The Happiness Equation: Want Nothing + Do Anything = Have Everything

6

Removal #3: How to add an hour to a day with only one small change

I got my first office job in my early twenties.

For four months between school years in college I held the sexy job title of “summer intern” at a big consulting company in a downtown high-rise. Casey was my boss and the head of the project I was assigned to for the summer, which was for one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies.

One Monday morning, I was sitting in his glass-windowed corner office with the rising sun beaming onto the desk between us. More than three months of late-night stress and working on weekends had finally rolled up to right now.

We were minutes away from our big presentation.

Casey’s sense of humor had carried me through all the challenges and Chinese takeout boxes leading up to today, but he had just asked me a last-minute question that made me snap. My nerves were frayed. I had no energy left.

“Why do we have an assumption in here instead of an actual figure?” he asked.

“Because Roger didn’t write back to my three emails asking him for the right number and he never gave us a number where we could call him. I tried his assistant twice and never heard back, either. It’s like he forgot we existed. You know that.”

Roger was the highly touted CEO of the oil and gas company who everybody looked up to. He was highlighted in flashy magazine articles and known as a people leader who espoused work-life balance while nonchalantly beating his numbers every year. Meanwhile, employees at the company told us he ate lunch in the company cafeteria, drove a beat-up truck to work, and had dinner with his kids every night.

The man was a legend.

After our introductory meeting three months back I wrote Roger an email summarizing our meeting and next steps. He didn’t write back. I then took my laptop home every night in case Roger emailed with an urgent question or request. I checked email every half an hour just in case the CEO of the company ever emailed late at night asking for a project update the next morning. Just so if he ever needed something, anything, I’d be there.

But . . . there was nothing. In three months of working for him he didn’t write me a single email. He didn’t write Casey any emails, either. We dropped a few questions along the way but never heard back. And I had just told Casey my messages to his assistant weren’t returned, either. Now suddenly it was time for our big presentation and Casey was questioning why I didn’t have certain numbers.

I steadied my nerves as we stepped into the boardroom where Roger was sitting and chatting with our company president. He smiled and got up to shake our hands and thank us for the work we’d done. “I’m so excited,” he said with a big grin. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate how hard you’ve been working. You guys are geniuses. I’m going to learn so much from this chat.”

The anger I felt about his unresponsiveness suddenly melted. I felt like a million bucks.

We jumped into the presentation and had a great discussion. It was casual, engaging, and open. He loved it. And I couldn’t believe how relaxed everything felt. He was talking to us like old friends. After the meeting was done there was so much trust between us. So as we were packing up, I thought about it for a split second and decided to ask him one last question.

I couldn’t help myself.

“Roger, thanks so much for today. We had trouble running some numbers by you in advance. And I know we didn’t hear from you on the additional questions we had. So, just for my own learning, can I ask why you don’t write or respond to emails? How do you do that?”

His eyes opened a bit and he seemed surprised by the question. But he wasn’t fazed.

“Neil,” he said, “there’s a problem with email. After you send one, the responsibility of it goes away from you and becomes the responsibility of the other person. It’s a hot potato. An email is work given to you by somebody else.”

I nodded, thinking about all the emails I got from Casey and coworkers.

“I do read emails, but the ones looking for something are always much less urgent than they seem. When I don’t respond, one of two things happens:

The person figures it out on their own, or,

They email me again because it really was important.

“Sure, I send one or two emails a day, but they usually say, ‘Give me a call,’ or, ‘Let’s chat about this.’ Unless they’re from my wife. I answer all of those.”

I was very confused.

How was the CEO of a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of employees not emailing?

He paused to look at me and sensed I didn’t get it.

“You know what,” he continued, “since I don’t write many emails, I don’t receive many, either. I probably only get five or ten emails a day.”

Five emails a day? Here I was working at a consulting company writing emails morning, noon, and night. It was the same for everyone. “My inbox has seven hundred emails,” my coworkers would say and sigh. “I did emails all Sunday afternoon.” There was no way around it. After all, our bosses sent urgent emails at 7:00 a.m. Saturday, late Sunday afternoon, or 11:00 p.m. Friday. I knew this was common in my company and others. McKinsey had even reported that office workers spend on average 28% of their time answering email. Almost a third. And Baydin, one of the world’s largest email-management services, says the average person gets 147 emails a day. We were all attached to our cell phones and computers, firing emails around, working hard to get everything done. It was part of the job. And we all wanted to do a good job.

Suddenly it started to click why Roger was known to have lunch in the cafeteria with employees every day and drive home for dinner with his family every night.

He didn’t respond to hot potatoes.

He didn’t write back to emails and create email chains.

I looked up at Roger again, and he continued.

“Most of the time, Neil, people really do figure it out on their own. They realize they know the answer, they keep on moving, they develop confidence for next time. They become better themselves. Your assumptions in the slides today weren’t perfect, but they worked perfectly well and you learned by doing them. Don’t get me wrong. I sometimes walk over to chat with a person or pick up the phone. But if I wrote back to an email, I’d be sending a hot potato. And nobody wants to be asked by the CEO to do something . . . never mind on an evening or weekend. Why? Because people would drop everything to reply. And they would expect me to reply to that. Basically, if I sent an email, it would never end. So I end it.”

