You can't just pick up the phone and call Jordan Calhoun, the editor in chief of Life Packer. Trust me, I tried. Jordan takes his time and attention seriously and protects them accordingly. His phone is set up so that you can only call him if he knows that it's coming. Thankfully, he knew I was calling him so he could appear on How I Work, and he did pick up and I.
Came out of that call with a lot of new ideas.
As well as being the editor in chief of Life Packer, one of my go to sources for inspiration on the web, He's also the podcast host of The Upgrade, which is kind of like How I Work, but for life.
And I think it's better say.
That Jordan is as nerdy as meat when it comes to productivity and thinking about how he spends his time.
So aside from.
Blocking calls, what other hacks has Jordan applied to minimizing distractions and interruptions? And I wanted to know why did jordans stop scheduling absolutely everything in his calendar like many productivity nerds like to do, and how has Jordan managed to weaponize accountability. My name is doctor Amantha Imba 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. When I was doing my research for this interview, I learned that Jordan had recently taken up skateboarding as an adult.
So I wanted to know why would an adult.
Decide to take up something that is normally reserved for kids.
It's so rare that as an adult we tried new things usually because we're used to being competent, right like that, you reach a certain age and a certain proficiency at most of your skill sets where you don't want to start new things because you'll feel like an idiot. And I wanted to try to get over that. And I wanted to do something that I always wanted to do
when I was a teenager, which is skateboarding. I had tried to get on once when I was a teenager and completely fell on my ribs and it hurt like hell, and I never got on a skateboard again until now when I'm in my mid thirties. So I decided to do this sort of fitness challenge where skateboarding would be my challenge. And I would see if I would learn how to ali in a month, whether I could, you know, quote unquote learn to skateboard.
In a month.
And my benchmark was the ALI, which is just being able to pop your skateboard off of the ground. And I was able to do that. It was a ton of fun and I'm really glad I did. I would ask you, like, what would you want to do? What did you want to do when you were about fifteen years old that you never got to do?
Such a good question, isn't it, Because I actually I thought skateboarding was really cool, and as a girl when I was younger, I thought that would make me really cool.
But my sense of balance just not the best. But it's funny. I did recently teach myself how.
To knit, not that this was a lifelong dream when I was a teenager, but I did learn that skill in lockdown, and I know what you mean. It's interesting learning a new skill. And podcasting has been the same for me, so I've been doing it for over three years now. But I just remember one of the joys of starting how I work is You're absolutely right. It's so rare that we just start at the very very beginning with something in life.
Absolutely, and it's gosh, it's good.
I'm curious because I think it's it can be a bit daunting to know where do you start when you're starting from scratch. So what was your process for learning how to skateboard?
I started by asking a million questions to other people, basically like, what would be a good benchmark goal if I'm going to quote unquote learn how to skateboard? What's a reasonable goal from a beginner for a beginner? And you end up hearing a lot of answers sort of pick and choose on which one makes sense for you. I think one of the best responses I got when I was asking more veteran skateboarders what I.
Should set as a goal.
When I got my skateboard at the skateboarding shop, I asked that question and someone who the sales clerk who was selling me the skateboards just stopped and looked at me in my eyes and said, it depends how dedicated are you. And that was It was such a you know,
a non committal answer. You didn't give me the type of cut and dry answer that I wanted, but it was really good for helping me remember that this is my process and I am an individual and whatever goal I set, whether it's high or lower in between, like, it's got to be catered to me. And what I want to get out of it, and what I want to get out of it isn't, you know, becoming a
good skateboarder or you know, becoming a professional. This isn't the type of thing that I want to eventually monetize and make a hustle out of or make a career out of. This is something that I want to do just to remind me myself that I can learn new things and to have an experience that's going to be humbling, and to do something that reminds me what it's like to be a beginner. Because it also helps me teach
other people. It's so hard to be able to train and instruct and teach other people when they're trying new things if it's been a really long time since you've learned a new thing and you've been on the educational receiving end yourself. So my goal was to learn how to ALI. It ended up working out really well, and I'm really glad I did it.
That's so cool.
Now I know something that you think a lot about is attention, and I want to know what have you done to stop apps and other things sort of hijacking your attention when you don't want them to.
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 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, Samantha, like my phone automatically blocks numbers that I don't recognize, Like, 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 calls. I don't know if you have a similar problem.
Oh, so many, so 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 that are just going to, you know, make you look at your phone and check who's calling and think for a moment that it might be somewhat important, or your mother calling you when 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 going to 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 save 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 my I was, you know, quite chuffed that I got through, Jordan, how are you managing your email?
