fridge, maybe a few other things, 00:01:10.269 --> 00:01:12.850 and they expect their employees, or their volunteers, 00:01:12.874 --> 00:01:15.523 to come to that location every day to do great work. 00:01:15.547 --> 00:01:18.468 It seems like it's perfectly reasonable to ask that. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:18.492 --> 00:01:20.825 However, if you actually talk to people 00:01:20.849 --> 00:01:23.493 and even question yourself, and you ask yourself, 00:01:23.517 --> 00:01:27.031 where do you really want to go when you really need to get something done? 00:01:27.055 --> 00:01:30.781 You'll find out that people don't say what businesses think they would say. 00:01:30.805 --> 00:01:32.302 If you ask people the question: 00:01:32.326 --> 00:01:35.142 Where do you need to go when you need to get something done? 00:01:35.166 --> 00:01:37.640 Typically, you get three different kinds of answers. 00:01:37.664 --> 00:01:40.527 One is kind of a place or a location or a room. 00:01:40.551 --> 00:01:42.495 Another one is a moving object, 00:01:42.519 --> 00:01:44.186 and a third is a time. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:44.210 --> 00:01:46.222 So here are some examples. 00:01:46.246 --> 00:01:49.477 I've been asking people this question for about 10 years: 00:01:49.501 --> 00:01:52.657 "Where do you go when you really need to get something done?" 00:01:52.681 --> 00:01:56.229 I'll hear things like, the porch, the deck, the kitchen. 00:01:56.253 --> 00:01:59.301 I'll hear things like an extra room in the house, 00:01:59.325 --> 00:02:00.602 the basement, 00:02:00.626 --> 00:02:02.527 the coffee shop, the library. 00:02:03.547 --> 00:02:06.102 And then you'll hear things like the train, 00:02:06.126 --> 00:02:09.226 a plane, a car -- so, the commute. 00:02:09.666 --> 00:02:11.378 And then you'll hear people say, 00:02:11.402 --> 00:02:13.404 "Well, it doesn't really matter where I am, 00:02:13.428 --> 00:02:16.940 as long as it's early in the morning or late at night or on the weekends." 00:02:16.964 --> 00:02:19.789 You almost never hear someone say, "The office." 00:02:19.813 --> 00:02:23.385 But businesses are spending all this money on this place called the office, 00:02:23.409 --> 00:02:25.663 and they're making people go to it all the time, 00:02:25.687 --> 00:02:27.722 yet people don't do work in the office. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:27.746 --> 00:02:28.909 What is that about? NOTE Paragraph 00:02:28.933 --> 00:02:30.393 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:30.417 --> 00:02:33.670 Why is that? Why is that happening? 00:02:34.093 --> 00:02:35.363 And what you find out is, 00:02:35.387 --> 00:02:38.775 if you dig a little bit deeper, you find out that people -- 00:02:38.799 --> 00:02:40.449 this is what happens: 00:02:40.473 --> 00:02:42.202 People go to work, 00:02:42.226 --> 00:02:44.536 and they're basically trading in their work day 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:48.052 for a series of "work moments" -- that's what happens at the office. 00:02:48.076 --> 00:02:50.759 You don't have a work day anymore. You have work moments. 00:02:50.783 --> 00:02:53.561 It's like the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart, 00:02:53.585 --> 00:02:55.887 and you walk in and your day is shredded to bits, 00:02:55.911 --> 00:02:58.459 because you have 15 minutes here, 30 minutes there, 00:02:58.483 --> 00:03:01.206 and something else happens, you're pulled off your work, 00:03:01.230 --> 00:03:05.119 then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch, then you have something else to do ... 00:03:05.143 --> 00:03:08.953 Then you've got 15 minutes, and someone pulls you aside and asks you a question, 00:03:08.977 --> 00:03:11.173 and before you know it, it's 5 p.m., 00:03:11.197 --> 00:03:12.769 and you look back on the day, 00:03:12.793 --> 00:03:15.824 and you realize that you didn't get anything done. 00:03:15.848 --> 00:03:17.205 We've all been through this. 00:03:17.229 --> 00:03:21.032 We probably went through it yesterday or the day before, or the day before that. 00:03:21.056 --> 00:03:22.470 You look back on your day, 00:03:22.494 --> 00:03:24.510 and you're like, "I got nothing done today. 00:03:24.534 --> 00:03:29.124 I was at work. I sat at my desk. I used my expensive computer. 