The Vergecast - A Googler’s guide to getting things done

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Laura Mae Martin is a big believer in the settings menu. Martin is Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor, and spends much of her time working with other Googlers on improving their productivity and communication systems — and one of the things she often recommends is taking a few minutes to poke through the options. “With your phone, with your email, your Slack, all these things, the features are there but we don’t take the time to dive into them,” she says. She even thinks you should maybe have to look at settings before you can use the app. “Like, you can’t get into the app unless you spend 10 minutes figuring out what it can do.” On this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries about all things productivity and work, we talk to Martin about how she sees things changing. Four years after the pandemic forced us all to work from home, are we finally figuring out remote and hybrid work? Are managers realizing that butts-in-seats isn’t, and maybe was never, a good metric for productivity? And is the era of the hard-charging hustle bro finally giving way to a healthier, more holistic way of thinking about being productive? Martin sees all these things from so many perspectives, and has lots of thoughts on everything from communication styles to energy flows. We also talk about the rise in digital productivity tools like Notion and Slack, and why email is still so important — and still so terrible. One of Martin’s jobs at Google is to consult with the teams building Workspace apps like Docs and Gmail, and she has lots of thoughts on how those product works and how they could be better. We also talk about whether AI stands to change the way we get things done, and whether it’ll help us do more or just give us more to do. Along the way, Martin offers us lots of practical tips on how to manage our digital lives a little better. Charging your phone outside the bedroom, no-tech Tuesdays, and a couple of prettier email labels might actually go a long way. And if you have too many notes in too many places, it’s time to get a Main List going. If you want to know more on everything we talk about in this episode, here are a few links to get you started: Laura Mae Martin’s website Her book, Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing’ The Google Workspace guide to productivity and wellbeing The Verge’s favorite tools to stay organized The best note-taking apps for collecting your thoughts and data All I want is one productivity app that can handle everything Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the Zetlcast and system. If you don't know what that is, don't worry about it. And honestly, you're probably better off for it. But if you know, you know. I'm your friend David Pierce, and this is the first in our new three-part series that we're calling Work Smarter. And the idea is basically to talk about productivity. But I mean that in the biggest, broadest, loosest way possible.

Like, I will talk to you four hours about calendar apps and task management systems. whether notion is better than one note. Like truly, I will talk to you about this four hours. But no one needs to hear that. I just think that these questions about how we should deal with all of the stuff that happens in our digital lives is really interesting. How should we think about screen time and managing our relationships with our devices? Where should we put all of our stuff?

We have all this stuff online from photos to sensitive documents to emails to like just the random things that you accumulate as you go about your life day to day. How should we manage all of that? Does it matter? Do you need to manage all of that? These are the questions, I think, are really interesting. And we're in a minute right now where, A, there are a lot of new tools being built to make sense of all of your digital stuff. And we're starting to rethink what it means to be productive. What it means to be a person online is changing. And I think that's really interesting. And so we're going to spend the next three Sundays talking about all of that. We're going to talk to people who make products, people who use products, people who talk

to people about using those products and try to make sense of all of it. And maybe come up with some, like, cool practical tips along the way. For the first one, we're going to talk to Laura May Martin, who works at Google helping other people at Google be more productive. She coaches executives, she teaches courses, she has a newsletter that you can subscribe to. She just wrote a book called Uptime that's really good. And the thrust of her work is to help people get more done, but to also redefine what that looks like. She thinks a lot about how you should use downtime and how you should structure your days and how

you should think about your own energy flows and communication styles and really what it means to just kind of be more deliberate about everything that you do. And not just professionally, one of her big ideas that I really like and we talk about a bit is this collapse of the idea of there's a professional. you and a personal you, I think that's wrong. There's just you. You have to do all this stuff. And increasingly, all this stuff is meshed together and happening on screens. So we talked about all that and much more. It was a really interesting conversation. And I learned a ton. So let's just get into it. All of that is coming in just a second. But I have to check my notes

to make sure I got to everything. So hold on. We'll be right back. What's up, y'all? I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter. for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds.

Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right, let's get into my chat with Laura May Martin from Google. So Laura wrote this book called Uptime that is kind of like how to get more stuff done productivity book. It has lots of systems and tools

and there are like templates for notes apps that you can use. But her big idea is basically that just raw number of tasks completed is not the goal. That we're in this place now where we have to provide different ways of thinking about productivity. That butts in seats in an office is not the answer. That how many widgets you create is not a good measure. And she also argues that the way we've talked about productivity for forever is just wrong. that we've been in this age of, you know, hustle culture and hustle bros being like, get up at 5 a.m. and do 50 tasks and then six hours of workouts and now you get three days out of my day.

And all of that, she says, is just wrong. It's unhealthy. It leads to burnout. It doesn't actually help you accomplish more over time. It's just unproductive. So we started just by talking about that. And I asked her basically, yes, okay, you want this more holistic, more sane, less hustle. cultural way of thinking about productivity. But is that realistic? Are we actually going to get that in a time where still maybe the best way we have to measure productivity is how many hours are you in the office and how many things do you produce? Even if everybody intellectually agrees, those are bad measures.

Those are kind of still the measures we have. So I asked her what she's seeing. Is there a real cultural shift happening in the way that we talk about productivity? or is this just kind of a woo-woo thing that we like to tell ourselves before we get back to yelling at people about not working enough? What I would ask of you, too, is all these people you've talked to that kind of had that mentality for maybe 10 or 15 years, what happened is then, is that sustainable? Or are those people now totally step back from the workforce and started a farm because that was their only way of kind of pulling out of it? And so I think that one thing the pandemic did is kind of shift our mindset to, okay, we have to think of ourselves as whole people and everything we have going on.