So 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 pr email about something, then I block them and I move on and I'll never
have to worry. And the reason I do that, imanth 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 it 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.
Now.
You mentioned pictures and being inundated with them, and I can imagine given what you do, I feel like I'm sort of experience that.
On a smallest scale, I'll probably.
Get about, I don't know, somewhere between five to ten pitches for people wanting to be guests on how I work most days. What is your decision making process for making quick decisions about which pictures you're going to consider?
Is it going to be fun?
Like the feeling that I want to avoid is and we've all we've.
All felt this before.
Is when it comes time to do that thing, are you going to be like, ah, man, why did I do this? I like, I do not feel like having this. I do not feel like doing this thing if it's going to feel.
Like a chore when the time comes.
Like I try to put myself in the shoes of future me and say, like would I would I have when I have the with my energy level right now? Would I be looking forward to this or would I feel that it's a drag that I need to stop my day and do this thing? And if the answer is that I would enjoy doing that thing and it would probably be fun, then I try to go for it.
I can kind of relate.
My test is if, like when I'm deciding on which guest pictures to accept, and to be honest, most of the guests that I have with people that I reach out to personally, such as yourself. But but I think, oh, would I be really curious and looking forward to spending several hours researching this person, And generally that provides me with a very whether it's.
A yes or a not right right, If you're having fun doing that, then you'll probably have fun talking to that person, and then readers or in my case it's readers, but in your case, listeners will also enjoy it, because I think it's very clear whether people are actually enjoying themselves or whether they're going through the motions. If I'm writing something, I assume that it's pretty clear to the reader which parts of it I'm actually having fun writing and which parts of it I'm just like, I am
just trudging through it. I am just getting through it and going through the motions. I think it's so transparent in a way that we often don't realize. So I think of it as doing myself my future self a favor. What I picked the right types of things to be involved with, and also doing everyone else a favor, like no one wants to You wouldn't want to host someone who actually doesn't want to be there and they're just doing it because they're you know, publicists told them to.
Or you wouldn't want to read something that, you know, the writer wasn't really passionate about it, but they wrote it because it was a trending topic and they felt that they had to write. So I feel like we're all doing ourselves and each other a favor when we go for the things that actually inspire us and that you know, make us happy.
Now, I know think you've changed the way that you use your calendar. Can you tell me about what you used to do and why you changed.
Yeah.
I was the type of person who used to schedule everything. I mean, every hour of my day was blocked off with something or other, even if it was like relaxation time like this. Everything was accounted for the time that I would spend walking my dog was accounted for every every waking hour had something. And that was my way
of feeling in control. I wanted to feel in control, and I wanted to feel productive, and eventually, for a plethora of reason, a lot of that having to do with just mental health and being able to be flexible.
I ended up.
Pivoting towards Have you heard of a decision matrix?
This is a new thing for me absolutely to explain what that is.
Okay, So a decision matrix is it's sort of hard to describe virtually verbally, but I will do my best. So there's four quadrants in this decision matrix, and it splits everything up into whether it's high urgency and low effort, or high urgency and high effort, or low urgency and low effort or low urgency and high effort. And basically every task that you do can be put into one of these four categories. And the types of things that I used to put on my calendar would be all
four of those things. Whether it was high urgency or low urgency, whether it was high effort or low effort, Everything that needed to be done would go on my calendar.
And that was not sustainable and not ideal.
And my ex is my ex partially because she probably hated it. But if I fast forward a little bit and look at how I look at my calendar now, it's going to be those things that are specifically high urgency and high effort or low urgency and high effort. There are going to be things that require me to plan or to block out time to do as opposed to those things that you can do right away because
it's you know, low effort and high urgency. So for example, if I go to the gym and I'm really really sweaty, it's low effort to take a shower, and it's high urgency to take a shower, So that's something that I should just do right now, right like, I should just get that out of the way because it's low effort and high urgency. Or if it's something that's low urgency and low effort, then that's something that I.
Could definitely put off till later. If it's you know, I.
Need to go to the post office and drop off something, then I could I could defer that, I could you know, figure out when to do that later on on, but I don't need to put that on my calendar. But for those things that take planning, you know, if I need to block off time to plan for a presentation, right a presentation is going to be depending on when
it's coming up, it's going to be high urgency. And it's definitely going to be high effort, so I need to block off time to do that, or if it's something like filing by taxes, that might be low urgency, depending on you know, how close tax day is, but it's definitely going to be high effort to have to sit down and look through all these financial records. Right, So that's something that needs to go on my calendar.
