0:01

Eric Mack has been my trusted

0:03

advisor and my personal technology coach

0:05

for the past 30

0:18

years. In

0:20

that time, he developed his

0:22

intentionally productive practices

0:25

and framework which he uses to help people

0:27

shift their perspective

0:30

about the

0:32

way they use what they know, how they

0:36

work, and the tools they already

0:38

have to get things done. For

0:42

many, the workplace is broken. We

0:45

don't realize it, but our tools can shape

0:48

us in unproductive ways and

0:50

we've become conditioned

0:52

to accept this as normal. With

0:55

his eight practices of

0:57

intentionally productive work, Eric provides

0:59

a framework to help you

1:02

shift your mindset and uplevel your

1:04

work. With Eric's help, I

1:07

spend less time thinking about my tools

1:09

and more time doing meaningful work.

1:13

In this podcast, I've invited Eric to talk

1:16

with John Forrester and me about

1:18

his intentionally productive mindset,

1:21

how the workplace is broken and

1:24

what you can do about it. One

1:28

more thing, to help

1:30

people better understand the relationship between

1:34

their knowledge, methods and tools,

1:37

Eric's doing a survey on work

1:39

styles and key frustrations. I

1:42

want to encourage the GTD community to

1:44

take his survey. I

1:46

did and I found it helpful to us

1:48

in understanding how

1:51

we work, what we can do to improve

1:54

and more. John will

1:56

provide the details at the end of the

1:58

podcast. be sure to

2:00

listen to the end. Hi,

2:03

everyone. I'm here with David Allen and

2:05

Eric Mack. My name is John Forrester.

2:08

And Eric is no stranger to our

2:10

recorded podcasts, as many of you know,

2:12

we've talked with him over the years

2:14

about various topics.

2:16

And today we're

2:18

going to look at, I'm going to

2:20

use the provocative title and say the

2:22

workplace is broken. And

2:24

Eric is going to get into more about

2:26

how that is, why that is, and what

2:29

can be done to fix it. David

2:32

Allen and I have worked with Eric for over 30

2:34

years now, and he's currently

2:36

helping busy professionals use his intentionally

2:38

productive framework with the tools they

2:40

already have. As a result,

2:42

they spend more of their work day on meaningful

2:44

work and they make a greater impact. David,

2:47

I'm going to hand it over to you and

2:49

anything you'd like to say about Eric and his

2:51

work over the years. First, I have

2:53

to say I wasn't trying to cut

2:55

my throat. I nicked myself shaving this morning.

3:00

I have a bandaid, a little bandaid here. I'm

3:03

glad you lived to tell the tale, David. If

3:06

somebody were to show up in any organization and

3:08

say, God, you know, we just have a whole

3:10

new technology we want to install, but

3:13

how do we make that work culturally, strategically,

3:17

economically, given everybody that

3:19

we need to do? Well, first of all, you're going to

3:22

find very few executives that

3:24

are savvy enough to even ask

3:26

that question. So,

3:28

Eric, we can talk about that too, that you're one

3:30

of your biggest problems, one of our biggest problems, but

3:32

most people don't even know what their problem is. Well,

3:37

you know, the last thing a patient notices is

3:39

water. So

3:41

probably the last thing even IT

3:43

professionals notice is how

3:46

cumbersome or how unproductive

3:51

their implementation is

3:55

potentially. Come on, we knew this

3:57

from Lotus Notes many years ago. God, this is like

3:59

this. like the gold for

4:02

a team and organizational conversations

4:05

and project management and whatever.

4:08

But most people didn't even realize...

4:12

They weren't ready for it. They weren't ready for it. They

4:14

didn't know what the tool was. Anyway,

4:17

to make a long story short, so

4:20

I'm going to give Erica right

4:22

off the front bat here a paid

4:24

political announcement called Look Guys. Everybody

4:27

who's in that situation probably needs

4:29

somebody like an Eric Mack or Eric

4:32

himself to come in and help

4:34

assess that situation and say, you know, what's the

4:36

strategic way to get on top

4:38

of this game instead of feel buried by it?

4:40

So that's my introduction to

4:43

Eric Mack, and I would have no

4:45

reservations to making that recommendation from now

4:47

on. Thank you.

