The Value of a Job: How to Find Out and Maximize Your Potential • Jobs should offer someone a sense of purpose and value, rather than just a paycheck. • A job should be a way to contribute to the team and organization, and not just a means of income.
Speaker 1
Am i useful? Am i good? Am i getting better?
Speaker 2
Am i contributing to this team, to this organization?
Speaker 1
Am i getting better at what i’m offering? Like, what is my craft? How valuable am i? How can i be more valuable? That’s the craftsman mine said. So it has very little to do with what is the job offered me. Ereis just right to offer me more about how good am i? How can i get better?
Speaker 2
Yeand like, the big take away for me, and i wrote a little bit about this in my book, master wont is like passion is a side effect of mastery. Iht you get to love what you do by getting really good at it. Ore, talking to an audience of christians who this shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to you. Like, we are modelling our lives after jesus, who came to serve, not to be served. To write the passion mines that is all about, like, what value does a job offer me? And i would argue the crass iknow, how could i serve others really well?
Speaker 1
Yet, i would say some of the most more interesting conversations i had about this concept. So i wrote this book when i was at m i t. And it was with various catholic lay communities there. For example, m i t had a house that i think was, i think it was opus day. And i remember, like, having lunch with a sort of catholic lay leader of this house.The Calling: A New Perspective on an Old Idea • Calling is a nuanced concept that can be corrupted when simplified for children. • Calling is a component of service that is important in Christianity.
Speaker 1
Yet, i would say some of the most more interesting conversations i had about this concept. So i wrote this book when i was at m i t. And it was with various catholic lay communities there. For example, m i t had a house that i think was, i think it was opus day. And i remember, like, having lunch with a sort of catholic lay leader of this house. I don’t know quite exactly how the catholic positions work, or this or that, but i remember coming away thinking, my god, they have a very sophisticated understanding of calling. This is not and just by contrast how we simplified this for you and me when we were kids wh were hearing from our teachers, it’s almost insulting, yet agree to, which we took this nuanced Concept ofa aline and corrupted it to when you were born, you have a gean that says, you’re meant to be a social medium marketer. And if you express that gean by being a social medium marketer, it will produce good feelings. And if not, you need, you need the change to that job. And then you go and you look at the classic christian notion of calling, and its well, first of all, it has a huge component of service.Deep Work: The Importance of Concentrating on What Matters • Deep work is when you’re giving something unbroken concentration. • Shallow work is when you’re answering email, doing pay roll, or anything that doesn’t require a lot of concentration. • It’s important to prioritize your deep work, so that you can be as productive as possible.
Speaker 1
Imean deep work is when you’re giving something unbroken concentration. I heares a cognively demanding thing, and i’m doing just this thing. I’m not doing this thing while also checking this. I’m not doing this thing while also scrolling this. I’m just doing this hard cognitive thingd my main argument is, in almost every endeavor, that’s what moves the needle. Now, there’s other things that er, i call it shallow work. I mean, you need to answer the email from your accountant because they need to know the answer, u should i move this money? And you know, you kned the do pay roll. Nd, there’s stuff that’s important, but it doesn’t move the needle. It doesn’t make you better what you do. It doesn’t make your company more successful. It doesn’t get you promoted. It’s the if you’re in a non manual field, where your brain is your primary tool. It is the unbroken, concentrated thought. It is your number one activity that’s going to move you ahead. And so the mind set i preach in that book is that should be a priority, right? I mean, it’s like you’re the athlete. Youre prioritizing your training, and then you want o mae, sure, of course i have put aside time becaue i have to deal with my agent, ad, my accountant and my endorsement deal in this and That. But of course, my trainingis going tobe at the centere of what i do, bease, if i don’t train im lok to perform ad, it’ll all go away. And in knowledge work, we forgot that, and we let the shallow stuff, asly, just take over the whole day. Ye. And then we coare worshipped at the altar of business as supposed to actually honing craft and applying craft.Email and the Enemy of Depth • Deep work is when you’re giving something unbroken concentration. • Shallow work is when you’re answering email, doing pay roll, or scrolling social media. • The goal of deep work is to become better at what you do. • Email is an enemy of deep work because it takes away from concentration.
