If you're a bit of a productivity buff, you probably have some clever hacks for reducing time spent reading or sending emails. Maybe you use Superhuman like I do, or maybe you're a big proponent of inbox zero. Either way, you're probably not looking for So how I work episode that suggests you spend more time on email? But this is different. The goal of true productivity, after all, is to get more meaningful work done in less time. So what if using some work tools at home could enable
you to make more intelligent decisions in less time. That's exactly what Brown University economics professor Emily Oster and her partner and sometimes even her kids do when they send emails to each other. So how can using email in your personal life actually help strengthen relationships and lead to better decisions. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent Him. And this is how I work, a show about how
to help you do your best work. On today is my Favorite Tip episode. We go back to an interview from the past, and I pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Emily Osta about why she sends fairly regular emails to all members of her family. Now, I've heard that when you're talking about like different matters relating to your kids, you will do quite a bit of email discussion with your husband.
Is that right? That is right? Yeah, we do a lot of our interaction over email. I love a good email.
Can you tell me why you decide to do that via email than some other communication channel, like face to face at the dinner table.
Well, first of all, the kids are at the dinner channeling about that. But I yeah, so I think that that we try pretty hard to do to do much of this interaction over email. And I think part of you know, or over some like to get even more extreme, like in an Assana task or over something like that.
And I think that the reason is that that you can be much more direct and concrete and understanding is just much clearer when it is written down and it sets expectations in a way that everybody can see, like can see what is written, can see what we agreed on, can sort of like see all of the information together. It's also an efficient way to be able to go back and back and forth between sort of learning something
and asking questions and learning more. So give you an example, there was like a period of time when one of my kids had a tick on them, like there's like a bug and tick on them, and there's like a question about there's a concern about mime disease where I live, which is a thing that you can get if you have a tick bite. And we had to have a discussion about whether we wanted to like pre treat him
with antibiotics for this. And that is a place where like having the interaction the about that question over email is very productive because I can say here are the facts. He can say, well, here's the question that I still have. And rather than him saying over the breakfast table, here's the question I still have and me being like, okay, let me try to remember, like look at that later and then get back to you about it. I can just see the email, put it aside when I have time,
come back to it, send it back to him. And it's sort of like so sometimes I say, like, your computer doesn't get tired of remembering things even though you do, and so you've got to like give your computer a little mental load.
Is there anything else that you do like because of your background that helps you like in work or life that other people would go, oh, that's really quirky.
See, we have a lot of these same kinds of interactions with our kids where we will sort of interact over email with them. And the other day so I noticed that they were emailing each other, and you know, there's like six and ten, it's like my son opened up his computer and he was like emailing with he like emailed like, I hope you have a good evening.
I mean, I don't even know where they come up with this, where they come up with this stuff, but but I think we do, you know, sort of lean into the idea that had kind of everybody in the in the household can engage in this kind of slightly structured decision making.
That is it for today's show. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Emily. And if you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that helped me work better, ranging from interesting research findings three to gadgets that I'm loving. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co. That's how I Work dot C. How I Work is produced
by Inventi with production support from Dead Set Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.