4:49

Well, we have... This is the second recording we've

4:51

done with Eric in a week. We're

4:55

going to release both of them in short

4:57

order. But before that,

4:59

it was late 2019, the last time

5:01

we talked with you, Eric. So

5:04

what have you been up to for three

5:06

years? Almost four years. Well,

5:09

let's see. We actually met in

5:11

late 2021, my mistake there, when

5:14

we did... We

5:18

started to kick off this coaching

5:20

program, and what happened is just

5:23

two weeks after we launched that

5:25

podcast, I had my

5:28

forced Mind Like Water experience. Forced

5:31

Mind Like Water? Forced Mind Like Water. For years. Yeah,

5:34

no, no. I

5:37

know that for many years, we always tried to

5:40

reach that elusive state of Mind

5:42

Like Water, David. But for me,

5:45

it was forced. I ended up

5:47

in the hospital with COVID, double

5:49

pneumonia, sepsis, and ARDS.

5:52

And what that translated into is

5:54

spending 11 days getting

5:57

critical care, but specific

6:00

with 40 liters

6:03

per minute of oxygen, which is like

6:05

taking the other end of a vacuum cleaner hose

6:07

and hooking it up to a face mask. After

6:13

one day, your mind was definitely

6:15

clear of all thoughts because it

6:18

was not possible to contain any

6:20

other thoughts. By

6:22

the eighth day, I was convinced that if

6:24

I could get the strength together, which I

6:27

didn't have, I was going to take off

6:29

the mask and run down the hall screaming

6:31

because it was just the

6:33

silence and the white noise

6:35

and everything was just a little too much.

6:38

But what's been interesting from that, and I

6:40

kind of call that my forced mind like

6:42

water, but what was interesting in that is

6:46

that coming home, I lost

6:48

all short term memory, which

6:52

in a sense is what we talk

6:54

about when we talk about mind like

6:56

water. We talk about the water not

6:58

tensing up before the rock shows up.

7:02

That was very much me. In

7:04

fact, I resorted

7:06

to surviving going through pads and

7:08

pads of post-it notes every day

7:11

just to give me

7:13

the simplest cues like I'm going down

7:15

the hall to use the restroom or

7:17

I'm going to the office to pick something

7:19

up. It literally was that

7:22

extreme. At

7:24

its worst, I was probably going through half

7:27

a dozen post-it note pads a day just

7:29

with these little cognitive artifacts telling me what

7:31

to think about because I could not keep

7:34

a thought in my mind from one moment

7:36

to the next. Now while I

7:38

was going through that, it was no fun.

7:40

In fact, it was pretty frustrating and at

7:42

times I'd even get angry that I couldn't

7:44

remember some of the most basic things I

7:46

set out to do. But

7:49

after a while, I realized, wait a

7:51

minute, I've got what we were all

7:53

looking to get to, which is this

7:55

point of responding in the moment only

7:58

to what's going on in the moment. And

8:01

for that I'm very thankful because now

8:04

as I'm on the other side of recovery

8:06

I spent a year on oxygen and other

8:09

stuff at home trying to get better. Now

8:13

that I'm on the other side of that I can

8:15

see how that's actually benefited me

8:17

greatly to have experienced that.

8:20

Just like David when you coached

8:23

me and you wanted to get all the

8:25

way through to an empty inbox to make

8:27

sure that I experienced what empty felt like.

8:29

This was like I definitely

8:31

experienced that mind like water

8:33

moment. Wow what

8:36

a story. Well we're glad you're feeling

8:38

better now and you're back

8:40

to your cockpit there where you have

8:42

that amazing desk and set of monitors

8:45

and tools around you. By

8:47

the way let me interrupt right for

8:49

a second. John and Eric you both probably

8:51

have run across people as I have who

8:54

wound up going to like a

8:56

10-day silent retreat where

8:59

at the end of the sixth or seventh day

9:02

instead of going crazy they suddenly

9:04

realized wow I'm pleasant. It

9:08

kind of took them that long to

9:10

get to the space that was

9:12

clear space. Yes. Then

9:15

all that other stuff wasn't going on say

9:17

Eric you just sounds like you just

9:19

got that in turbo charge. Yeah

9:21

I don't think I could have handled

9:23

voluntarily going into the 10 days of

9:26

silence although it's appealing

9:28

now. But

9:31

yes I understand for once.