Speaker 1
Imean deep work is when you’re giving something unbroken concentration. I heares a cognively demanding thing, and i’m doing just this thing. I’m not doing this thing while also checking this. I’m not doing this thing while also scrolling this. I’m just doing this hard cognitive thingd my main argument is, in almost every endeavor, that’s what moves the needle. Now, there’s other things that er, i call it shallow work. I mean, you need to answer the email from your accountant because they need to know the answer, u should i move this money? And you know, you kned the do pay roll. Nd, there’s stuff that’s important, but it doesn’t move the needle. It doesn’t make you better what you do. It doesn’t make your company more successful. It doesn’t get you promoted. It’s the if you’re in a non manual field, where your brain is your primary tool. It is the unbroken, concentrated thought. It is your number one activity that’s going to move you ahead. And so the mind set i preach in that book is that should be a priority, right? I mean, it’s like you’re the athlete. Youre prioritizing your training, and then you want o mae, sure, of course i have put aside time becaue i have to deal with my agent, ad, my accountant and my endorsement deal in this and That. But of course, my trainingis going tobe at the centere of what i do, bease, if i don’t train im lok to perform ad, it’ll all go away. And in knowledge work, we forgot that, and we let the shallow stuff, asly, just take over the whole day. Ye. And then we coare worshipped at the altar of business as supposed to actually honing craft and applying craft. So there’s a plea for, i know all this stuff is exciting, especialy with digital tools and slack and email and social media, and there’s all these things you can be doing, and it’s all Very exciting, but just remember, none of that moves the needle. None of thats gong o make you better. None o thats gong to make your company more successful. None of that’s going to get you promoted. That is almost always going to be the long, contemplative, undistract deep efforts. Ye.
Speaker 2
And you started working, i don’t realize this, you start working on ta world without email right after deep work. I’m assuming that’s because email is enemy number one in our fight for depth. Is that right? Is that why you start working on that manuscript next?Rit a world without email • Deep work is important, and it can be difficult to find time for it. • Digital minimalism is a book about living a life outside of work. • The title of the book is “Rit a world without email” and it is about more than email.
Speaker 1
Yes. Because in deep work, i just said, let’s just stipulate that it’s things like email, right? I right. Dad. Are making this horrd, and let me get into my argument for like value of focus. And really the feedback from that was, don’t be so hasty. Don’t be so flippant. You don’t understand the degree to which we can’t escape. Yo hapen o men thes ema lin box, i tho, but that’s greatly what’s going on here. What an interesting question. It was. Hundreds of millions of people around the world had work experiences where tey’re just constantly tending these chattering in boxes and say, oke, so what’s going on here? Why do we worke that way? Is it a good idea? And if not, you know, what shall we do instead? It was an epic question at took me five years to untangle. So i stopped in the middle of working on that book to write digital minimalism, which is the book that came out two years ago. And that’s about our life outside of work. It’s about our smart phones, the social media and youtube and the stuff we do outside of working distracted on our phones. And i stopped to write that book because it was incredibly timely. There was the shift that happened right around late two thousand 16, early two thousand 17, where people went from exuberant to uneasy about their smart phones. Like this is happening fast. All right, i got o write about that. So i wrote that book, and then i turned back and kept working on the emal book because the ideas, no one was asking these questions about email. So i had no fear that i was going to be scooped, right? I had no fear like whete ther’s three other books hat are going to come out. Everyone had just accepted, ye, we just we chu na officer told me, t get tim e to this is just work is and know ing what’s question it. So paradoxically, that gave me confidence to take my time.
Speaker 2
You ad anoter, make sense. Ye wa.
Speaker 1
So on that beat.
Speaker 2
I like. T so the title’s terrific. Rit a world without emal. But you make it really clear early on i the book, that this is about more than email. It’s about what you call the hyper active hive mind. To find that for us real quick before we move on.The Hyper Active Hive Mind • Email is not synonymous with the hyper active hive mind. • Email can be used to collaborate and coordinate with unscheduled messages, but it is not the only way to do so.
Speaker 1
So paradoxically, that gave me confidence to take my time.
Speaker 2
You ad anoter, make sense. Ye wa.
Speaker 1
So on that beat.
Speaker 2
I like. T so the title’s terrific. Rit a world without emal. But you make it really clear early on i the book, that this is about more than email. It’s about what you call the hyper active hive mind. To find that for us real quick before we move on.