How to protect your most valuable asset

You have only one brain. And it focuses on only one thing at one time.

Your brain is the most incredible and complex object in the universe. We have never seen anything like it. We barely understand it. We use it, but we don’t know how we use it. When we kick, we pull our leg back and swing it forward. When we think, we just think. As Cliff once said on Cheers, “Interesting little article here. It says the average human being only uses seventeen percent of his brain. Boy, you realize what that means? We don’t use a full, uh . . . sixty-four percent.”

Your brain is capable of infinite possibilities: producing great works of art, building businesses, raising children. Brains made The Starry Night and the Great Wall of China. The Beatles and the Bible. Brains made planes, trains, and automobiles. Brains make your life what it is and die when you do. The good news is for no money down, no annual fees, and no monthly interest, you get one free copy of the universe’s most complex and powerful object. It’s yours for life! The only bad news is there is no warranty, it requires daily recharging, and even the longest-lasting models in the world last only forty thousand days. (The average model lasts twenty-five thousand days.)

You break it, it’s broken. Seat belts, bike helmets, and exercise are mandatory. For power, your brain recharges with six to eight hours of sleep a day and as much healthy food as possible. That’s a lot of gas! It takes the equivalent of more than sixteen apples a day just to power your brain. But remember: The world’s most powerful supercomputer has been compacted into a three-pound pile of flesh in your skull, so no wonder it needs so much energy. Yes, nearly a full third of all the food you eat goes straight to powering your brain.

Roger was the smartest guy at the company. No doubt about it. In the years since, he’s gone up and up and up. All while eating lunch in the cafeteria every day and dinner with his family every night. I had worked with Roger only three months when I learned how to add an hour to the day with only one small change.

How?

Block access. Protect your brain. Guard it. Remove all entry points to your brain except a single one you can control. In addition to Roger’s approach to email, I learned later that he didn’t have a desk phone, personal email address, or any social media accounts. Fuel your brain and let it run wild by removing access points. Close the doors and lock the windows, but answer the bell.

What’s the bell? It’s your number one top priority. What was Roger’s bell? Emails from the chairman of the board and his family. Not voicemail, not texts, not anything else. Have you ever shopped in a small-town convenience store where they have a little bell on the front counter? They are busy stocking shelves. They are busy unpacking boxes. They are busy placing orders. But when you ring that bell they are right there, right away. That’s what it means to close the doors and lock the windows but answer the bell.

Let your brain produce great work, savor space, and power your biggest ideas, most passionate efforts, and greatest accomplishments.

The greatest misconception you share with every other employee

Multitasking.

Doing two or more things at once.

How often do you hear people use that word? What does it mean? And where did it even come from?

We have to go all the way back to a paper written by IBM in 1965 to find the origin of the word multitasking. How was it defined? “The ability of a microprocessor to apparently process several tasks simultaneously.”

Yes, that is the actual meaning. Right from the paper. Want to read it again? This time let me underline one word.

“The ability of a microprocessor to apparently process several tasks simultaneously.”

Apparently? Apparently! What do they mean by apparently? You mean, even computers don’t actually process several tasks at the same time? Well, no. They don’t. Another quote, another underline from me:

“Computer multitasking in single core microprocessors actually involves time-sharing the processor; only one task can actually be active at a time, but tasks are rotated through many times a second.”

Time-sharing. We’ve heard of time-sharing. Like splitting a lake house with five other couples throughout the year. Everyone has the illusion of owning a lake house! But really, you’re all just going at different times.

And this is for single-core microprocessors. Those with one brain. You know who else has one brain? You and me. We can make a dual-core computer, but we haven’t developed a dual-brain baby yet. That kid will actually be able to multitask.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Just because a computer doesn’t actually do more than one task at once, who says you can’t? After all, haven’t you ever brushed your teeth while taking off your socks, texted while driving, or answered emails on a conference call?

No.

You haven’t actually done any of those things.

You have taken tiny breaks from driving to text and you have taken tiny breaks from texting to drive. You have taken tiny breaks from brushing your teeth to remove your socks. You have taken tiny breaks from removing your socks to brush your teeth. Together, you may have accomplished all of it. But you have created only the illusion of multitasking.

As my friend Mike once told me, “Screwing up two things at the same time isn’t multitasking.”

Let’s look at one final quote about multitasking in a computer’s brain. This one comes from a white paper written by the company National Instruments:

“In the case of a computer with a single CPU core, only one task runs at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for that task. Multitasking solves the problem by scheduling which task may run at any given time and when another waiting task gets a turn. This act of reassigning a CPU from one task to another one is called a context switch. When context switches occur frequently enough, the illusion of parallelism is achieved.”

When context switches occur frequently enough, the illusion of parallelism is achieved.

The single greatest misconception of every employee is that they can multitask. That their brains can do two things at once. But they can’t. This is the illusion of parallelism. When jumping between many things is perfectly scheduled, everyone will think you’re actually doing two things at the same time. But you’re not. You’re simply scheduling them in. Have you ever seen anybody checking emails while pressing “mute” on a conference call? They aren’t listening to the call. But they said hello at the beginning and will “context switch” if anybody says their name. Like “Linda, what do you think of the proposal?” Suddenly Linda stops emailing and gives her two cents.