It's work, it's home. And how do we look at how to keep employees happy and productive long term? And so even the word productivity, I didn't really want it in the title of the book because I just feel like it brings up this sense of like, oh, I got to churn more out, kind of that sense of dread. But I think when we think about well-being and people ask about the balance of the two, it makes it seem like they're the opposite and their two ends of the stick that you're trying to go back and forth on. But when you think about the fact that when you prioritize your well-being, you end up more productive, which gives you more time for your well-being, which makes you more productive. And so it ends up being actually this holistic view and sustainable view of getting things done. I think the hustle culture is still having its moment in the sense of, you know, you hear a lot of,

oh, I'm back to back, I'm crazy, you know, how it is, fire drills, this language around it. And so I try to be aggressively the opposite and say awkward things like, oh, I'm actually the perfect level of balance. Or I have the right, exactly right amount of commitments. Or, you know, I have breaks in my day. And it makes people feel weird because, you know, that's what we're supposed to do, but nobody talks like that. So I think the language is dragging a bit, but I think the mindset is there, which is great. It's so funny you bring up the word productivity, because this is the thing I've been thinking a lot about too. And like we talk about productivity going back to like the industrial revolution is like literally how many things are you making.

Intellectually, if you ask anyone, it's a terrible measure, right? Like all of our measures of productivity in life now are bad. The like how long were you sitting in your chair is not a good measure of productivity. How many things did you make as like a knowledge worker is not even a thing? and yet it feels like in aggregate nothing has changed. And I think in a certain way, like I talk to folks at companies like Microsoft and Google who are like looking for new ways to track people

with the idea that maybe if we attach more numbers to this, we'll suddenly figure it out and everything will be great. What I wonder is whether like we're going to look back 50 years from now and realize that like the pandemic was a real sort of cultural inflection point or if we're going to be stuck in these problems forever, even though everybody knows the solutions we've been talking about for decades are not the right ones. Yeah, I think even the, like, how long are you sitting at your desk that you mentioned, you know, that nine to five? I feel like even with the pandemic, we saw a little bit of a shift to, and some companies like Google are already thinking this way.

But, oh, if somebody feels like they work better from 10 to 6, is that something we can honor? And we only would have figured that out about ourselves when we were given that little bit of breathing room and flexibility to decide our schedules and without commutes and working from home. So I think the goal, when I talk to managers and people who are thinking, how do I judge, if it's not number of calls per day, if it's not, you know, how much did I get done that day, what should I be really judging? And I think it goes back to that longevity piece. Do you have happy, successful, inspired creative employees that want to stay and that are performing well? And when we look at the macro level, so instead of, hey, what did you get done this week?

How long were you sitting in your chair today? knowing that there will be ebbs and flows and giving people that flexibility instead saying, what did you accomplish this quarter? Or, hey, we're going to look at this, you know, half-year project and you do it in the way that feels best to you. And it gives more of that chance for you to figure out what is the best way to do this, that breathing room instead of the micromanage mentality. I'm curious how you think about this, even in like the coaching you're doing with folks at Google, because I would assume most of the people you're working with are managers and other sort of high-ranking people,

people who oversee people, generally speaking, right? And like, those are the people who set the rules for the other people, many of whom are going to read a book like yours in order to figure out how to escape the meeting hell that their managers have put them in. And so, like, I think this idea of starting at the top to make some of this change makes a lot of sense to me, but it also seems like the last few years have been a lot of people raising their hands

being like, I get way more work done at home, can I stay at home, and a lot of managers being like, absolutely not come into the office because that's how I tell if you're working. What are you seeing from the manager's side of thing? Are they just slowly learning how to let go a little bit on some of that stuff? Yeah, I think, you know, there's a lot of flexibility in the sense that, okay, if you're going to spend three days at home, then I'm going to be okay with whatever you're choosing to do on those two days.

If you want to switch the days that you're here or let's think about our team meeting schedule. And so you're right. I always encourage, even from the well-being perspective, we were just talking about, you know, I tell managers, if you're going to say, oh, don't worry about working on the weekends, but I'm sending emails on the weekends, or take your vacation off, but you'll see me emailing on vacation. That doesn't set the example. So it really does have to start at the top where you might create, you know, one thing I do with a lot of executives is create

a user manual, meaning a description of how they work. And I think it's important to showcase there, hey, I've really thought about where I work best. And I've thought about the fact that I have my power hours or my best work time when I'm at home in the morning. And so I'm going to do my best to keep those free and communicate that and encourage people on your team to do the same and have that empowerment to say, I'm really thinking about when I get my best work done. And then as a manager, both living that and communicating it. Because the more that you talk about those things, the more it says, oh, you know, our VP does this.

So I feel like I can do that. And they're showing how they get more done and I can do the same. Yeah. Do you have a strong thesis on hybrid work? It feels like we're in a moment right now. where I suspect everyone you talk to is asking you, like, how do I set up my team to succeed in a hybrid universe? And at some point, maybe the answer is lots of answers, but that's no fun. So do you have a sort of strong idea about how to kind of do this correctly?

Yeah, I think that some level of flexibility is ideal. So saying, you know, everyone has to be in the office every day at this time. I don't think you're going to get your best results at that point. You might not even get the best people with that schedule. And so I think figuring out what is that. right mix of saying, hey, we as a team need to connect and that needs to be on this day and setting those things from the beginning so that people can then work around it. But at the same time, I know a lot of successful companies that have only remote employees, but they're really

thinking about, okay, then we need to have these connection points throughout the year, maybe more in-person off-sites, or, you know, if you're working globally, you need to have more of a structure of saying, okay, when we have APEC U.S. meetings, they're always on Tuesday, night, Wednesday, day morning because that's respecting, you know, culturally and everybody's not just working at all different times. And so I think it's looking at the makeup of your team because hybrid can mean lots of different things. It can mean, you know, in the office and in work. It can mean some of your team is in the office and some of your team is remote, which says, you know, a lot about how you're conducting meetings and making sure that people feel included and things like that. So I

think it's really about intention. I mean, so many things are about intention, but sitting down and saying, what does this actually look like and how can I make it work? And then the other thing I always encourage is, you know, don't just set it and forget it. If you have a team who's hybrid and you're saying, hey, let's test out this three, two model, let's test out all of us being here Wednesday. And then you choose these other days and our meetings fall these days. Go back in a quarter, half year and take a survey and ask how it's working because a lot of times you won't flush that out unless you ask. And so that's the best way to make sure it's working for everyone. Totally. Yeah. One of the things I really liked about your book is you keep coming back to the