9:33

Yeah yeah. All right

9:35

well let's move on to the provocative

9:38

topic of the workplace is broken. Tell

9:40

us what you mean by that

9:42

and start filling in on

9:44

that please. Sure when I talk about the

9:46

workplace being broken I mean that

9:49

our environment and our tools as we

9:51

were discussing in the last podcast often

9:53

shape us in unproductive ways

9:56

and so it's kind of you

9:58

know a situation. where the

10:01

tools can work against us. In

10:03

fact, if you don't mind, I

10:05

pulled together a page that I

10:08

think I'd rather read just because

10:10

it allows me to succinctly describe what

10:13

I mean when I say the workplace

10:15

is broken. I realize that's a provocative

10:17

topic. The modern

10:19

workplace works against us. Of course, work

10:22

still gets done. It's just much harder

10:24

than it should be. Constant

10:26

connectivity means we're expected to be

10:28

always on with little time for

10:31

deep thought. Meetings are

10:33

more frequent, inefficient, unproductive,

10:35

and disappointing. We spend

10:37

too much time looking for information

10:39

so it becomes easier to just

10:42

Google or reinvent a process. It's

10:45

too hard to organize information we receive

10:47

so we tend to leave it all

10:49

in our inbox. Many

10:52

organizations respond to this by replacing

10:54

one set of tools with another,

10:56

promising that your work is about to

10:58

get easier with fill in the blank

11:01

tool. Thanks to some

11:03

new tool, paradoxically, the very tools

11:05

that are intended to make us

11:07

more productive often have the

11:09

opposite effect. Thanks to

11:11

cloud software, the tools we use change

11:14

often and new tools are

11:16

introduced at a frenzying pace, typically

11:19

with little notice or training. Have you

11:21

seen that? Yeah.

11:24

Absolutely. I was talking to someone last week

11:26

that who had just

11:28

had a new tool dropped into her company and

11:30

she said we're expected to do

11:32

something with this but we've had no

11:35

training or other information about

11:37

how to use it. Or

11:39

even time to explore. So

11:42

we barely have the time to learn

11:44

how to use these tools effectively. Overlapping

11:47

features often create confusion around what

11:49

to store where and which tools

11:51

to use for what. Distractions

11:54

abound in the form of

11:56

interruptions and constant alerts from

11:59

apps. email, instant messages,

12:02

and all other tools, each demanding our

12:04

attention at the expense of the important

12:06

work we've been paid to do. These

12:09

things sabotage our focus and rob

12:12

our productivity, sap our energy, and

12:14

instead of feeling accomplished, we feel mentally drained

12:17

at the end of the day. Now

12:19

here's the real thing that I think

12:21

is why

12:23

I call the workplace is broken. I

12:26

just described the problem, and of course, many

12:29

people would acknowledge that they've experienced that

12:31

to some degree or other. But

12:34

we've been conditioned to think that this is

12:36

normal. Right, we've been

12:38

conditioned to think that it's normal that

12:40

yet another distraction comes our way

12:42

on the desktop, or

12:45

yet another tool comes away, or

12:47

another alert. I

12:49

was working with a client the other day,

12:51

and they had all kinds of applications from

12:53

their health and wellness group that were popping up.

12:56

It's time to stretch, it's time to do this,

12:58

it's time to do that. And while as

13:01

an isolated tool, that was

13:03

a very valuable and thoughtful tool, but

13:06

as an interruption, it totally took that

13:08

person away from the deep work that

13:10

they were just getting into. And

13:13

I see this happening over and over and over.

13:16

So as a consequence of this, we've

13:18

become conditioned to think in unproductive ways.

13:20

And let me give a couple examples.

13:24

We tend to organize our work around the tools

13:26

we use, often

13:28

choosing the most comfortable tools, rather

13:31

than the most productive tools. In fact,

13:33

I was reading a Harvard

13:35

Business Review article on the

13:37

future of work, and

13:40

they talked about the same thing, where they

13:42

talked about how workers are using

13:44

50% more tools than

13:46

they were using in 2014, and

13:49

that 95% of

13:52

the respondents say that email is the

13:54

most common tool they use for work.