The illusion of parallelism is achieved.

Here’s what it looks like in a Dilbert cartoon.

Visit http://bit.ly/1UNMpGI for a larger version of this image.

Do you remember when doctors were the only ones with pagers? Sometimes they were on call and they carried their pagers around. Sometimes they weren’t on call and there was no way to reach them. If there was an emergency, the hospital would page the doctor and they’d drive over to deliver the baby or slice out the appendix. Emergency device for emergency situations. Then suddenly everyone had pagers. Then everyone had cell phones. Now everyone is accessible, any way, any time.

Do you remember when stores used to be closed on Sundays? It was family day. Church day. Quiet day. Nothing was open. You couldn’t get anything done. Neither could anyone else. Then a few stores started opening on Sundays. Others wanted to compete. Local laws changed. Online stores opened twenty-four hours a day.

How do you add an hour to your day with only one small change?

You need to remove access.

Close the doors, lock the windows, answer the bell.

The only two modes your brain actually has and how to use them

John Cleese, cofounder of Monty Python, knows a few things about removing access. Freeing your brain from the tyranny of “busy.” He is famous for removing access and creating space in his life. What was the effect? Oh, not much. Just scoring Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations and being in more than a hundred movies all the way into his seventies.

As John described it in a speech to the organization Video Arts, we are in closed mode “most of the time when we’re at work. We have inside us a feeling that there’s lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we’re going to get through it all. It’s an active, probably slightly anxious mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable . . . It’s a mode in which we’re very purposeful and it’s a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic.”

What’s the opposite of this? John calls it open mode. That’s where your brain is free and playful and capable of achieving greatness. Sound slightly counterintuitive? Maybe. But by closing off access to your brain . . . you’re opening up your mind.

“By contrast,” John says, “the open mode is a relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode in which we’re probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor . . . and consequently, more playful. It’s a mode in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.”

How do you get yourself into open mode? How do you block access?

“Let’s take space,” he says. “You can’t become playful and therefore creative if you’re under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you’ve got to be in the closed mode, right? So you have to create some space for yourself away from those demands. And that means sealing yourself off. You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.”

You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.

One of the hardest and most important things you will ever do at work

How do you actually eliminate other outside disturbances? How do you cut off access . . . to yourself? Without building a shack in the middle of the forest.

It’s not easy.

While working as Director of Leadership Development at Walmart, I counted six distinct ways people could communicate with me: email, voicemail, instant message, texting, written notes, and walking up to my desk. Every interruption took time because I suddenly had to do three things:

Bookmark

Prioritize

Switch

“People in a work setting,” says psychologist David Meyer of the University of Michigan, “who are banging away on word processors at the same time they have to answer phones and talk to their co-workers or bosses—they’re doing switches all the time. Not being able to concentrate for, say, tens of minutes at a time may mean it’s costing a company as much as twenty to forty percent in terms of potential efficiency lost, or the ‘time cost’ of switching, as these researchers call it. In effect, you’ve got writer’s block briefly as you go from one task to another. You’ve got to (a) want to switch tasks, you’ve got to (b) make the switch, and then you’ve got to (c) get warmed back up on what you’re doing.”

René Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University, has done a study showing the brain exhibits a “response selection bottleneck.” I like that! When someone calls me at the same time as an email comes in and a person walks up to my desk—what happens? Response selection bottleneck. Picture saying that in a robot voice. “Error. Response. Selection. Bottleneck.” In other words, I get jammed up.

Another study from Harvard Business School is called “Rainmakers: Why Bad Weather Means Good Productivity” by Jooa Julia Lee, Francesca Gino, and Bradley R. Staats. They show that bad weather reduces our options of what we can do and increases our productivity. Less access to outside? More work done inside.

One day at work I decided to block off as much access to myself as possible. Close the doors. Lock the windows. But answer the bell. (For me the bell is emails from my boss.)

First, I logged in to my voicemail and permanently set it to “vacation mode” where it didn’t allow callers to leave a voicemail. There was no beep. There would be no red light on my machine. I just left a message asking people to email me instead and then spelled out my email address really slowly a couple times.

Next, I deleted our office instant-messaging software and deleted my profile in the texting application we all used on our work phones. Coworkers used these to send messages because they came with the illusion of parallelism. But it was a red herring. Bookmark, prioritize, switch. No. I would never be in “away mode” anymore. I flat-out deleted it.

Last, I disabled all notifications from my email. No dings. No pop-ups. No reminders telling me an email arrived. With no voicemail, no text messages, no instant messages, and no email reminders, what happened? I created focus. And if I needed space from my own desk, I could go work in the cafeteria.

By cutting off access to myself, I was able to choose what to focus on, aim my brain at that task, and then nail it.

How do you add an hour to your day with only one small change?

Remove access. Close the doors. Lock the windows. And pick the bell you will answer and focus on. Delete and remove all access to yourself except for that one. Watch as your productivity spikes, your days become more productive, and you create beautiful space.