00:03:29.148 --> 00:03:31.385 I used the software they told me to use. 00:03:31.409 --> 00:03:33.862 I went to these meetings I was asked to go to. 00:03:33.886 --> 00:03:36.583 I did these conference calls. I did all this stuff. 00:03:36.607 --> 00:03:38.976 But I didn't actually do anything. 00:03:39.432 --> 00:03:40.584 I just did tasks. 00:03:40.608 --> 00:03:43.048 I didn't actually get meaningful work done." NOTE Paragraph 00:03:43.447 --> 00:03:46.383 And what you find is that, especially with creative people -- 00:03:46.407 --> 00:03:51.976 designers, programmers, writers, engineers, thinkers -- 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:55.888 that people really need long stretches of uninterrupted time 00:03:55.912 --> 00:03:57.234 to get something done. 00:03:57.258 --> 00:04:00.686 You cannot ask somebody to be creative in 15 minutes 00:04:00.710 --> 00:04:02.329 and really think about a problem. 00:04:02.353 --> 00:04:03.719 You might have a quick idea, 00:04:03.743 --> 00:04:07.702 but to be in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, 00:04:07.726 --> 00:04:10.114 you need long stretches of uninterrupted time. 00:04:10.611 --> 00:04:13.313 And even though the work day is typically eight hours, 00:04:13.337 --> 00:04:16.892 how many people here have ever had eight hours to themselves at the office? 00:04:16.916 --> 00:04:18.083 How about seven hours? 00:04:18.107 --> 00:04:21.315 Six? Five? Four? 00:04:21.339 --> 00:04:24.491 When's the last time you had three hours to yourself at the office? 00:04:24.515 --> 00:04:26.537 Two hours? One, maybe? 00:04:26.561 --> 00:04:28.276 Very, very few people actually have 00:04:28.300 --> 00:04:30.974 long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office. 00:04:30.998 --> 00:04:34.528 And this is why people choose to do work at home, 00:04:34.552 --> 00:04:36.131 or they might go to the office, 00:04:36.155 --> 00:04:38.790 but they might go to the office really early in the day, 00:04:38.814 --> 00:04:40.640 or late at night when no one's around, 00:04:40.664 --> 00:04:42.732 or they stick around after everyone's left, 00:04:42.756 --> 00:04:44.170 or go in on the weekends, 00:04:44.194 --> 00:04:47.285 or they get work done on the plane, in the car or in the train, 00:04:47.309 --> 00:04:49.214 because there are no distractions. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:49.238 --> 00:04:51.433 Now there are different kinds of distractions, 00:04:51.457 --> 00:04:54.846 but not the really bad distractions, which I'll talk about in a minute. 00:04:54.870 --> 00:04:59.334 And this whole phenomenon of having short bursts of time to get things done 00:04:59.358 --> 00:05:03.000 reminds me of another thing that doesn't work when you're interrupted, 00:05:03.024 --> 00:05:04.209 and that is sleep. 00:05:04.771 --> 00:05:07.960 I think that sleep and work are very closely related -- 00:05:07.984 --> 00:05:11.682 not because you can work while you're sleeping and sleep while you're working. 00:05:11.706 --> 00:05:13.150 That's not really what I mean. 00:05:13.174 --> 00:05:19.245 I'm talking specifically about the fact that sleep and work are phase-based, 00:05:19.269 --> 00:05:21.000 or stage-based, events. 00:05:21.324 --> 00:05:27.379 Sleep is about sleep phases, or stages -- some people call them different things. 00:05:27.403 --> 00:05:31.237 There are five of them, and in order to get to the really deep ones, 00:05:31.261 --> 00:05:34.030 the meaningful ones, you have to go through the early ones. 00:05:34.054 --> 00:05:37.245 If you're interrupted while you're going through the early ones -- 00:05:37.269 --> 00:05:40.976 if someone bumps you in bed, or there's a sound, or whatever happens -- 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:43.000 you don't just pick up where you left off. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:43.024 --> 00:05:44.976 If you're interrupted and woken up, 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:46.738 you have to start again. 00:05:46.762 --> 00:05:49.976 So you have to go back a few phases and start again. 00:05:50.000 --> 00:05:52.767 And what ends up happening -- you might have days like this 00:05:52.791 --> 00:05:56.339 where you wake up at eight or seven in the morning, or whenever you get up, 00:05:56.363 --> 00:05:58.479 and you're like, "I didn't sleep very well. 00:05:58.503 --> 00:06:01.071 I did the sleep thing -- I went to bed, I laid down, 00:06:01.095 --> 00:06:03.473 but I didn't really sleep." 