13:56

And yet these companies are pouring small

13:58

fortunes into all of these. other tools

14:00

that are supposed to make life easier. I

14:03

call that Channel Creek. Yeah,

14:06

very much so. Very much

14:08

so. David, recently on another

14:10

recording, David, you were talking about, remind me

14:12

of a number, when

14:14

your attention is diverted from one thing to

14:16

another, there's some kind of length of

14:19

time it takes you to switch your full

14:21

focus back. Does that ring a bell? 12

14:24

minutes? Yeah. Well, some study

14:26

said 12. I've seen 20, I've

14:29

seen various different kinds of things, which

14:31

is kind of bizarre because if you're a karate,

14:33

four people jump in a dark gala, you don't

14:35

wait 20 minutes to decide who to hit next.

14:39

So shifting a focus

14:41

is possible, but only

14:44

if you have the skills to know how

14:46

to shift your focus and where to put

14:48

it to and

14:51

what the previous input means. What

14:56

I found, and this goes back

14:58

to my post-hospitalization experience, I

15:01

found that in losing the short-term

15:03

memory, I lost the

15:05

ability to process non-visual

15:07

cues. And so

15:09

if I had to jump from idea to

15:11

idea, I just could not do it. It

15:14

was so frustrating. And so

15:16

I often had to leave markers or

15:18

visual artifacts around to remind me. So

15:21

perhaps, David, when you drew your

15:23

comparison to the martial artist in

15:25

the alley with four attackers, those

15:28

were each very visual and in his face

15:30

so that he knew exactly what had to

15:32

be done as he

15:34

made each turn. Whereas

15:36

in knowledge work, so much of the

15:38

work that happens happens in our mind

15:41

before being committed to paper or

15:43

email or whatever the task may

15:45

be. And that's the

15:47

work that is very difficult to switch

15:50

back and forth because you mentally have

15:52

to put away what you were thinking

15:54

on, and then you mentally have to bring

15:56

it back. And I think that's where

15:58

that 12 minutes or or however many

16:00

minutes it happens to be for people, that's

16:03

where that tax comes in. Yeah,

16:06

unless you had made a

16:08

note about where you left

16:10

off. Precisely, precisely. So

16:14

if you took that extra step, and

16:16

that's a valuable point, if you took

16:18

that extra step of making a note,

16:20

even on a post-it note and saying,

16:22

I just got to this point, then

16:24

you could go take that call, you

16:27

could go use the restroom, you could

16:29

go get a cup of coffee, and

16:31

come back and be able to slip

16:34

right back into where you were. It's

16:38

when you have those interruptions and you

16:40

don't process the interruption effectively for what

16:42

it is. I'm gonna

16:44

leave some of these other things off the

16:46

list here, but basically you get the idea

16:48

of where I was going in that our

16:51

tools shape our behaviors, and

16:54

they're not always shaping our

16:56

behaviors for the more productive approach.

17:01

Right. I would challenge

17:03

or proffer, correct

17:06

me either of you guys, if I'm wrong, but

17:09

most of the people who are deciding about

17:13

optimizing tools, don't

17:15

get how to optimizing the thought process required

17:19

to use them well. Correct. Agreed,

17:22

absolutely agreed. I would agree. I think a

17:24

lot of people look at the tool and

17:26

figure maybe at best if they can just

17:28

master how to use the tool, then they're

17:30

set. But mastery of

17:32

the tool is really mastery of the

17:34

mindset in how we use the tool.

17:36

The tool is just a way of

17:39

extending our capabilities. Yeah,

17:42

and we've run across clients

17:44

and friends and colleagues and people

17:47

who've implemented some tools, but

17:50

because they had GTV based

17:52

as an operating system in

17:54

their brain, they knew how

17:56

to structure us on it. They knew

17:58

how to then structure teams. they

18:00

knew how to then structure slack or

18:03

make decisions about what it means and

18:06

then how to spread that

18:08

organizationally. But boy, that's, I

18:10

think that's a rare commodity still these days

18:13

to find somebody who gets that. I think

18:15

it is. I think it is. People want

18:17

to be told how to

18:19

structure before they've learned the

18:22

productive thinking habits. Right.