idea that you just kind of have to do this stuff on purpose. And I never, I hadn't really thought about it until I was reading it, but I think it's really true how much of work and frankly, like digital life in general just happens to us, right? Like things appear in your inbox. Stuff happens in your calendar. Like Slack is always going. There's just, there's just things always happening. And I think like all the examples you gave of executives you talked to who you're like, where are you spending time and they just don't know, was both very, uh, made me feel a lot. better about my own habits. But it was also really interesting. And I think we're in a moment right now where so much has changed about how we work and like the tools that we use and the kinds of work

that gets done. And it feels like we just haven't developed the muscles in so many ways to actually both like measure this stuff with numbers and tools and stuff. But also to just say like, okay, how is any of this supposed to work? What am I actually doing? What am I getting out of this? And I feel like it was such a simple piece of advice to take out of, like, in a lot of ways, a very sort of practical, technical book. But it was just like, just pay attention. Yeah. Just look at this as you're doing it. Well, I think it was one of Cal Newport's books, maybe digital minimalism, that talks about Amish culture and how they don't reject all technology.

They actually look at each individual technology and really analyze, is this technology, what is it going to do for us? What is it going to take from us? Is it worth adopting? They, like, really think. through it. And I feel like it's the opposite where, like you said, it's like, all right, Slack's on the scene. Now we're all on Slack. Okay, now we have our phone. Now we sign up for this newsletter. It's just like we default into these things. And then we spend a lot of time kind of backtracking and say like, okay, do we really need this email in our inbox? Do I actually

want to be on my phone for this many hours every night? So it's that reverse mentality. But, you know, I joke with people. My phone has a bedtime. Like the alarm goes off. I put it to bed. I put it to bed in its own bedroom, but that requires a lot of intention because it's much easier for me to just sit with it all night on my couch doing things that I actually don't want to do. So it does kind of require that thoughtfulness of what time do I want to be done with my phone at night? And then how do I make that happen with a routine? Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's an interesting tension in that that I find really fascinating about this whole space. Like I really like the productivity subreddit because half the posts on there are just somebody being like, why can't I get anything done? I'm super

burned out and half the comments are always like trying to be helpful and give them tips and sort of build them up and say take a break you know here are some things that work for me and then the other half are just people being like just be disciplined shut up like just if you've stuff to do just do the stuff well I don't understand what the problem is and I think it's it's such an interesting dichotomy because on the one hand like if you want to use your phone less just use your phone less right is is not I think is not a particularly helpful piece of advice but it's not a wrong piece of advice. And like, charge your phone in the other room is a thing you can just do. Right. But I also think we're in a moment right now where all of the questions are being asked about,

like, okay, how can I sort of use technology to help me manage my technology? And we're talking about, you know, focus modes and all these different apps that build trees when you're not using them and all this different stuff. So I'm curious, like, how you feel about just kind of being a thoughtful person and being proactive and thinking this stuff through. versus like, can you build systems to protect you from your own worst instincts? Because I feel like a lot of technology is trying to take advantage of your worst instincts, and you're very much trying to keep people out of those holes. Yeah, I think I equated always to just if you were saying,

hey, I want to eat healthier. You know, that's like a lofty. It's just kind of a big goal. And so if you have years of having those practices and recipes, it's easier. but if you're getting started, you really want to drill down to what does that actually look like? So all the way down to like a grocery list. Like this week I want to eat healthy.

What am I actually going to buy at the store? And what am I going to clear out of my cabinet? And so that's why in the book I didn't just want these like delegate more. You know, I feel like those are just like too big. I think and those are the people on Reddit you're talking about that are like, just put your phone away. It's like, well, we almost need to trick our brain into these like little small, you know, routines. Even with myself, I see, you know, when I can't get something done, I talk about in the book that's been a really popular idea of like splitting up the task into the preparation of the task and the doing of it. Because for some reason, you know, setting out anything I need to do and then walking away and then stumbling upon it the next day and saying, oh, this has already set out. It's like, that's such a simple thing. And so you could just say, just do it. Just bake the muffins. But, you know, instead of that, I can say, okay, no, I have actually a recipe something to do. I'm just going to set that. ingredients out. And so I think it's a mix of, you know, having the understanding why these things are important,

but then also giving yourself a break and saying, yes, it's very hard to just say put your phone away. So maybe I will take advantage of something on my phone that turns off certain apps at a certain time just to remind myself. And maybe in three months, that could be turned off and I would have the good habits to just put my phone away. But if you never start with some of those things, and I do think the technology itself has a lot of those features that we just don't go into, which I talk about in the tools chapters, you know, like, you can choose, here are the 10 people I want to get email notifications from after hours, and that can be a setting, and no one takes the time to set that up. Again, we default into, oh, you know, there was a office-wide email about the carnival going on,

and I opened my phone at 9 to see it, you know, so we really just have to either take the time to set up rules for ourselves, set up the rules in the technology itself, but then knowing that with time, we'll see the benefits of those things and say, wow, I really see when I do this, it makes a big difference. And now I have that as a habit in general. Yeah, one of the reasons I knew I wanted to have you on the show was because you have a whole chapter in your book in which you just yell at people to use the settings of their apps. And it's like, that's a Vergecast thing if I've ever heard it in my entire life. It's simple, but it's underlooked. I think, you know, I even talk about the dishwasher thing

in the book about how my father-in-law just, his dishwasher is a piece of art. It's so perfectly stacked and everything comes out clean. He gets so much in there. And when I asked, how did you learn how to do this? He's like, no, the curveballs go over here. Just like, how did you know that? He's like, well, I read the manual for 10 minutes when I got the dishwasher. And it's like, how many of us do that? No one. And if we run the dishwasher every single day, imagine how much that 10 minutes of just really understanding the settings would benefit us every single time we on the dishwasher. So, you know, with your phone, with your email, your Slack, like all these things, the features are there, but we don't take the time to dive into, you know, there should