Speaker 1
Exactly. So y, i actually don’t care about mal. The toole. The whole story is emal spread in the nineties because it was better than facts, machines and voice mail. In its wake came this new way of collaborating that i call tha hyper active hy pint, where we said, oh, now that we have low friction digital communication, we can just do all o our collaboration With back and forth, unscheduled messaging. You know, just like jordan, you grabd hus. What about this? You want to jump on a call? Now, that doesn’t work. What about this time? Hey, iwus. Got this question from a client. What do you think? Shall we do a meeting? We began collaborating and coordinating with these unscheduled back and forth messages. I call that approach to collaboration the hyper active hive mind. Email enabled it, but it’s not synonymousw you can’t do the hive mind without email, right? Unless you’re just two people in the same room. We don’t necessarily have to do the hive mind just because you have email, right? So i’s important to separate those two things.Is it deep work if it’s many different tasks one after another? Organizing work and making connections? pkmThe Importance of Friction in Soft Systems Development • Engineers are familiar with the fact that if you have a system with no friction, crazy things can happen. • Engineers need some friction in their systems in order to keep them in control. • Soft developers are more aware of this and are structured in a way to minimize the number of things they are responsible f. • When using a system like Conbond, the team can set a limit on the number of works in progress an individual can have at a time.
Speaker 1
Engineers are very familiar with this fact that if you have a system and you go from some friction to no friction, crazy stuff happens. Bring feedback loops. A pa system, you know, turning into a squeal. If you don’t have enough friction and gears, they spin out o control. You need some friction, emal got rid of friction. And so i think we’re doing too much, and for no good reason, right ivo, no good reason, just because it’s possible. And human social dynamics and this weirdness of social capital, and no one’s ever stepping back and sane. Well, let me say there re some exceptions to this. I’l sa i in a minute. But for the most part, we’re not stepping back and sane. Well, how is on your plate right now? Like how many things are you responsible for? Is that too many? And the one group that does care about this is softer developers. They’re much more structured and how they organize and assign their work. And once they got very intentional about answering these questions, they got incredibly minimalist. A if you use a system like conbond to organize your softer development team, they have a thing called the works in progress limit. He ok, how many things we want one individual to have to worry about at a time? And the answer turned out to be, one or two is optimal. Ye y, do this, and then we’ll talk about what comes next. It’s the opposite what we do in almost all other work, which is like ts obligation, hot potato.Undistracted Concentration: A Religious Perspective • There is a lot of talk among religious leaders about the importance of contemplation,. • There are many different religious traditions that emphasize this value.
Speaker 1
You have aint but it’s like one of the groups i hear from most consistently. I hear a lot from professors, professors are overwhelmed. But i hear a lot protestant pastors. And, i mean, you know why, but there’s so i hear a lot from protestant pastors because they recognize the contemplative power of undistracted concentration, and they feel like they’ve Lost it, because they’re also running, basically what feels like your running n a mid sized business. You know how you have all these parishioners. You have the budget for the church. Everyone needs your attention. And for them, it’s often the sermon writings where this gets clear. Ye lake, that touch point. I hear from various catholic thinkers, catholic fathers and some lay leadership or this or that. The catholics is a little bit different ecause they’re alttle bit more nwas thay smug about it, buth like, oh, yet we’ve been doing this for 500 years, yet we think a lot about this. We have these, especially if theyare in an order. Iike, let me telyou how the jesuits do this. And we sit down, we ave these big rituals, and we do the prayers, and we set it up aesthetically in the candle going, and we bloba, bla. So that catholics are more like, ye, welcome to the party. So that’s kind of interesting. Oh, ye ad. Then, of course, the jews are like, out come on. This is all we do, right? So it’s really been interesting. I hearing from, like, some of the jewish tulmutic traditions of concentration, partner base study of tora to try to get to deeper levels. There’s fascinating layers, right? So, various religious communities in the islami commutee, i’ve been hearing more from too there’s a really big tradition in the islamic community of contemplation. And koran study this very structure. But i think it’s really interesting, right, that the ancient religions have thought about so much the value of contemplation s we’re just like, rediscovering at the surface stuff That we’ve known in our souls for a really long time.
Speaker 2
I haven’t told you this yet, but so i could book coming out with rainam house this october.The Gospel According to Jesus: How He Focused on the Task at Hand • Jesus was a human being and walked like a human being. • Digiminalism and deep work are prevalent in the Christian community because they can be seen in the life of Christ. • Jesus focused on preaching and ignored his family.