18:26

Or instead of

18:28

solving the problem, as you described,

18:30

David, which is look at the

18:33

method that they're working with, that they

18:35

attempt to solve the problem by focusing back

18:37

on the tool. What can the tool do?

18:39

Oh, we can only think this way because

18:41

that's the way the tool was designed. And

18:44

they try to shoehorn their work into whatever the

18:46

tool in front of them provides

18:49

or offers rather than saying, what do

18:51

we need to be effective as a

18:53

team and what can this tool offer

18:55

us that will support us? Well,

18:59

to be fair, that said,

19:01

there is some sexiness to the tools.

19:04

Sure. In terms of triggering

19:06

thinking you hadn't thought of before,

19:09

et cetera. You know, come on. You

19:14

know, I've just seen, Eric, you passed on

19:16

Microsoft's 30-minute promotional

19:18

about Copilot.

19:22

So that tool is a huge

19:24

decision support tool. Absolutely.

19:26

But you have to then

19:28

decide what decisions do I

19:30

need to make. Right.

19:34

And whatever. But the tool

19:36

itself could just turn you on to lots of cool stuff.

19:39

You know, I've had many of the tools that

19:41

I've experimented with that gave me ideas I wouldn't have

19:43

had otherwise. Even

19:46

Evernote or even, you know,

19:48

certainly Lotus Notes. And then even,

19:51

you know, Team, so

19:54

I'm still in the stigma. Try

19:56

to hit it. You know, they build all

19:58

these buttons in that if you go. You know

20:00

how to go to which corner to

20:02

punch that button, then that will solve this

20:04

issue. But who knew that was the button

20:06

you need to push? Especially, I

20:08

find it challenging with the very minimalist

20:11

design, like the disappearing

20:13

horizontal scroll bars or things like

20:16

that. Again, there are

20:18

no problems only projects. So what's the project here? How

20:20

do we get clear? How do we get on top

20:22

of this thing? How do we surf

20:24

the technology we have available to us?

20:27

But again, do we have the, you

20:30

know, Eric's formula, do we have the

20:32

knowledge and the methodologies to

20:34

be able to know how to use the tool? I

20:37

was just thinking about this, and I think

20:39

I had left a prompt here that

20:41

talking about how even just

20:43

alerts, how costly

20:46

those alerts are. And

20:48

not that alerts are bad. I mean, obviously if

20:50

there's a problem and you need to be alerted

20:52

to it, that could be useful to you. But

20:55

the fact that these days we have

20:58

so many things looking for our attention

21:01

and the costs at that place,

21:03

I always tell people it's lightweight.

21:05

If you've got all your alerts

21:07

turned on in your email, it's

21:10

like training chickens. Yeah.

21:15

Shall I share that one? And that's just

21:17

email. Then multiply that by

21:19

all the other programs that want to be pushing alerts

21:21

at you. That's right. Think

21:24

about it, every time you install an app,

21:26

thank goodness that Apple at least warns you

21:28

this program is trying to send you alerts.

21:31

This program wants to take over your home

21:33

screen and so on. You

21:36

know, the analogy that I use with training

21:38

chickens, David, you'll remember this, goes back to

21:40

this little clicker here. And

21:44

when we took the class on how to

21:46

train chickens, which by the way is a

21:48

thing, and you can do that, and

21:51

you can train them to do just

21:53

about anything because you have a stimulus,

21:56

you have a behavior that you're

21:58

looking for, have a reward, you

22:01

give the chicken a kernel of grain

22:03

or something to make that happen. But

22:06

is that really any different with all the

22:08

dings and notices we have on the computer?

22:11

I could be in a podcast with you right now and

22:13

all of a sudden I'd have the dancing email ball

22:15

in the corner of my screen and

22:17

I go, ooh, there's my stimulus. Let

22:20

me go see what it is. It could be exciting. And

22:23

I go click on it and now

22:25

I've taken an action, I've clicked

22:27

on it and my reward is

22:29

a momentary distraction, a momentary high,

22:31

which may or may not be

22:33

in any way related to the

22:35

task for which I was hired, the

22:37

task I needed to do or anything else.