But there's a difference now that I think I've got a healthier balance now between those things that belong on my calendar because they're either high effort or high urgency or both, or those things that you know, just give me a false sense of productivity and a high degree of rigidity that probably is is more detrimental to my productivity and my mental health than useful.
Now I'm curious about goal setting and accountability because I've heard that you use accountability to make sure that you do certain things.
Is that right?
Yeah?
Yeah, I think one of the most powerful forces personally that I have for making sure certain things get done is by weaponizing accountability. I know that it's very easy for me to let myself down and not really care if you think about, like, you know, whether you're trying to eat healthier or something like that, but you also want to eat a candy bar and no one else knows, and you're just like, Okay, that's fine, I'll have this one and then I'll start again eating healthy the next
week or whatever. Or if you tell yourself that you're going to, you know, go for a run for three days this week, and you do two days and you're like that third day, I'll just add an extra run next week, right, like you can. It's very easy for me, and I imagine most people to rationalize their way out of whatever we want to rationalize ourselves into or out of.
But if I tell my plans to someone who I don't want to disappoint, that thing is going to get done, mostly because I hate disappointing people like I don't like.
Especially if it's if it's someone.
Who I know is going to hold me to that thing, then yeah, then it'll work.
It's it's probably. I would say.
It's the second most powerful way for me to make sure that I get something done.
The other one is a rougher option.
Have you ever heard of the website? I heard of it back in college. I wonder if it still exists, it's called stick STI KK.
If I remember correctly, Ah, that rings a bell.
It's it's really old. It's been around for a long time. I learned about it in undergrad and college at university when I was studying psychology and I was studying behavioral psychology.
And one of the things that I learned.
About was the reinforcement strategies. And the short of this website, the summary of it is that you have an accountability partner and have you set a goal. So let's say that that goal is to go to the gym three days a week. You set your goal, you tell your accountability partner that goal, and then the way that I did it, and there's I think there's a few different ways to do it on this website, but there's one very clever, very very powerful way of doing it is
you choose an anti charity. So an anti charity is something for which an organization that has a cause that you strongly disagree with, like that you are the opposite of right. So in my case, my anti charity was the NRA in the United States, the National Rifle Association, this organization that, like you know, pushes for the advocacy
of everyone having guns I politically am not there. Or then my best friend, she's a lesbian and there was an anti marriage equality law and her anti charity was an organization that was against LGBTQ people.
You set this anti.
Charity and then it'll automatically deduct five dollars from my account if ever my accountability buddy pulls the trigger and says that or presses the button and says that I didn't do what I said that I was going to do.
So that's right, That's that's the nuclear option if I want, like I never missed the commitment whenever I wanted to be that serious and use use the anti charity, because you know, if you're choosing the right anti charity, it's going to be something that like morally would like it would it would hurt your soul.
To not do this thing. So when I was doing the.
Anti charity, I remember one night it was close to midnight and I went to the gym because I was not going to pay five dollars to this organization that I didn't like.
That's so good.
We'll be back with more of Jordan soon and talking about out of all the things that he's learned from editing life hacker what has impacted his behavior the most. If you're after even more things to improve the way you work, you might want to check out my very first digital course, The time Wise Challenge, where I've curated the world's best kept secrets and strategies for maximizing productivity
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Now, something I imagine that we've got in common is that in terms.
Of your like the things that you're learning and consuming, Like you're learning a lot of great advice through your role at life Hacker and through the podcast that you host, the Upgrade, Like so many tools and tips and strategies that you'd be hearing, I imagine every week. I'm curious as to which ones have really stuck with you and that you've implemented.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a few of them that come to mind. The first one that comes to mind there was an episode that we did with a writer named Daniel Pink, and he had written a book. I'm drawing a blank on the book title.
One of his race and ones might be when When Yes?
When? When Yes? When? By Daniel Pink.
It was about understanding your chronotype, like understanding whether you're actually a morning person or an evening person or something in between, and then deciding from there having a better understanding of what type of work you should do at what time and what time periods you should sort of
avoid doing things that are mentally taxing. For most of us, that's going to be that after life un hour, like that lull that we feel between like noon and three o'clock when everyone's sort of groggy and not on their best. For me, it meant understanding that I am a morning person when it comes to productivity, Amantha. I probably get more done between probably between six am and ten am
than I do the rest of the day combined. Like, I am very much a morning person when it comes to productivity, but I'm not very creative in the morning.
I can get things done.