00:06:03.497 --> 00:06:05.863 People say you go "to" sleep, 00:06:05.887 --> 00:06:09.005 but you don't go to sleep, you go towards sleep; it takes a while. 00:06:09.029 --> 00:06:11.084 You've got to go through phases and stuff, 00:06:11.108 --> 00:06:13.417 and if you're interrupted, you don't sleep well. 00:06:13.441 --> 00:06:15.797 So does anyone here expect someone to sleep well 00:06:15.821 --> 00:06:17.403 if they're interrupted all night? 00:06:17.427 --> 00:06:19.141 I don't think anyone would say yes. 00:06:19.165 --> 00:06:21.490 Why do we expect people to work well 00:06:21.514 --> 00:06:23.986 if they're being interrupted all day at the office? 00:06:24.010 --> 00:06:26.444 How can we possibly expect people to do their job 00:06:26.468 --> 00:06:28.573 if they go to the office and are interrupted? 00:06:28.597 --> 00:06:31.504 That doesn't really seem like it makes a lot of sense, to me. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:31.528 --> 00:06:35.396 So what are the interruptions that happen at the office but not at other places? 00:06:35.420 --> 00:06:39.681 Because in other places, you can have interruptions like the TV, 00:06:39.705 --> 00:06:42.976 or you could go for a walk, or there's a fridge downstairs, 00:06:43.000 --> 00:06:46.105 or you've got your own couch, or whatever you want to do. 00:06:46.129 --> 00:06:48.938 If you talk to certain managers, they'll tell you 00:06:48.962 --> 00:06:51.533 that they don't want their employees to work at home 00:06:51.557 --> 00:06:53.454 because of these distractions. 00:06:53.478 --> 00:06:56.509 They'll sometimes also say, 00:06:56.533 --> 00:06:59.376 "If I can't see the person, how do I know they're working?" 00:06:59.400 --> 00:07:02.701 which is ridiculous, but that's one of the excuses that managers give. 00:07:02.725 --> 00:07:05.982 And I'm one of these managers. I understand. I know how this goes. 00:07:06.006 --> 00:07:08.729 We all have to improve on this sort of thing. 00:07:08.753 --> 00:07:10.723 But oftentimes they'll cite distractions: 00:07:10.747 --> 00:07:12.381 "I can't let someone work at home. 00:07:12.405 --> 00:07:14.421 They'll watch TV, or do this other thing." 00:07:14.445 --> 00:07:17.180 It turns out those aren't the things that are distracting, 00:07:17.204 --> 00:07:19.160 Because those are voluntary distractions. 00:07:19.184 --> 00:07:21.636 You decide when you want to be distracted by the TV, 00:07:21.660 --> 00:07:23.351 when you want to turn something on, 00:07:23.375 --> 00:07:25.769 or when you want to go downstairs or go for a walk. 00:07:25.793 --> 00:07:26.944 At the office, 00:07:26.968 --> 00:07:28.991 most of the interruptions and distractions 00:07:29.015 --> 00:07:32.132 that really cause people not to get work done are involuntary. 00:07:32.156 --> 00:07:35.267 So let's go through a couple of those. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:35.291 --> 00:07:38.608 Now, managers and bosses will often have you think 00:07:38.632 --> 00:07:40.636 that the real distractions at work 00:07:40.660 --> 00:07:43.470 are things like Facebook and Twitter 00:07:43.494 --> 00:07:46.664 and YouTube and other websites, 00:07:46.688 --> 00:07:50.530 and in fact, they'll go so far as to actually ban these sites at work. 00:07:50.554 --> 00:07:53.895 Some of you may work at places where you can't get to certain sites. 00:07:53.919 --> 00:07:56.538 I mean, is this China? What the hell is going on here? 00:07:56.562 --> 00:07:59.305 You can't go to a website at work, and that's the problem? 00:07:59.329 --> 00:08:01.337 That's why people aren't getting work done, 00:08:01.361 --> 00:08:03.289 because they're on Facebook and Twitter? 00:08:03.313 --> 00:08:05.566 That's kind of ridiculous. It's a total decoy. 00:08:06.297 --> 00:08:09.714 Today's Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, 00:08:09.738 --> 00:08:11.976 these things are just modern-day smoke breaks. 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.015 No one cared about letting people take a smoke break for 15 minutes 10 years ago, 00:08:16.039 --> 00:08:18.657 so why does anyone care if someone goes to Facebook 00:08:18.681 --> 00:08:20.792 or Twitter or YouTube here and there? 00:08:20.816 --> 00:08:23.393 Those aren't the real problems in the office. