Ep. 358: Workplace Challenges and Improvements  🔗 **Source:** [Ep. 358: Workplace Challenges and Improvements](https://share.snipd.com/episode/0d574223-1b72-4798-b1f1-d46fdb8994d8) ## Highlights - **Forced Mind-Like Water From Severe COVID Recovery** - Eric recounted a near-death COVID hospitalization that left him with severe short-term memory loss and forced presence. - He used pads of post-it notes daily as cognitive artifacts and later saw benefit in achieving a 'mind-like water' clarity. Transcript: David Allen Forced mind-like water? Eric Mack Forced mind-like water experience. Yeah, no, no. I know that for many years, we always tried to reach that elusive state of mind-like water, David. But for me, it was forced. I ended up in the hospital with COVID, double pneumonia, sepsis, and ARDS. What that translated into is spending 11 days getting critical care, but specifically with 40 liters per minute of oxygen, which is like taking the other end of a vacuum cleaner hose And hooking it up to a face mask. And after one day, your mind was definitely clear of all thoughts because it was not possible to contain any other thoughts. By the eighth day, I was convinced that if I could get the strength together, which I didn't have, I was going to take off the mask and run down the hall screaming because it was just the Silence and the white noise and everything was just a little too much. But what's been interesting from that, and I kind of call that my forced mind-like water, but what was interesting in that is that coming home, I lost all short-term memory, which in A sense is what we talk about when we talk about mind-like water, right? We talk about the water not tensing up before the rock shows up. That was very much me. In fact, I resorted to surviving going through pads and pads of post-it notes every day just to give me the simplest cues like I'm going down the hall to the restroom or I'm going to the Office to pick something up. It literally was that extreme. At its worst, I was probably going through half a dozen post-it notepads a day just with these little cognitive artifacts telling me what to think about because I could not keep a thought In my mind from one moment to the next. Now, while I was going through that, it was no fun. In fact, it was pretty frustrating, and at times I'd even get angry that I couldn't remember some of the most basic things I set out to do. But after a while, I realized, wait a minute, I've got what we were all looking to get to, which is this point of responding in the moment only to what's going on in the moment. And for that, I'm very thankful because now as I'm on the other side of recovery, I spent a year on oxygen and other stuff at home trying to get better. Now that I'm on the other side of that, I can see how that's actually benefited me greatly to have experienced that. ([Time 0:05:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4235a1c1-5b27-4d8e-abd6-f4cdba6f5d53)) - **Tools Shape Workflows More Than We Realize** - Modern workplace tools and constant connectivity shape behavior and often reduce productivity rather than increase it. - Eric Mack lists frequent meetings, overflowing inboxes, overlapping tool features, and nonstop alerts as core mechanisms that sap deep work. Transcript: Eric Mack Sure. When I talk about the workplace being broken, I mean that our environment and our tools, as we were discussing in the last podcast, often shape us in unproductive ways. And so it's kind of, you know, a situation where the tools can work against us. In fact, if you don't mind, I pulled together a page that I think I'd rather read just because it allows me to succinctly describe what I mean when I say the workplace is broken. I realize that's a provocative topic. The modern workplace works against us. Of course, work still gets done. It's just much harder than it should be. Constant connectivity means we're expected to be always on with little time for deep thought. Meetings are more frequent, inefficient, unproductive, and disappointing. We spend too much time looking for information, so it becomes easier to just Google or reinvent a process. It's too hard to organize information we receive, so we tend to leave it all in our inbox. Many organizations respond to this by replacing one set of tools with another, promising that your work is about to get easier with fill-in tool. Thanks to some new tool. Paradoxically, the very tools that are intended to make us more productive often have the opposite effect. Thanks to cloud software, the tools we use change often, and new tools are introduced at a frenzying pace, typically with little notice or training. Have you seen that? Yeah. John Forrester Yep, absolutely. I was talking to someone last week who had just had a new tool dropped into her company, and she said, we're expected to do something with this, but we've had no training or other information About how to use it. Eric Mack Or even time to explore. So we barely have the time to learn how to use these tools effectively. Overlapping features often create confusion around what to store where and which tools to use for what. Distractions abound in the form of interruptions and constant alerts from apps, email, instant messages, and all other tools, each demanding our attention at the expense of the important Work we've been paid to do. These things sabotage our focus and rob our productivity, sap our energy, and instead of feeling accomplished, we feel mentally drained at the end of the day. Now, here's the real thing that I think is why I call the workplace is broken. I just described the problem, and of course, many people would acknowledge that they've experienced that to some degree or other, but we've been conditioned to think that this is normal. Right. We've been conditioned to think that it's normal that yet another distraction comes our way on the desktop or yet another tool comes away or another alert. I was working with a client the other day and they had all kinds of applications from their health and wellness group that were popping up. It's time to stretch. It's time to do this. It's time to do that. And while as an isolated tool, that was a very valuable and thoughtful tool, but as an interruption, it totally took that person away from the deep work that they were just getting into. ([Time 0:09:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/607db62b-f70c-41c9-bc10-05b7ab830403)) - **Leave Visual Markers Before You Switch Tasks** - Make explicit notes or visual markers before switching tasks so you can resume mental work quickly. - Eric recommends simple artifacts like post-its to mark where you left off to avoid the long cognitive recovery time after interruptions. Transcript: Eric Mack You were. It's when you have those interruptions and you don't process the interruption effectively for what it is. I'm going to leave some of these other things off the list here, but basically you get the idea of