22:40

I think I was mentioning it comes

22:42

back to being, are you intentionally

22:45

productive or are you accidentally productive?

22:48

If you're working off of your list,

22:50

if you're working off your calendar, I'd

22:52

call that being intentionally productive where you've

22:54

made some decision up front. And

22:56

of course, David, you've addressed this well

22:58

within the G2D methodology, which is why

23:01

I love it so much. But

23:03

at the same point, if you're somebody who's working

23:06

out of your inbox and

23:08

that email shows up to command your attention

23:11

and take it away for even just

23:13

a few moments, then the

23:15

question is, was that email strategic to

23:17

where you wanted to go or was

23:19

it just a distraction that there was

23:21

a sale last week at your

23:24

favorite store? And

23:27

in that case, if you managed to

23:29

get something done, I'd call that even

23:31

close to being accidentally productive. Right.

23:34

Well, but the chance you know that happening are so slim.

23:37

And you can magnify this, I think,

23:39

I don't know,

23:42

exponentially or geometrically anyway, when

23:44

you add something like Slack, it

23:47

gives these sort of channels that

23:49

are both chat. They're also

23:51

business channel, business project channels. There are

23:53

also all kinds of things. How

23:56

many things do you need to look at within

23:58

that whole? Echoes

24:01

the some of my wife and I

24:03

know what's life on the table. Maybe

24:05

it's not too many retailers me in

24:07

one of them is one am done

24:09

with Mr. Say think it's like okay

24:11

how do I stop to that. And

24:14

we've actually have some Gtd clients

24:16

one in Norway specifically that been

24:18

a lot of time. Cigarette: Here's

24:20

how we use. Our

24:22

slacked like they were using slang for

24:25

me the something similar Norwegian here's how

24:27

we use that there's I will use

24:29

Sms out the here's how we use

24:31

the phone or whatever and these of

24:33

the protocols when will now follow. So.

24:36

But they had the diggers spend a good

24:38

that a rigorous time. I. Say

24:40

defining. What? Those protocols

24:43

were. For. Those different different

24:45

tools. And. I.

24:48

Says I talk to our Gdp

24:50

trainer Erica and and coach you

24:52

who is working with the songs.

24:55

I said are they still doing this He said yes.

24:58

Six. Months later, it's still in place.

25:00

Wonder wonderfully Because as you know

25:02

Eric Months as one of its

25:04

challenges as of. Okay, are you

25:06

so many useless? You know, Frame

25:09

Us are now six months now. As

25:11

as cool as it may be In

25:13

on your on your Saturday. You

25:15

know, seventy rainy afternoon? Geek out?

25:19

Yeah David, I think set time. When.

25:22

We look at at this. the key to

25:24

adoption is heavy agreements as to how we're

25:26

going to use these many tools. We have

25:28

so many tools and then on top of

25:31

that we don't even have. It's not even

25:33

like reaching into your utensils tour and saying

25:35

i have a nice knife of forth in

25:37

a spoon because every tool than ads on

25:39

so many features said it's more like you

25:42

open your drawer and you have a whole

25:44

bunch of Swiss army knives. And.

25:46

So the problem then become night.

25:48

well which which tool mag any

25:51

you see breakfast with? Ah well,

25:53

any of them. Well that's okay

25:55

as long as other people are

25:57

expecting to receive fear the same

25:59

handle. Otherwise you know end up

26:01

with a disconnect. Edu lead into a

26:03

lack of trust which we talked about

26:06

once before. You.

26:08

That's why this becomes a pretty much the top

26:10

down. A. Decision.

26:14

Making implementation Making. Procedure,

26:17

Eric and something. That's your game

26:19

now, right? That is

26:21

this where I'm spending a lot of

26:23

time. It took awhile to to get

26:25

clear on the problem in such a

26:28

way that I could help come alongside

26:30

people and help them see the impact

26:32

that it was having on their own

26:34

work and help them discovered new ways

26:36

of working with whatever tool they have

26:38

in front of them. When

26:41

you send me notes ahead of

26:43

time, Eric, you've mentioned something about

26:45

eight practices. Oh

26:47

yeah that? sure? sure.

26:49

So basically in in

26:51

doing my research about.

