Trying to call Jordan Calhoun, the editor in chief of Life Hacker, isn't easy. Trust me, I've tried. Jordan simply doesn't take chances when it comes to his attention and his productivity. He wants his devices to be productivity tools, not a means for other people to distract him. So what is Jordan's step by step process for ensuring his phone and computer only command his attention when he wants
them to. My name is doctor Amantha Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, 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've pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Jordan about what he has done to stop technology and various hijacking his attention.
I go the nuclear route, which your mileage may vary. You may not want to do this depending on the type of person you are and how important notifications are to you. But when it comes to things that infringe
on my attention, I turn them off. Whenever I download a new app, whenever I begin a new service, whenever I sign up for a new thing that has access to my inbox, I turn off all notifications, and then I actively turn on only the ones that I feel that I need because these apps and services everything wants your attention on their terms. That app that you download, that service that you use, is going to want to tell you, hey, this is this is when we want
your attention. This is when we think you should pay attention to us. I feel that once I have a certain level of control over my life and my schedule and my calendar, then it should be up to me to decide when I want notifications for things, so I automatically turn them off by default, even for my phone, Amantha, like my phone automatically blocks numbers that I don't recognize.
I so hate unwanted interruptions that I try to block them at every chance that I get, And I trust myself to be able to organize my calendar and organize my schedule in a way that works for me, and only choose those notifications that I really really need.
You mentioned blocking phone numbers, and I know when my producer did a pre interview with you before. What we're doing right now we had to send our phone number ahead of time so that we wouldn't be blocked. Can you tell me about what you are doing with numbers on your phone?
Yeah, So again this is a nuclear option. This might not be advisable for everyone. I'll tell you sort of the good and the bad of it. The good of it, obviously, is that I do not get spam call. I don't know if you have a similar problem.
Oh, so many, sign many.
Yeah, there's so many bot calls, and they're only projected to increase, Like the volume of bot calls has increased I don't know, a thousand times in the past, like a handful of years, and it's only going to get worse. So you're just going to get so many spam calls, so many telemarketers that are just gonna, you know, make you look at your phone and check who's calling and think for a moment that it might be someone important or your mother calling you, and it's really not right.
It's just going to be a robot. It's going to be a recording. So the good part is that I don't have that problem. I do not get telemarketers. I do not get spam calls. I do not get calls from, you know, people who I didn't explicitly give my number two.
That's the great part. The downside of it is, you know, if my dentist wants to call me and it's a new dentist to confirm my appointment, they're not going to be able to They're gonna have to send me an email, or they're gonna have to send me a text message. I have to be really strategic about either warning people, hey, let me say your phone numbers so that I have it.
I have to like be on top of that myself, or knowing that they have an alternative means of connecting with me, whether that's email or whatever else.
Now I want to ask about email as well, because I imagine you're getting even more unsolicited emails from people such as myself. I was, you know, quite chuffed that I got through, Jordan. How are you managing your emails with regard to this problem.
So I have my personal email and my professional email, and I treat them sort of differently. Well, in some ways I treat them the same. I am an inbox zero person across all of my inboxes, so I try to empty out my inbox and archive things because I sort of use my email as a to do list, or the only things that are in my inbox are things that are actionable, like things that actually need to
be done. For my professional email, I am really really strict, and that's mostly because my professional email is public, and that means that anyone can email me, and I get a lot of emails from every PR person and every publicist under the sun advertising everything that you could possibly imagine,
asking if I'm willing to cover it. So if your email address is public out there, then you might want to follow again my very admittedly strict sort of guidelines, which is that everyone whether they're you know, a PR person, whoever, is reaching out. And I will again preface this by saying this is a little bit extreme, but I basically block every email that I get after they've emailed me once,
like you sort of get a one shot policy. So if I get an email from someone about something that I'm not interested in, I you know, either I can respond and tell them I'm not interested if I feel that it deserves a personal response, but if it's just a mass piece our email about something, and I block them and I move on and I'll never have to worry And the reason I do that, Amantha, is because because they'll always follow up. They'll always follow up two
or three or four times. And if you know that you're not going to respond affirmatively to this person, you might not want to respond at all because they're just you know, it's basically spam. Then why are you Why would I leave myself open to the follow up? Like I either need to respond to tell them I'm not interested or block them. And that's the decision that I make with every email that comes into my inbox, like do I want to give them another chance? I'll be honest,
ninety nine percent of them. Because I get so much in my inbox, like ninety nine percent of it, I just automatically block and just continue living my life.
I love Jordan's ruthless approach to blocking emails, and it's something that I've adopted in my own life now. So I get a lot of pictures from people about being on this podcast, and inevitably they follow up three or four times, sometimes more. And as strange as it feels, blocking people, my goodness has freed up a lot of space in my inbox and also in my head. 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've discovered that helped me work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I work dot co. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios and thank you to Matt 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.