where I was going in that our tools shape our behaviors and they're not always shaping Our behaviors for the more productive approach. ([Time 0:16:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/25992cc2-cf93-44e1-9de2-5c0d4e64b334)) - **Prioritize Mindset Before Tool Mastery** - Focus first on methods and mindset before expecting mastery of a tool to solve workflow problems. - Eric warns mastery of a tool is actually mastery of the mindset for using it; tools extend capabilities but don't replace method. Transcript: Eric Mack Or instead of solving the problem, as you described, David, which is look at the method that they're working with, that they attempt to solve the problem by focusing back on the tool. What can the tool do? Oh, we can only think this way because that's the way the tool was designed. ([Time 0:18:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3783586d-c979-41f8-a339-0c7224a0b633)) - **Notifications Train Us To Chase Distractions** - Alerts act like behavioral training signals, prompting instant attention for small rewards and fragmenting focus. - Eric compares app notifications to training chickens with a clicker and grain to explain why we chase distractions. Transcript: Eric Mack You give the chicken a kernel of grain or something to make that happen. But is that really any different with all the dings and notices we have on the computer? I could be in a podcast with you right now, and all of a sudden I'd have the dancing email ball in the corner of my screen, and I go, ooh, there's my stimulus. Let me go see what it is. It could be exciting. And I go click on it. And now I've taken an action. I've clicked on it. And my reward is a momentary distraction, a momentary high, which may or may not be in any way related to the task for which I was hired, the task I needed to do, or anything else. I think I was mentioning, it comes back to being, are you intentionally productive or are you accidentally productive? ([Time 0:22:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8a280b8a-808b-42c0-bee1-ec720245fff2)) - **Create Team Protocols For Tool Usage** - Define and agree organizational protocols for which tool/channel to use for what before adopting multiple apps. - David Allen and Eric cite a Norwegian team that created and sustained clear tool-use protocols for six months successfully. Transcript: Eric Mack David, I think that when we look at this, the key to adoption is having agreement as to how we're going to use these many tools. We have so many tools. And then on top of that, we don't even have, it's not even like reaching into your utensil drawer and saying, I have a knife, a fork, and a spoon, because every tool then adds on so many features That it's more like you open your drawer and you have a whole bunch of Swiss Army knives. And so the problem then becomes, well, which tool am I going to use to eat breakfast with? Well, any of them. Well, that's okay, as long as other people are expecting to receive via those same channels. ([Time 0:25:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ebc8a23a-14c1-4b92-ad43-112375fe3c8d)) - **The T-Myth Explains Failed Tool Migrations** - The T-myth: organizations assume new software will automatically boost productivity without changing methods or habits. - Eric shows migrations often just move old messes into new tools, preventing real gains. Transcript: Eric Mack I actually came up with three things, John. I came up with a definition. I call it the T-myth, which I'll give you in a moment. I place that in context of the value that we create. And David, you already talked about that being the function of our knowledge, the way we work, our methods, and the tools that we use. And there's an interesting relationship between those. And then finally, I created a set of principle-based practices for how to think about our work, Not too dissimilar from the natural planning model, but really different in the sense That I'm looking at other outside behaviors, but still very complementary to GTD. Let me start with the T-myth, for example. The T-myth was my attempt to create a definition of what I see going on in too many organizations. So I define the T-myth as the myth that computer software or other tools automatically make us more productive regardless of one's methods or knowledge. The additional part of that is the T-Myth is also the fallacy that leadership or IT management, A, understand how their people actually work well enough to select or design an appropriate Tool, and B, can drop said tool on their people, and once IT has dropped the tool on their people, that those people will, A, naturally take to it, and B, automatically become more productive As a result. And I'm really passionate about this because I worked with a large client back east, and they were moving to a new system of tools. And for months, they had – By the way, back east, Eric is in the US. David Allen So back east means eastern US. Eric Mack Thank you. And for months, this client had posters and newsletters and email advertisements all saying your work is about to get easier with – and then the name of their new system. And they really built it up and really built it up. And that just that frustrates me to no end because I've yet to see a situation where that's really true. Usually what ends up happening is on the day of migration, people are told, OK, you're leaving on Friday with this system. And on Monday morning, we're going to be switching over to this system. And you know what ends up happening is people just take their habits, good or bad, and their messes, and they move them into the next tool. And as a consequence, they never quite get the benefit that they could have otherwise received from that very tool because they didn't shift their thinking about the tool. ([Time 0:27:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc5a56be-3267-4d4c-8e65-6d478cedb04a)) - **Moving Laundry Analogy Shows Migration Habits** - Eric shared an apartment-moving analogy where one brother prepared laundry neatly while the other boxed clutter and moved it as-is. - The tidy brother mirrors people who clean up work before migrating tools; the other preserves messy habits into new systems. Transcript: Eric Mack He said that he and his brother shared an apartment in university. When they knew they were moving to the next apartment, he, the host, would do his laundry and he would take it down to the car and put it in a box in the car so everything was neat and ready To go. So on move day, all he had to do was drive his car to the new apartment, open the box, and he was ready to go. His brother, on the other hand, would just let the laundry pile up in the laundry basket, the dishes pile up in the sink, and he'd throw those in a box and throw his laundry, and then he'd Move those both over to the new location and keep working. ([Time 0:30:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fe832f52-c855-45f7-a2d3-e602924d9b5f))