26:53

Why? Work is broken and what I could

26:56

offer to six Seven Cz to get out

26:58

there and say work is broken but it's

27:00

It's a little more. Challenging.

27:02

To come back and say. Now here is

27:04

some things you can think about. it do

27:06

differently. I tried to. I actually came up

27:08

with three things. John. I

27:11

came up with a definition I

27:13

call it the T Miss which

27:15

I'll give you in a moment.

27:17

I then place said in context

27:19

of the values that we create

27:21

and David you already talked about

27:23

that being the function of our

27:25

knowledge, the way we work, our

27:27

methods, and the tools that we

27:29

use. And there's an interesting relationship.

27:31

Between those and then finally I

27:34

created said it of principle best

27:36

practices for how to think about

27:38

our work. I'm not too dissimilar

27:41

from the natural planning model, but

27:43

really, Different.

27:45

In the sense that I'm

27:47

looking at other outside behaviors.

27:51

But. still very complimentary to gtd com

27:53

let me start with the team

27:55

is for example you know the

27:57

t mess was my attempts to create

27:59

a definition of what I see

28:01

going on in too many organizations.

28:03

So I define the T-Myth as

28:06

the myth that computer software or

28:08

other tools automatically make

28:10

us more productive regardless of

28:13

one's methods or knowledge. The

28:17

additional part of that is the T-Myth

28:19

is also the fallacy that

28:22

leadership or IT management,

28:24

A, understand how their

28:26

people actually work well enough to

28:28

select or design an appropriate tool,

28:31

and B, can drop said tool on

28:33

their people. And once IT

28:35

has dropped the tool on their people,

28:37

that those people will A, naturally take

28:39

to it, and B, automatically become more

28:42

productive as a result. And

28:45

I'm really passionate about this because I worked

28:47

with a large client back East and

28:51

they were moving to a new system

28:53

of tools and for months they

28:56

had... By the way, back East, Eric

28:58

is in the US, so back East

29:00

means Eastern US. Thank

29:03

you. And

29:05

for months this client had posters

29:08

and newsletters and

29:10

email advertisements all saying your work

29:13

is about to get easier with,

29:15

and then the name of their new system.

29:18

And they really built it up and really built it up.

29:21

And that just... That frustrates me to

29:24

no end because I've yet to see

29:26

a situation where that's really true. Usually,

29:29

what ends up happening is on the

29:31

day of migration, people are told, okay,

29:33

you're leaving on Friday with this system

29:35

and on Monday morning we're going to

29:37

be switching over to this system. And

29:40

you know what ends up happening is people just

29:42

take their habits, good or bad,

29:45

and their messes and they move them

29:47

into the next tool. And

29:49

as a consequence, they never quite get the

29:51

benefit that they could have otherwise received from

29:54

that very tool because they

29:56

didn't shift their thinking about the tool,

29:59

they just moved every... over. The analogy

30:01

I give, I had a, I was

30:03

speaking at an executive conference and the

30:05

host described it this way.

30:07

He said that he and his brother shared

30:09

an apartment in

30:11

University and when they

30:13

knew they were moving to the next apartment,

30:16

he, the host, he would

30:18

do his laundry and he would take it down to

30:20

the car and put it in a box in the

30:22

car so everything was neat and ready to go. So

30:25

on move day all he had to do was drive

30:27

his car to the new apartment, open

30:29

the box and he was ready

30:31

to go. His brother

30:33

on the other hand would just let

30:35

the laundry pile up in the laundry basket,

30:37

the dishes pile up in the sink and

30:40

he'd throw those in a box and throw

30:42

his laundry and then he'd move those both

30:44

over to the new location and keep working.

