Did you ever have a great study buddy, someone in high school or university who made those long sessions on the books a little less punishing. What did that person actually do?
Were they giving you tips or was it enough to just have them there? I know I work with a whole lot more concentration and energy when my teammates are around, and Taylor Jacobsen does too. He had such a great study buddy in college that he turned the experience into a company folks mate, So how can we all turn a regular social interaction into an accountability tool. My name
is doctor amanthe 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 pick out my favorite tip from the interview. In today's show, I speak with Taylor Jacobson, and if you have never heard of Taylor's company, Focus Mate, a good place to start is understanding how it actually works.
Very simply, you and another community member get paired up for a video call where you sit quote unquote side by side and you keep each other company and you hold each other accountable while you each work on your own work. Using Focusmate is going to the website and you log in and it's a calendar that shows all of your appointments, and so you just decide, you know, this is when I want to be working, and you book an appointment at that time, and we take care
of the rest. We find you the right person based on your preferences, and you just show up and you join the video call, and in the first minute you greet your partner. You know, Hiamantha, what are you working on today? And you'll tell me what you're working on. And you'll say, okay, Taylor, what are you working on today? And I'll say, you know, I'm I'm trying to get to inbox zero. I'm going to do as many emails as I can, and then we just get to work.
People will often mute their microphones and kind of drag their partner off to the side of their screen, or they'll have their partner on a separate device so they can keep them there sort of next to their main screen workspace. And at the end of the session, whether it's twenty five minutes or fifty minutes, a bell goes off, and then we come back and I say, you know, how to go Atmantha? How'd you do on your whatever? And you know you say, oh, it went pretty well.
I got distracted for like a minute in the middle there, but not a big deal. And you asked me how to go for you Taylor, and oh, I think I got through like eight emails. Felt great. And then we say thanks, goodbye, and you know, and we go off on day.
It's interesting my team and I invent heres. There's about ten of us. We try something similar. We call it what do we call it, like virtual deep caves or something like that, where we basically book out. It's typically a one and a half to two hour time period and everyone in the team is invited, although probably about half to two thirds will actually attend, just due to coordiniting diaries and someone will facilitate it. We'll do a little like round the virtual table to talk about what
we're working on. Then we'll get into work.
Our cameras will be switched on, which kind of makes you.
Feel accountable, like you can't just go off and make multiple cups of tea or something. And then we'll have a halfway check in where we'll talk about how we're all going, and then we'll get back to work, and then we'll do a little wrap up at the end.
And I must say I love those sessions.
I mean, if any of my team are listening, we don't them often enough. I feel like once a fortnight, and I'd be loving them if they're like once every couple of days, because I just get.
So much work done.
And tell me, like, what are the behavioral triggers that this kind of idea is tapping into.
Yeah, well, I can like hear you smiling as you as you think about it, And that's kind of a good segue in terms of the behavioral triggers because we can get into some of the details of specific triggers, meaning, hey, there's research that's validated this thing, and here's what it's
called according to these studies, blah blah blah. Right, But if we just take a step back, all of it, I think, or a great deal of the science of it is is just based on the fact that we're tribal animals that were social animals, that were mammals, pack animals. That's how our brains work, it's our bodies work, that's
how our nervous system is optimized to function. So that's why it works, is we're tapping in to just human nature basically, is we work better when we're you know, playing as part of a team or a tribe or or what have you. So you know, just just for example, you know, and this one is sort of the like the obvious, but there are studies that show that if you are in the room with another person while you're performing a task, your performance increases pretty pretty pretty straightforward.
You know, there's research that shows if you tell another person what you're going to do, your performance increases. There's some other cool stuff and one of my favorites is is actually the reflection that we do at the end. There's a little celebration and reflection at the end, and actually both of those are impactful. So you know, celebration provides some dopamine, right, so it really reinforces what we just did, create some more momentum. But then also reflection.
You know, there's there's two types of work quote unquote, one executive function and the other is reflective function. And I think societally we're pretty obsessed with the executive function thing, which is like what we think of as getting things done. We don't necessarily think of even writing our to do list is like, it's not part of getting things done in a sense. It you know, it feels like prep work or something like that. But it turns out that
reflection is extremely valuable in making us more productive. So even just taking sixty seconds at the end of a coworking session to just talk about how it went, it's just a moment of awareness, but doing it right then is really valuable.
So I wonder if after this extract you're feeling inspired or perhaps just a little intrigued to set up a virtual working and accountability session. I love the virtual caves we run an Invantium. We currently do a deep work cave every Monday morning from nine thirty to eleven thirty am and a shallow work cave from two to three
point thirty pm on Thursdays. And while it's often just a small group of us that do it regularly, I personally find them very motivating and productive, and also just a nice chance to hang out with my work mates given that we don't work in the same office together.
If you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three core 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 co. That's Howiwork dot co. How I Work is produced by inventing and 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.