How to Zero in on Your First Couple Wins

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Use your inbox as a guide. What is the underlying process that this is a part of and that this message is trying to help advance towards completion? Then you can ask the key follow up. What would be a better process for accomplishing the same thing? You do that, for example, you may reduce the back and forth emails from a client down to basically none. It's the same thing done.

Cal Newport reveals how the rise of email led to a productivity disaster and what we can do to change that.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) How email changed the way we work for worse

2) Simple strategies for cutting down the email back-and-forth

3) Why we feel guilty when we don’t respond—and what to do about it

Subscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep647 for clickable versions of the links below.

— ABOUT CAL —

Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. In addition to researching cutting edge technology, he also writes about the impact of these innovations on our culture. Newport is the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Digital Minimalism, which argues that we should be much more selective about the technologies we adopt in our personal lives, and Deep Work, which argues that focus is the new I.Q. in the modern workplace.

Newport’s work has been published in over 25 languages and has been featured in many major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, Washington Post, and Economist, and his long-running blog Study Hacks, which receives over 3 million visits a year. He’s also a frequent guest on NPR.

• Cal’s book: A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

• Cal’s book: Deep Work (Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)

• Cal’s podcast: Deep Questions

• Cal’s planner: Time Block Planner

• Cal’s website: CalNewport.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• App: Calendly

• App: Trello

• Researcher: Sophie Leroy

• Book: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman

• Previous episode: 632: How to Reclaim 40 Hours Every Month (WITHOUT Multitasking!) with Dave Crenshaw

— THANK YOU SPONSORS! —