30:46

How is that any different from the way

30:48

that we're working in the workplace? It's

30:50

not, it's not. If you, if you

30:52

get a new email tool you

30:55

can either transfer your 10,000 emails in your inbox

30:58

into the new tool or maybe for a

31:00

moment you have email bankruptcy, you have zero

31:02

in your inbox but before long your

31:04

work habits are going to get you back to the 10,000 in

31:07

the inbox. Yeah, Eric,

31:09

let me. But

31:11

Lotus Notes again was such a game

31:14

changer in terms of what that

31:16

was but when organizations did implemented

31:18

Lotus Notes almost nobody knew

31:20

how to use it. Nope,

31:22

all they did was try to transfer, okay

31:24

well I guess this is my email client

31:27

but it's not quite as as

31:29

cool as whatever my previous one was but I'll use

31:31

it I guess if I have to and that was

31:33

it. Literally that was

31:35

it at multiple senior

31:37

levels of people in the organization that

31:40

should have been much more savvy and aware about

31:42

this but I don't know. Well

31:44

and you know to Microsoft's credit, Microsoft

31:47

their way of responding to Lotus Notes

31:49

because at the time they offered nothing

31:51

at the time was

31:54

to pigeonhole people

31:56

into thinking that Lotus Notes was email.

32:00

And completely overlooking the collaborative

32:02

aspect of that tool, which

32:04

was really where the power

32:06

was. And email was

32:09

just one small-sized slice of that. Yeah,

32:11

the first place

32:14

I went to work that used Lotus Notes,

32:17

they were lucky that they didn't treat

32:19

it as just an email client. Because

32:21

frankly, an email client in Lotus Notes

32:23

was one of the weak spots. Absolutely.

32:25

They treated it as a collaborative workplace

32:28

where there were applications within

32:30

Notes that managed the workflow.

32:32

And I got there after having been on

32:34

email for a few years and looked at

32:36

this and went, well, this is

32:39

revolutionary. I mean, you're not going to have

32:41

everything go through my email? You have workflow

32:43

that comes and goes from me to

32:45

me where it's clear what I need

32:47

to do, but it's built into the

32:50

collaboration part of Lotus Notes. It was

32:52

an eye-opener for me. And

32:54

yet, 20 years later, we've got

32:56

some amazing tools out there, and

32:59

yet people are still dealing with the exact

33:01

same challenge. Right.

33:03

Okay. In fact, I

33:06

think, like I said, in that

33:08

Harvard Future of Work study, they

33:10

talked about how increasingly executives are

33:12

using more tools than they did

33:14

five years ago. And

33:17

that email still remains the most

33:19

common tool used, even though

33:22

we have some extraordinary collaboration

33:24

tools out there. So

33:26

how do we deal with this? Well,

33:30

for me, that comes down to

33:33

a few things. The V equals

33:35

KMT is a formula that I

33:37

put together to describe the relationship

33:40

between what you know, how

33:42

you work, and the tools that you use.

33:45

And those are all multipliers, which

33:47

means that a change in any

33:49

one of those could have a

33:52

profound impact upwardly

33:55

or negatively. For example, many people are

33:57

using V as a tool. Many

33:59

people are using V as a tool. times people think that

34:01

the tool, in fact this comes back to

34:03

how I came up with the T-Myth, many

34:06

people ascribe to the T,

34:08

the tool component, a

34:10

whole lot more important than I think

34:12

it really deserves. Many

34:14

people think if I just replace the T,

34:17

then all these other problems are going to

34:19

go away. If we get fill in the

34:21

blank vendor's product, then all these other problems

34:23

that have been plaguing us, they're going to

34:25

go away because of the T, because of

34:27

the tool. I submit that the T

34:29

is actually only about 20% of

34:32

the value add in the equation. Far

34:34

more important is the methodology and the

34:37

knowledge that we bring to the table

34:39

as knowledge workers to get the job

34:42

done. It's challenging

34:47

at first to get people to see

34:49

that and understand and get them away

34:51

from, oh, this tool is

34:53

going to solve your problem. By

34:56

the way, I'm very guilty of that.

34:58

In the very early years of Lotus

35:00

Notes, Lotus Notes was marketed as

35:02

the ultimate knowledge management tool

35:04

or the ultimate knowledge management

35:06

system, I should say. In

35:08

reality, what it was was

35:10

a great tool for sharing

35:12

of information and collaboration. It

35:15

wasn't the end all panacea that

35:17

it was marketed as. Now,

35:19

it did become so for some organizations

35:22

that took that extra time and effort.

35:25

Those are the kinds of organizations I love

35:27

serving where people say, hey, we just made

35:29

this investment in this tool. How

35:31

do we get more out of it?

35:34

How do we learn to work differently

35:36

or work intentionally?