Speaker 2
I haven’t told you this yet, but so i could book coming out with rainam house this october. And part of the case that i maye is that part of the reason why digiminalism and deep work specifically, are so prevalent within the christian community is because you can see it in the Life of christ, rightly, we read the gospels almost exclusively for their theology and for their ethics, which obviously there’s a lot of that there. But we rarely, if ever, look at the way that jesus walked, right? We forget that god became flesh in jesus and was time bound, right? He was a human being. But when you look at the gospels, there’s these little stories here and there, here and there, that show him fully present with whatever the tast his great sein, where he’s preaching And he’s preaching. He’s teaching ton the synagogue or some one’s house. I can’t rember exact why it was. And one of his disciples comes ope, tis tik hay, jesus, your mam and your siblines are outside. And he essentially says, he preaches this minni sermon on whos my brother or who’s my mother, whatever. But we miss the fascinating bee story there. He ignored them. He said, now i’m fully focused on the task at hand. Onlyke preaching this sermon. And then, like elsewhere through the gospels, he’s fully present with his family and fully present with his friends.How Do You Know What You’re Gifting Most of the Time? “i nything sy when it comes to books. Like, what is it that i talk you know, a book i talk up a lot?” “I’m a big lincoln ophile. I like abraham, abraham l Lincoln for a lot of reasons,” he says. ‘There’s this little known book called lincoln’s virtues’ He also talks about Karen armstrong’s The case for god.
Speaker 2
Like, what do i so i can’t answer what i gift most often, because i’m real matcher, you know.
Speaker 1
Ok, do youne this is the book, but, no, look, i nything sy when it comes to books. Like, what is it that i talk you know, a book i talk up a lot that a lot of people haven’t heard of? I’m a big lincoln ophile. I like abraham, abraham lincoln for a lot of reasons. Its very inspiring to me. So i talk up, there’s this little known book called lincoln’s virtues. It’s an ethical biography. So try to understand how ethical positions developed. Another bosk i’ve been talking up a lot, should be more well known, it was at the time, but karen armstrong wrote this book called the case for god, and it’s, i it’s written from a non sectarian Standpoint, but it’s an incredibly incitful, i think, take on religion. It’s in part a very sophisticated rebuke of the new atheist, which is interesting, especially since it’s coming from non sectarian place. But it also, i find it fastinin the idea it has that is really stuck with me is the way that the enlightenment kind of messed up our understanding of religione, that a lot of this was developed In a world before we had the sort of enlightenment principles of younow empiricism, or this or that. And it really gets into how a lot of, there’s a lot of misunderstanding or critiques people have of religion, actually comes from applying an enlightenment frame to something enlightenment, And trying to understand something likeThe Purpose of Work • Kalen Hagee has a lot of advice for people who want to be successful in their careers and lives. • One of the things he recommends is to be so good that people can’t ignore you. • This requires diligence and a willingness to stick with your craft.
Speaker 1
This book talks about that notion is nonsense when you go before like 15 hundred, right? It also goes deep into the ineffability of religion, and how we sort of forget the degree to which through which we’ll through creed, through story, that we’re trying to actually connect To smething that’s ineffable. So literally, the human brain can’t comprehend it. In its fulness, our brain can’t handle it. And so we have these brilliant ways of trying to just gain insight into something that we can’t fully understand. And how all that just falls away when you have a very simplistic sort of post enlightenment type analysis of like, ok, what are the empirical observations that you’re assenting true? So anyways, that book of thngs is really, really smart. So that’s one. It’s another on that i recommend a lot. Oi. Last question, one piece of advice to leave this audience with.
Speaker 2
You’ve so much to give about career and work, but ist an audience of people who want to do great work because they believe it’s a means of glorifying god and serving other people. What one thing do you want to leave them with?
Speaker 1
Well, the primary piece of advice i guides all this is what goes back to that first career book from two thousand 12, which was this notion that be so good they can’t ignore you. And if you do that, all the other good things will come ye. And to be so god, i can’t ignore you requires a sort of diligence, which means not just the returning to something of value, but the saying no to the other things that are of lesser value, But would take your time from it. So this willingness to stick with and hona craft is useful and apply it. That idea has been foundational to almost everything i’ve done. And everything i’ve thought about the world o work.
Speaker 2
I love it so much. Kal, i want to commend you just for the exceptional work you do in the world, helping us think through these topics. Thank you for serving your readers, our shared publisher, everybody well through the work you do. And thank you for helping us be more purposeful and present and productive, like jesus hageis.