be like a limit. Like, you can't get into the app unless you spend 10 minutes figuring out what it can do, basically. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time in recent years trying to figure out whose responsibility it is to do that stuff. Because on the one hand, like, there are a lot of tools out there that are vastly more powerful than almost anybody knows, right? And sometimes, like, Excel is the perfect example, right? Like, if you really know how to use Excel, you can run the damn world out of Excel. But if you don't, and you just need to type a bunch of numbers in

and get some of those numbers, like, that's fine. You don't actually need to know how to use the tool. And so I think to force you to learn how to do everything before you do anything is actually the wrong outcome. But then is it Excel's job to teach me as I go, or is that going to be annoying because you get all those little pop-up tools? tips that everybody just ignores and closes anyway. So I don't know. Part of me wonders if this is just sort of an impossible problem to solve that it's like, how do you help me along without getting in the way as I do

the stuff that I actually need to do? Because I think to your point, the other thing that's happening is like you get Slack for the first time and you open Slack and there's already stuff happening. Like the minute you get Slack, you are already behind. And that's stressful, right? And so I think it's true with a lot of work. It's like you don't download PowerPoint to learn how to use PowerPoint. You download PowerPoint because you owe somebody a deck. Right. So I think this thing of like building the work about work into the work is just really hard. And I agree with you that it's really valuable and sort of whose responsibility it is to make

that easier has always been a challenge. And I think I talk to a lot of product people who can't figure out how to do it because like we don't want to get in your way. Oh, I was going to say, yeah, I work a lot with our product people. And I think it's finding that right balance of like Google Calendar, for example, can tell you how much time you're spending in each type of event and give you all this data. And it's like, but if you're my mom who's just kind of scheduling a couple one-off things on her Google Calendar, you know, she doesn't care about that. So I think it's, it would actually probably waste her time

to see a whole tutorial of how I'm using Google Calendar. But I think the right point to hit is maybe if I'm changing the color of an event, you know, then they say, okay, this person is now customizing, you know, all of their events and maybe they care about, did you know, you can see how much time you spend in each calendar color? You know, so that, and then, oh, and by the way, you can click this little tutorial. So it's kind of like, where is the right hook, you know, or if you see somebody add one, multiple time zones, now you know, okay, you're working across time zones. Did you know, you can add world clock? And so, you know, just finding that right, what is the profile of the user, where are they looking for more information and then how can you

make it easy from there. Because I totally agree. People are using the tools in so many different ways. You don't want to overwhelm the getting the sum in the cells person with every single formula available. So I think it's trying to find that profile person and give them the right things they need. All right. We got to take a break. But then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about digital tools because I have too many of them on my computer and it's time to figure out which ones to use. We'll be right back. Hey, I'm Matt Bucel. Comedian, writer, and floating head you may or may not have seen on your 4U page.

And I'm starting a brand new podcast. Wait, wait, don't swipe away. It's called, That Sounds Like a Lot, as in that feeling when you check your phone in the morning, you read through headlines and you immediately think, oh, that sounds like a lot. I can't deal with all this. But guess what? I can deal with it. And I'm going to get into it every Friday. I'll break down whatever chaos is happening in the world. Then I'll sit down with a comedian. You can be progressive and not be like fucking annoying. Maybe an actor. They go, feminism has gone too far. You go, why?

Because the Sadie Hawkins dance happened? Maybe a filmmaker. Since leaving that show, I'm challenged sparing. I just got to hang out and try to do stuff. You're the one with a charmed life. Could be a politician, basically anyone who responds to my cold DMs. We're recording the whole thing in a beautiful studio, so yes, you can watch it on YouTube, or you can listen wherever you get your podcast.

This is not the place to get the news, but it is the place to feel a little better about it. That sounds like a lot, part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. All right. with Laura May Martin. So I want to kind of talk now about how you think about digital tools, especially when you're coaching somebody. Do you have kind of a diet of things

that you hand them that you're like, these are the tools that you need to use because they're the ones that work the best? I assume because you work at Google, many of them are Google tools, but do you have sort of religion on like, everybody should have a calendar and everybody should maintain a to-do list

and everybody should maintain X, Y, and Z email structure? Or is that just as personal as some of the other productivity stuff that you're talking about. Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing I like to ask in a coaching session, you know, the point is that everyone has this pressure from work or life or whatever it is. It's just like get things you need to do pressure.

And it will surface. So I think that when that pressure is hitting, it's going to find a way to get to you somewhere. And so it could be your email. So if somebody emails you and you don't email them back, they'll email you again. And if you don't respond, they're going to ask. time to your calendar. And if you don't do that, they're going to instant message you or chat you. And so by not having that one place where you've directed your communication and you've told people and you've stayed on top of that one place, you end up having pressure in all of them.

And so I think that it's very personal in the sense of what do you want your medium to be? And so some people are like, you know, just don't want to deal with email. I'd rather have people popping in my office every five minutes. It's just touch base. That's a personality. Some people only want to communicate an instant chat and they're not, they don't want to start with a meeting. And so the first question I always ask is if everything could funnel through one of those,

what would your preference be? And then that's the tool that you really, really need to get to. And so it doesn't really matter exactly what tool you're using. I think people look for tools just to solve their problems, but it's really the intention behind the tools. It's how you're using the tools that makes the biggest difference. And so it's thinking through that first before, again, before you just dive into the tool. Okay, well, as someone who uses every tool and expects them all to solve my problems, I feel personally attacked by that.

But I think that makes sense to me. And I think the idea of having one thing that you treat as sort of your main communication system is really smart. Right. And telling people is the next step. So if people chat me or say, hey, can I grab time on your calendar? I usually say, hey, do you mind starting with email and then we'll go from there. And so it's just a gentle nudge putting it, you know, and of course I still meet and chat with people, but it's just, hey, this is where I prefer communication and it just makes it a lot

easier on you. Because I always say if you have like 12 places to check for things you need to do, think about if you went out to your street and you had like 12 mailboxes. It's like you'd have to go to every single one and be like, is there a bill in here? Is this all advertisement? So by having less places to check, it gives our brain a little bit less stress. So if yours is slack, then you've funneled people there and your brain thinks, okay, if I check here, I'm pretty much good.