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:23.417 --> 00:08:27.028 The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms, 00:08:27.052 --> 00:08:29.305 the Managers and the Meetings. 00:08:29.329 --> 00:08:32.718 Those are the real problems in the modern office today. 00:08:32.742 --> 00:08:35.222 And this is why things don't get done at work, 00:08:35.246 --> 00:08:37.046 it's because of the M&Ms. 00:08:37.070 --> 00:08:39.372 Now what's interesting is, 00:08:39.396 --> 00:08:42.537 if you listen to all the places that people talk about doing work, 00:08:42.561 --> 00:08:46.525 like at home, in the car, on a plane, late at night, or early in the morning, 00:08:46.549 --> 00:08:48.680 you don't find managers and meetings. 00:08:48.704 --> 00:08:51.941 You find a lot of other distractions, but not managers and meetings. 00:08:51.965 --> 00:08:54.942 So these are the things that you don't find elsewhere, 00:08:54.966 --> 00:08:56.561 but you do find at the office. 00:08:57.371 --> 00:09:00.722 And managers are basically people whose job it is to interrupt people. 00:09:00.746 --> 00:09:04.238 That's pretty much what managers are for. They're for interrupting people. 00:09:04.262 --> 00:09:08.101 They don't really do the work, so they make sure everyone else is doing work, 00:09:08.125 --> 00:09:09.849 which is an interruption. 00:09:09.873 --> 00:09:13.467 We have lots of managers in the world now, and a lot of people in the world, 00:09:13.491 --> 00:09:15.592 and a lot of interruptions by these managers. 00:09:15.616 --> 00:09:17.669 They have to check in: "Hey, how's it going? 00:09:17.693 --> 00:09:19.577 Show me what's up." This sort of thing. 00:09:19.601 --> 00:09:21.759 They keep interrupting you at the wrong time, 00:09:21.783 --> 00:09:25.084 while you're actually trying to do something they're paying you to do, 00:09:25.108 --> 00:09:26.511 they tend to interrupt you. 00:09:26.535 --> 00:09:28.098 That's kind of bad. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:28.122 --> 00:09:31.233 But what's even worse is the thing that managers do most of all, 00:09:31.257 --> 00:09:32.704 which is call meetings. 00:09:32.728 --> 00:09:35.274 And meetings are just toxic, 00:09:35.298 --> 00:09:38.300 terrible, poisonous things 00:09:38.324 --> 00:09:39.743 during the day at work. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:39.767 --> 00:09:40.983 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:41.007 --> 00:09:42.794 We all know this to be true, 00:09:42.818 --> 00:09:46.039 and you would never see a spontaneous meeting called by employees. 00:09:46.063 --> 00:09:47.324 It doesn't work that way. 00:09:47.348 --> 00:09:49.076 The manager calls the meeting 00:09:49.100 --> 00:09:51.015 so the employees can all come together, 00:09:51.039 --> 00:09:53.762 and it's an incredibly disruptive thing to do to people -- 00:09:53.786 --> 00:09:54.976 to say, "Hey look, 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:58.698 we're going to bring 10 people together right now and have a meeting. 00:09:58.722 --> 00:10:00.214 I don't care what you're doing, 00:10:00.238 --> 00:10:03.245 you've got to stop doing it, so you can have this meeting." 00:10:03.269 --> 00:10:06.643 I mean, what are the chances that all 10 people are ready to stop? 00:10:06.667 --> 00:10:10.420 What if they're thinking about something important, or doing important work? 00:10:10.444 --> 00:10:14.233 All of a sudden you tell them they have to stop doing that to do something else. 00:10:14.257 --> 00:10:16.976 So they go into a meeting room, they get together, 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:20.272 and they talk about stuff that doesn't really matter, usually. 00:10:20.296 --> 00:10:21.940 Because meetings aren't work. 00:10:21.964 --> 00:10:24.130 Meetings are places to go to talk about things 00:10:24.154 --> 00:10:25.851 you're supposed to be doing later. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:25.875 --> 00:10:27.846 But meetings also procreate. 00:10:27.870 --> 00:10:30.135 So one meeting tends to lead to another meeting, 00:10:30.159 --> 00:10:31.644 which leads to another meeting. 00:10:31.668 --> 00:10:33.874 There's often too many people in the meetings, 00:10:33.898 --> 00:10:36.623 and they're very, very expensive to the organization. 