You know, I got to look other places, but people know, look for me here. And that can help a lot. What do you tell people who are like, I want to do chat or I want to do email or I really believe in meetings, but my boss is different. And that's not up to me. Like, I do think the one that's the one that. I hear a lot from people who are sort of mad at productivity culture is they're like, this all sounds great for people who are completely in charge of their own life and schedule.

And that's just not most people, right? Like most people have a job where someone else tells them more or less where to be and what to do and how to communicate all the time. And I think it's easy in that moment to just kind of throw your hands up and be like, well, I'm not in charge. There's nothing I can do about it. But I'm curious. I mean, most of the people you talk to, I think, are fairly senior, but like they have bosses.

what do you tell of those people? Is the job just to kind of adapt? Well, I think now I coach executives, but I mean, in my 14 years at Google, I've coached, you know, all levels and I've also been all levels. I've been what I call the sandwich level, which is I have people reporting to me, I'm reporting to people, you know, I'm not the executive who's making all the decisions. And so I try to include in the book those things that I still teach in my scalable learnings that are more directed at what you're talking about. And I think when I had that I prefer email since I also had a manager who exclusively chatted. You know, that was the only way he was going to communicate with me.

And so I think that what I talk about the whole book is even 80, 20 is going to make a huge difference. Like if everybody who's coming to me and says, hey, can you do a coffee chat? And I say, hey, can you actually send an email first? But then I say, you know, I always pick three people that can chat me no matter what. And it's usually like my boss, my boss is. boss and maybe like a cross-functional partner that I'm working with. Sure. If they chat me, I'm not going to say, well, I prefer email.

But if I've done that with everybody on my team, then now I've still shifted, you know, most of my energy into the right place. So same thing. You know, if you make this perfect schedule that you wanted to fall this way, you know, you can't tell your manager, hey, I can't meet during this time. That's my power hours. But, you know, if you've set aside. That's my designated walk time.

Exactly. Right. But if you've done that with every. everyone else, you know, if you have no plan, then it'll never fall to plan, but if you have some plan, it'll at least fall some. And you feel a difference with some, you know, you feel a big difference with saying. So I think sometimes people just throw up their arms and say, well, I don't have control over my meetings and I don't have control over this. But no matter what your level, there still is something you have control over, you know, and that's the only lever you can really

pull. Where is the science right now on kind of energy flows and how, how, we're starting to understand when people are and are not productive. Because again, I think it's pretty obviously a personal thing. But also it seems like there's an increasing body of research that says everyone has that kind of cycle that you're describing and we can attack those cycles with different systems in different places. Like, how well do we kind of understand what peak productivity looks like for people? Yeah.

Weirdly, I feel like a lot of the studies that have been happening almost started with sleep. So like those natural circadian rhythms of like, how are we sleeping? When are we resting? And then one of my favorite books is by Daniel Pink called When. And I feel like he really started talking about, okay, but how does that apply to productivity? You know, and so how do we take those rhythms that we know about ourselves and say, I'm just somebody who sits down at 8 in the morning and does not feel like jumping into the day? Or, you know, I'm a person who naturally gets an afternoon lull.

And of course, it's very personal. And I would say that if you talk to the 100 last people that I coached, I would say this would be the top answer of the one thing they took away and immediately applied and made the biggest difference because not all time slots are created equally. And I think that we look at our schedule and we say, okay, I need 30 minutes tomorrow. I need an hour to work on something. So for me, blocking 9 to 10 is so different than blocking 4 to 5. It's totally different. I'm going to feel different in that moment. I'm going to produce different work.

You know, and so I'm going to be in different energies. And so just knowing that small thing about myself can help me shift just a couple things so that I can do it where it feels right. But it doesn't just mean, hey, I'm focused two or three hours of the day. That's my day. Is your experience that most people, when you ask them about that, can self-assess pretty quickly? No. I think they can say things like, I'm not really a morning person or I'm a bit of a bit of of a night owl or I like to do, I find myself not wanting to do this work at this time. You know,

it's kind of these like little snippets. But if I say, hey, what are two or three hours a day that you do your best heads down focus, strategic work? Not a lot of people have like that exact answer. So, but it's so fun to uncover it with people because, you know, it can be as simple as, okay, just keep a little post it. And when you're feeling your best, write down what time it is, some of the conditions. You know, this goes back to working from home, working in the office kind of thing, just what are some of those patterns you're noticing? Well, every time I'm working from home and it's, you know, one woman I loved, she noticed it was like 10 to 1 every day. She would write down, I'm feeling really focused. Well, then when she was in the office, she was taking a break

every day at noon to eat lunch. And she was like, you know what? I actually, that's like one of my best hours of the day and I'm just eating lunch. So what if I shift some of my lunches to 1 p.m. and squeeze that extra hour out of my best time. And that's just such a small change and such a small thing she noticed, but now she's getting back like three hours of the week of focus time just from shifting lunch and knowing that about herself. So I think that people have those general nuggets, but they haven't actually thought through what is my ideal two to three hours. And, you know, it can be from sometimes getting yourself thinking about it, can say, hey, if you had these things to do tomorrow, some focus things that just require you, like build a new presentation or write something

and you had no meetings, no commitment, no structure to your day at all, how would you set it up for tomorrow? So that's when you can get the sense if they're like, well, I'd wake up kind of late, and, you know, then I'd do this for a while, and then I might take a break and work out. And then, okay, now I can tell you're kind of more of an afternoon person because you haven't ever said, you know, then you have people who are like, why I wake up at five? And I'd start right away. And, you know, so it's like those little nuggets can help you figure out, okay, airing on this side or this side and figure it out for it. All right, we got to take one more break and then we're going to come back.

We have a few more things to talk about. Some apps, some AI. We'll be right back. Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people, all of the folks that are getting screwed over

against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think, that the world can be much better that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo.

And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people? So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like second. third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority.

That's this week on America Actually. Let's dig in. All right, we're back. Laura, I spent a lot of time while I was reading your book thinking about, I'm sure you've seen the meme that's like the bell curve. And at the beginning, it's just Apple notes. And in the middle, it's this like unbelievably complex web of all these interlocking productivity tools. And then at the end, it's just Apple notes again. Like, as someone who has lived in the middle of that bell curve for a really long time, I feel that. But I wonder, like, you advocate at one point in the book for doing things like sprucing up the design of your email client in order to make it look nice the way that you want, or tweaking all the settings and changing the labels and sort of making everything lovely in a way that makes you want to use it.

And I totally get the appeal of that. I also think it's really easy in a lot of these tools to spend a lot of time mucking around with the tools and not a lot of time using them. And I think especially, like, I'm someone who is very much guilty of spending way too much time trying to devise the perfect. Rube Goldberg machine that will make everything easy forever and not actually just doing the thing that would have taken me less time to go get done. And there's tons of tools out there being built for this stuff, right? You can build an incredibly complex web of notes and personal knowledge management is a thing. And we can talk about Zetelkastin for hours. But I wonder if at the end of the day, you're spending a lot of time with these people being like just write a list. Like, is that where we

need to land? So much of what you're talking about is just get a piece of paper. Just get a piece of paper. Is that, like, is that where we need to land? Yeah, like, I wonder so much of what you're talking about is, like, just make things smaller and make things simpler. And part of me, like, hates that advice, if I'm being honest, even though I think it's the right advice. But I think it's a really interesting moment kind of in the product space of all of this stuff. And I'm just curious what you think about as you look at all those tools. I think you, when you start with a system that you want to use in your head.

So it's kind of like that's why in the whole book I give tool agnostic suggestions of how to organize things. So for example, email, you know, and I talk about thinking about it like laundry and thinking about your dryer like your inbox and, you know, you have all these laundry baskets of things you need to do. So that's my system. That can actually be then applied to any email program. I happen to think Gmail does it best because I worked on that. But I think it's then saying, okay, I have this system for email or I have this system for capturing things I'm thinking about and getting them to a do-do list. Now that I open the tool, instead of looking at the tool to solve all of those things of

the system, how can the tool support the system that I've created in my head? And then sometimes enhance it, like things like my ability to add things to my to do list using my voice on Google Keep. it's like that is a tool-based feature that's amazing and helps me keep up with the system that I started on paper. You know, and I used to have to run to my paper and write something down, which is inefficient. But instead of kind of logging into the tool and saying, what are you going to do for me? Having that behind the scenes, like, this is how I want to think about email. This is how I want to capture. So that's why I tried to make those systems for people so that you can say like, hey,

this is how an idea. When you get an idea, this is how it should travel until it's actually actually executed. You know, you're on a run. You think of something, you know, what tool can get it out of your head? What tool are you looking at to put it in a group of things to do when you're at your computer? When are you actually scheduling the time to do that in a calendar and then executing? And so I think everyone's different, but the way that you're talking does make me feel like you have a lot of focus on tools. Whereas some people, I feel the opposite where it's like, hey, you know some of this stuff you're doing with paper and pencil can really be enhanced with some of these tools. So let's see if we can just shift. You know, I work with a lot of teams that are global and,

you know, they're trying to do asynchronous communication about priorities. And there is a lot of benefit in things like Google Docs. And, you know, we're all working on the same time in the middle of the night. You're here. I'm adding priorities. So, you know, that would be impossible if you're not using a tool like that. So I think in some ways you can go too far one direction. But it does feel really nice to always have that sense of, hey, if this tool was ripped from me right now, I'd be able to replicate this system because it's mine. It's not the tools. So I think that's a good place to start. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I am curious about the voice thing because I was all prepared to have a fight with you about pen and paper versus digital tools.

Where do you stand? Let's go. I'm fully digital tools. But only I was, I'm less mad at your approach because I love the idea of making a list and then taking a picture of it on your phone. I think that is like an extremely clever middle ground of like the science on when you write by hand, you remember it better seems just unshakable. Like that just is true. My handwriting is trash and I mostly can't read it, which is a bit of a problem. But I think that there is something to that. But for me it's always been just like the availability of my phone in particular is just untouchable compared to everything else. But I'm really curious particularly because you're an advocate for pen and paper, but you're also an advocate for voice dictation.

And I'm curious about both of those things and how you can push them together. Yes, that's a great question. I think it's just an advocate for whatever gets you excited because you're only going to stick with a system that you like and use, which kind of goes back to your customizable question. So I like pen and paper because I like writing in pretty colored pens. And I have good handwriting, you know, that I like to decorate August. and make it, you know, all fun. So it's like that's more fun to me. So you're the one I see like all over Instagram showing the beautiful bullet journals.

No, no, no. I don't have time for that. That's why I kind of pick a lane where it's like I'm going to have one thing that I keep going back to. That's my list, my what I call my main list. And it's just, you know, if you came to me and you're like, what's everything that you, not personal you and work you, you, Laura, have to do. I would have a list. Okay, these are all the returns I need to do.

These are all the things for my kids summer camp. This is everything I have do at work. These are all things I need to buy. Like, those are all in one place. And I like having that kind of one touch point where I write everything like that out. Could this just as easily be a digital list? Yes, but it's not as fun for my brain. So, you know, I think it's just a personal thing,

but it's more important to have something that you're consistently using. And the capture thing, I talked to one productivity expert on his podcast, and he said he has a little, he has like 20 little journals that he brings everywhere. And instead of using voice dictation, he just always has a little journal in any pocket of any pants. And he writes down all these things that come to him. So it's just so funny because. That's my nightmare. I would never get anything.

I would never remember one thing. Me too. Then every day at the end of the day, he takes 20 little journals and deposits them into like a bank box. And then he goes through each little journal. So, but the point is the little journals give him joy. They work for him. You know, that's, so for me, the dictation, I think a lot of times I get those ideas in the shower, on a drive, on a walk, you know, when I don't want to pick up my device.