00:10:36.647 --> 00:10:39.772 Companies often think of a one-hour meeting as a one-hour meeting, 00:10:39.796 --> 00:10:42.257 but that's not true, unless there's only one person. 00:10:42.281 --> 00:10:45.805 If there are 10 people, it's a 10-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting. 00:10:45.829 --> 00:10:49.106 It's 10 hours of productivity taken from the rest of the organization 00:10:49.130 --> 00:10:52.469 to have this one-hour meeting, which probably should have been handled 00:10:52.493 --> 00:10:54.976 by two or three people talking for a few minutes. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:57.539 But instead, there's a long scheduled meeting, 00:10:57.563 --> 00:11:00.134 because meetings are scheduled the way software works, 00:11:00.158 --> 00:11:03.559 which is in increments of 15 minutes, or 30 minutes, or an hour. 00:11:03.583 --> 00:11:07.226 You don't schedule an eight-hour meeting with Outlook; you can't. 00:11:07.250 --> 00:11:10.224 You can go 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour. 00:11:10.248 --> 00:11:12.222 And so we tend to fill these times up 00:11:12.246 --> 00:11:14.405 when things should go really quickly. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:14.429 --> 00:11:18.079 So meetings and managers are two major problems in businesses today, 00:11:18.103 --> 00:11:19.262 especially at offices. 00:11:19.286 --> 00:11:21.932 These things don't exist outside of the office. 00:11:22.428 --> 00:11:27.229 So I have some suggestions to remedy the situation. 00:11:27.253 --> 00:11:28.976 What can managers do -- 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:30.976 enlightened managers, hopefully -- 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:34.472 what can they do to make the office a better place for people to work, 00:11:34.496 --> 00:11:37.341 so it's not the last resort, but it's the first resort, 00:11:37.365 --> 00:11:38.707 so that people start to say, 00:11:38.731 --> 00:11:41.508 "When I really want to get stuff done, I go to the office." 00:11:41.532 --> 00:11:43.446 Because the offices are well-equipped; 00:11:43.470 --> 00:11:45.604 everything is there for them to do the work. 00:11:45.628 --> 00:11:48.889 But they don't want to go there right now, so how do we change that? 00:11:48.913 --> 00:11:50.947 I have three suggestions to share with you. 00:11:50.971 --> 00:11:53.842 I have about three minutes, so that'll fit perfectly. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:53.866 --> 00:11:56.703 We've all heard of the Casual Friday thing. 00:11:56.727 --> 00:11:58.576 I don't know if people still do that. 00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:00.276 But how about "No-talk Thursdays?" NOTE Paragraph 00:12:00.300 --> 00:12:02.332 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:12:02.356 --> 00:12:05.302 Pick one Thursday once a month, 00:12:05.326 --> 00:12:08.637 and cut it in half, just the afternoon -- I'll make it easy for you. 00:12:08.661 --> 00:12:10.391 So just the afternoon, one Thursday. 00:12:10.415 --> 00:12:12.669 First Thursday of the month, just the afternoon, 00:12:12.693 --> 00:12:14.757 nobody in the office can talk to each other. 00:12:14.781 --> 00:12:16.319 Just silence, that's it. 00:12:16.343 --> 00:12:17.976 And what you'll find 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.408 is that a tremendous amount of work gets done 00:12:20.432 --> 00:12:22.036 when no one talks to each other. 00:12:22.060 --> 00:12:24.124 This is when people actually get stuff done, 00:12:24.148 --> 00:12:26.664 is when no one's bothering them or interrupting them. 00:12:26.688 --> 00:12:29.649 Giving someone four hours of uninterrupted time 00:12:29.673 --> 00:12:31.847 is the best gift you can give anybody at work. 00:12:31.871 --> 00:12:33.284 It's better than a computer, 00:12:33.308 --> 00:12:36.062 better than a new monitor, better than new software, 00:12:36.086 --> 00:12:38.061 or whatever people typically use. 00:12:38.085 --> 00:12:40.489 Giving them four hours of quiet time at the office 00:12:40.513 --> 00:12:42.434 is going to be incredibly valuable. 00:12:42.458 --> 00:12:46.426 If you try that, I think you'll agree, and hopefully you can do it more often. 00:12:46.450 --> 00:12:48.172 So maybe it's every other week, 00:12:48.196 --> 00:12:49.976 or every week, once a week, 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:52.053 afternoons no one can talk to each other. 