So the dictation helps with that. But him and I essentially have the same system. If you think about it, it's just we're doing it in different ways. Yeah. Well, and it feels like spiritually the process there is is not that different from the way you were talking about communication, right? where it's less about having the sort of one specific thing work, one specific way, and more about having things that work for you,

but most importantly, not having very many of them, which is a thing I had not really thought about that, like, the problem with living the way that I live, which is between a thousand different productivity apps, is the universe where anything is. And so I spent an enormous amount of time collating all the stuff in all the places to try and make sense out of everything. And there's something, even in your case where you're like you have, you get stuff on the one list that then goes on to the other list, that's still only two places. And that's that I feel like, and I would expect for a lot of the folks that you're meeting with, like they have so many things in so many places. And just the act of having all of your things in fewer places seems like it goes a really long way.

Yes. If you're like, I'm so overwhelmed, I can only do one thing. What should it be? I always recommend just making this main list from all your list, from all the 12, it sounds like you have 12 mailboxes. So just saying, okay, I got all the mail out. I've taken my brain and said, no, these are in these categories, things I need to buy, things I need to do, things I need to put on my website, you know, whatever those are. Even if you haven't actually done any of them, it feels like, ah, okay, I've got a dashboard because then I can make decisions based on that. I know, wow, my main list is blowing up right now. I've got to make more time for these personal things because it's the beginning of the school. You know, like I need more than Sunday night to do. some of these personal computer things or I have a lot going on at work. I'm going to need to

start saying no to things personally because I really need to make more time for this. So it just gives you that constant gauge of what's going on, you know, instead of trying to do the math on each of your tools and say, you know, the tools, but sometimes the tools work for people. So I think it's just, you know, how are you feeling using them is the biggest question. Yeah, that makes sense. So real quick, I'm going to let you go here in a minute, but I want to talk about downtime. And we've talked a little bit about this. the sort of needing downtime in order for uptime to be a thing and to be successful. And I think right now we think of downtime so much as like, you know, the joke is I go from

the big screen to the small screen while I watch the biggest screen and that's how I relax now. And I think part of what you advocate for is like finding more pockets of like space, right? And you talk a lot about focus and kind of disconnecting and pulling back. And I would assume, again, for a lot of the people that you coach at Google and a lot of the people who've read your book and things like that, the idea of like when my downtime is I sit and scroll TikTok for an hour, which is a certain kind of downtime, but it's not solving the problem that you're talking about. So, like, how do you coach people through how to not scroll TikTok for an hour? And again, it goes back a little bit to that discipline of just like don't just just don't scroll TikTok for an hour. But I think one of the theories I have is that one of the reasons walks have become so popular is that it is a thing to do. right? And it's like, it's not just don't look at a screen. It's go do something else. And so, like, is that, is that the kind of advice you give folks to sort of redirect that focus to something better? Or, like, how do you talk people through that? Yeah. Like, what you're talking about is kind of the crowding out method. Like, you can't scroll TikTok if you're doing something else. So I even do that, you know, with my kids, it's like, if you want screen time, first, you need to play outside for an hour. And it's like, by the time they're outside for an hour, they're having so much fun and playing. And then, you know, so redirecting the focus.

but I think it's starting small, realistic ways before you're diving into some big, every night I'm doing this or I'm never scrolling TikTok. And like you said, I think there are some benefits of scrolling TikTok. Maybe you enjoy the content. Maybe you're getting something out of that. But, you know, I made a rule for myself that I'm not going to scroll on my phone and watch TV at the same time. And so if there's a show I want to watch or something or, you know,

I want to go watch or look at, it kind of makes me have to decide. Again, the attention piece, well, do I want to sit here and scroll or do I want to watch this show? You know, I have to now decide. Sometimes I'm like, no, I wanted to look for new recipes today. So I'm actually going to look on here. But then I'm kind of done. And I think that having some structure. So one challenge I started, which I talked about in the book, which has been so popular is the No Tech Tuesday Night challenge. So again, it was a small thing. Not everyone wants to give up technology. every night, but let's just say one night a week from dinner to bedtime, could you give up technology? You know, one night for five weeks, six weeks. And so thousands of people started signing up for it.

I really did it to keep myself accountable because I was like, if I tell all these people I'm doing this and I don't, I'll be so embarrassed. So let's make it kind of a big challenge. So, but what now has gone on for five years and it's been this huge success. But what's so interesting is looking at the feedback, you kind of think it's going to be, oh, I felt so good during that downtime. You know, so like I was, you know, really relaxed off my phone. But it ends up being these longer term things. Like, I slept so much better. Like, I have a, you know, watch that keeps track of my sleep cycles and it was the best night of sleep I get all week is Tuesday night. So then the biggest piece of feedback that I thought was so interesting, which just kind of proves my point of the whole book,

is I am so much more focused and productive on Wednesday because I took Tuesday night off. And so I think that that's where people have that aha moment and then they stick with it every Tuesday all year, or they start doing two or three nights a week, or they start doing little more adjustments saying, now I'm going to start doing this at 8 o'clock every night because it made such a difference in my sleep. But if I had said do it at 8 o'clock every night from the start, no one would have started. So it's about, you know, even with people I'm coaching, I just say, hey, even if it's just like on my commute, I'm just going to have silence for 15 minutes, you know. Or I see people walk to the bathroom in the office and still have their phone. I'm just like, that is the shortest walk.

Like, could we just use that time to decompress? And as someone who is very guilty of both watching TikTok while I make coffee in the morning and taking my phone to the bathroom, I feel like I'm learning a lot right now. Well, see, for someone like you, it's just about, like, I was. really bad about waking up and looking at my phone right away. And then I just realized, unless I'm sending emails at 630 in the morning, like, why am I going to do this? Nothing's going to happen between 630 and 7. And so I had to start putting my phone outside my room. And then it was like, now if my phone's in my room, I still don't look at it because it's such a habit. But it's, you know, it's hard to trust yourself that you're going to want to do that or do that. And so having little

tiny habits like No Tech Tuesday or like just setting your phone. And then you start, sitting there and making your coffee and realize, well, this is actually relaxing, makes you want to scroll less. So I think it's just gradual and any amount of change is helpful, but an overhaul is unrealistic. I think that's where people go wrong sometimes.