00:12:52.077 --> 00:12:55.164 That's something that you'll find will really, really work. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:55.188 --> 00:12:57.490 Another thing you can try, 00:12:57.514 --> 00:13:00.976 is switching from active communication and collaboration, 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:04.191 which is like face-to-face stuff -- tapping people on the shoulder, 00:13:04.215 --> 00:13:06.191 saying hi to them, having meetings, 00:13:06.215 --> 00:13:09.001 and replace that with more passive models of communication, 00:13:09.025 --> 00:13:11.326 using things like email and instant messaging, 00:13:11.350 --> 00:13:14.302 or collaboration products, things like that. 00:13:14.628 --> 00:13:17.549 Now some people might say email is really distracting, 00:13:17.573 --> 00:13:21.143 I.M. is really distracting, and these other things are really distracting, 00:13:21.167 --> 00:13:24.739 but they're distracting at a time of your own choice and your own choosing. 00:13:24.763 --> 00:13:27.571 You can quit the email app; you can't quit your boss. 00:13:27.595 --> 00:13:29.373 You can quit I.M.; 00:13:29.397 --> 00:13:31.214 you can't hide your manager. 00:13:31.238 --> 00:13:32.976 You can put these things away, 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:36.381 and then you can be interrupted on your own schedule, at your own time, 00:13:36.405 --> 00:13:38.882 when you're available, when you're ready to go again. 00:13:38.906 --> 00:13:40.976 Because work, like sleep, happens in phases. 00:13:41.000 --> 00:13:43.093 So you'll be going up, doing some work, 00:13:43.117 --> 00:13:45.076 and then you'll come down from that work, 00:13:45.100 --> 00:13:47.552 and then maybe it's time to check that email or I.M. 00:13:47.576 --> 00:13:50.077 There are very, very few things that are that urgent, 00:13:50.101 --> 00:13:53.148 that need to happen, that need to be answered right this second. 00:13:53.172 --> 00:13:54.347 So if you're a manager, 00:13:54.371 --> 00:13:57.355 start encouraging people to use more things like I.M. and email 00:13:57.379 --> 00:13:59.395 and other things that someone can put away 00:13:59.419 --> 00:14:01.620 and then get back to you on their own schedule. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:01.644 --> 00:14:05.223 And the last suggestion I have is that, 00:14:05.247 --> 00:14:06.976 if you do have a meeting coming up, 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:10.626 if you have the power, just cancel it. 00:14:10.650 --> 00:14:12.110 Just cancel that next meeting. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:12.134 --> 00:14:13.300 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:14:13.324 --> 00:14:15.969 Today's Friday, usually people have meetings on Monday. 00:14:15.993 --> 00:14:17.155 Just don't have it. 00:14:17.179 --> 00:14:18.584 I don't mean move it; 00:14:18.608 --> 00:14:21.250 I mean just erase it from memory, it's gone. 00:14:21.274 --> 00:14:23.862 And you'll find out that everything will be just fine. 00:14:23.886 --> 00:14:26.902 All these discussions and decisions you thought you had to make 00:14:26.926 --> 00:14:28.710 at this one time at 9 a.m. on Monday, 00:14:28.734 --> 00:14:31.031 just forget about them, and things will be fine. 00:14:31.055 --> 00:14:34.036 People will have a more open morning, they can actually think. 00:14:34.060 --> 00:14:36.835 You'll find out all these things you thought you had to do, 00:14:36.859 --> 00:14:38.312 you don't actually have to do. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:38.336 --> 00:14:42.328 So those are just three quick suggestions I wanted to give you guys to think about. 00:14:42.352 --> 00:14:45.377 I hope that some of these ideas were at least provocative enough 00:14:45.401 --> 00:14:47.507 for managers and bosses and business owners 00:14:47.531 --> 00:14:50.347 and organizers and people who are in charge of other people, 00:14:50.371 --> 00:14:52.242 to think about laying off a little bit, 00:14:52.266 --> 00:14:54.401 and giving people more time to get work done. 00:14:54.425 --> 00:14:56.235 I think it'll all pay off in the end. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:56.259 --> 00:14:58.261 So, thanks for listening. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:58.285 --> 00:14:59.944 (Applause)