Yeah, I agree. All right, I've kept you too long. I have one more thing I want to talk about. Do you have five minutes? Yeah. Okay. I want to talk about AI before we go. Yes.

Which we can do very quickly because it's a super small. Stay out. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. I do think the like, Bull case for AI says that it can do a lot for a lot of the stuff you're talking about, right? Not just, like, write emails and help you do some of that stuff more quickly, but, like, you talk a lot about sort of bridging different ideas and pulling stuff together, and part of the work

is, like, collating all the information going on inside of your head. And part of the promise of AI is that it can start to do some of that stuff for you, right? That it can teach you how to use these tools so you don't have to muck around in setting so much. It can make sense of all of your ideas for you. you. Do you think of AI as kind of a key part of what you're going to be working on and coaching people on in the next few years? Yes, it already is. Definitely is. I think I'm glad you brought it up because I meant to mention it when you were talking about some of that automation of tools. And I think that the first tool that's really come around that I think can replicate some of

these or create some of these backend systems that I'm talking about is AI. I think that AI right now is at that level of, okay, these are the tasks that I know I need for my system and then I'm going to get AI to help with those tasks. I think where we're going is AI knows what tasks I need for my system and AI helps with those tasks. Or, for example, I have an idea and I put it on my capture list and by the time I get back to my desk, it's already on my part of my main list that I want it to be. So kind of that next level of taking the systems and making it totally easier for me and just questions about, you know, maybe AI will be able to tell us, what are my power hours? You know, can you tell how many times I'm switching tabs or when my output is best or when I'm, you know,

going to TikTok too many times, you know, it might be able to give us some of that information about our own productivity, whether it's hours and meetings, who we're meeting with, which platform do I prefer. Am I responding to emails faster than I'm accepting meeting invites? You know, whatever that is. So I think that it's just getting more and more exciting. Right now, it's kind of that helpful tool. But I think it's going to be one step ahead of us in figuring out our own productivity and kind of bringing it all together. And it's a fun time to be in productivity, I would say, because it's just, it's cool to see what a difference it's already made. And I feel like we're just at the tip of where it's going. And I work super closely with our Gemma.

and I product managers on just like, what is the ultimate productivity things that this tool could do and how can we get there? Yeah, so talk me through kind of the North Star you're thinking about because I think you just brought up a couple of different versions of it that I think are interesting. The one is like I say something to my device, it recognizes it as a to-do and it puts it on my list, right? That's very useful and very accomplishable, right? Like I think most tools will do that pretty soon.

And we're already like every meeting now is like, there's some app that will take your action items and shove it into your to-do list. I think that's great. But then there are all these tools out there that are like the sort of AI calendars where you put a bunch of stuff in and it'll try to organize your days for you based on all of the stuff that you need to get done and kind of the optimal flow like you're talking about. I'm skeptical of that stuff now because my experience has just been that it doesn't seem to actually work all that well.

But that is the sort of thing that might get better as technology gets better. But I'm curious, like, as you think about fast forward a few years and this tech keeps getting better and, like, do you think of AI as kind of, I just sort of yell at my system all day and then it kind of goes and accomplishes everything on my behalf? Or is it like you're talking about kind of the great engine of like insights and summarization and then I'm still on the hook to actually like make the most out of that stuff? Like where does this sort of land in the process? Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's always going to be how am I powering? some of these things that AI is doing for me. And so to your point about the calendar piece,

it's like, unless I tell the calendar, I'm very productive between 9 and 11, and that's when I like to do focus time, how is it really going to optimize for that? So I feel like that personal knowledge of your own patterns and things like that still starts with you. Now I think of it kind of like an intern,

like what things can I assign? But I think ultimately it will become more of that like assistant business partner, you know, with me where it's like we're both thinking on the same level and bouncing off of each other to make these great results. Whereas I think currently we're in more of the what can, what am I doing that I can assign, which that's what I always tell people if you're kind of like, where do I start with AI? Take a look at your to do list and just circle three things that you might be able to delegate to AI and just try it because I think a lot of people get that like blank screen nervousness just like what do I put in here but you know I talk

about summarizing brainstorming planning you know those are kind of like the key buckets researching and if you can just start with those and then I think it will become that next level partnership with us you know not not solving everything we have to do and not us yelling at it but just like this understands what I'm thinking. how I'm doing it and gives me, most importantly, the time, the downtime to come up with the next level things because I'm not spending hours sorting through comments. And so I think that's the coolest part about it. Yeah. I have to say, from intern to assistant to business partner is one of the best summations of the path of AI that I think I've ever heard. That's very good.

That's very good. Yes. That's where I'm hoping. I think we're kind of between intern and assistant right now. But every time it does something cool, I'm like, oh, this is, this is assistant level, you know, so yeah, it's exciting. All right. That is it for the Vergecast today. Thanks to Laura May Martin again for coming on the show. And thank you, as always for listening. If you want to buy Laura's book, it's called Uptime. It's very good. I actually listen to the audio book on Spotify. Worked great. Big fan. There's lots more on all this stuff that we talked about. Productivity tools, how to be a person on the internet, screen time, focus modes, all that at the verge.com. I'll put some links in the show notes, but, you know, as always, read the website.

And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or apps you think I should try, because I'm a true masochist. You can always email us at vergecast at the verge.com or call the hotline. 866, Verge11. We love hearing from you. Send us all of your thoughts and questions on this episode or anything. This show is produced by Andrew Marino, Liam James, and Will Pore, and this episode was edited by Zander Adams.

The Vergecast is Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Nelai, Alex and I will be back on Tuesday and Friday. lots of news, lots of fun stuff. And this Tuesday, we actually have a really fun, different kind of episode for you that I'm very excited about. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.