I have a lot of willpower and a lot of organizational skills at that early hour, but if I am doing some creative writing, then that's going to be something that I'm going to do closer to the evening. And just understanding that about myself and understanding that that's sort of a biological thing that really helps me make decisions on when to do certain tasks as opposed to the normal thing that I think about, which is what to do and what to put off and that type of thing.
Understanding chronotypes really really helped a lot. So thank you, Daniel Pink if you're listening today, There's one more thing that I would add, and that is having an understanding of habits and prompts. Just came from Charles Douhig, who's written a number of books on productivity. I wanted to read more. For example, There's very simple things that you could do to get into the habit of reading. One of those things is putting the book in a place that I am going to see and that I'm going
to attach it to another task. So like there's already a habit ingrained in me to brush my teeth before I go to bed. If I can attach my reading habit to brushing my teeth before I go to bed, then it's a lot easier for that habit to be
adopted into my life. So now, you know, try to get into this routine of brushing my teeth, going to this book that's going to be right on top of you know, right on top of my couch when I go back to the living room, and then I can sit for a little while and read book.
Where I go.
So just trying to understand how to pair habits, pair new aspirational habits with existing habits. That has gone a long way and sort of changing my thinking on how I can get things done in a more, you know, just sort of a natural way. I don't think of brushing my teeth as a chore, so once I attach something else to that task, I hopefully won't think of that thing as a chore either. It's just a thing that you do.
Now, I know that child Wilson gave you advice on how to give advice, Is that right?
Yeah? Yeah? Absolutely?
This, Yeah, tell me about that.
This changed a lot of my thinking on coaching and collaborating with other people and how I myself learn and how I can change things about myself that I might want to change. And that comes down to the power of stories. One of the things that science has shown us is that people naturally understand and advice through narrative form in a way that is far more resonant, in a way that we all can understand better than if
someone just gives us the information. So if I tell you, you know, you shouldn't smoke cigarettes because it causes cancer, Okay, that's information. But if I were to tell you a personal story about how someone who I cared about smoked and what their life with their relationship to cigarettes was and how it affected them, I don't even necessarily have to give advice. It's just you experiencing that story or seeing that story. That's something that your brain can retain
a whole lot better. And it's also why books are so important and movies are so important, and the media that we consume is so important. It's because our brain latches onto stories a whole lot more than straightforward logical information.
Now, something that I do in my life once a fortnite is that I see my therapist or psychologist. And I know that you've also got a regular appointment with a therapist.
Sorry, tell me how, like what role that plays in your life?
Yeah, I had mentioned accountability before. I think she is one of this not the biggest accountability structures in my life. If I tell her I'm going to do something, then ninety nine times out of one hundred, I will be able to follow through and do that thing because she because of the relationship that we have, like she is going to be someone who I trust and she knows the things that I want to accomplish and the challenges and the opportunities and the struggles and the joys that
I have. And being able to have someone like that and sharing your goals with like she's a very good accountability buddy. I would recommend anyone who's interested in having a therapist definitely take that leap in getting one. I was one of those people that was apprehensive, to say the least. I went very grudgingly into therapy years ago.
Like I was of the mindset that, you know, this is obviously silly in craft, but it was just like, oh, you know, crazy people go to therapy like you have to be, you know, I have some type of significant difficulties or have something terrible happen to you to be benefited by therapy.
And that's absolutely not true. You can feel pretty.
On top of your life and still be greatly benefited by talking through your feelings. And I look at a therapist now the same way that I would any other type of hygiene, whether it's going to the gym or brushing my teeth. Like your heart and mind and emotions need regular maintenance too, and I think that it's easily something to overlook if you don't have a regular time
set aside to do that. And for some people, it could be meditation, for some people, it could be therapy for some people, could be something else for some people could be a combination of those things. But having a set aside time for your mental health and focusing on understanding yourself and your happiness that I think is the other side of productivity. I think there's so often that we can focus on productivity and getting things done and having the sense this is at least I should speak
for myself here. I had the sense that I was what I could do, I was what I could produce, I was my accomplishments. And it took some shifting on my part in my thinking to understand that I am not my accomplishment and I'm not what I do, and that I can still have the level of success and accomplishment when I'm approaching these things from a place of love and enjoyment and not just trying to do something. I guess to bring this conversation full circle, that's sort
of what it's like with skateboarding. Skateboarding isn't something that I am really going to be accomplished at, but it is something that I can approach with curiosity and do it just for the enjoyment and the fun of it and having those type of escapes, having those types of hobbies that aren't monetized and aren't very serious to you, but that are just fun or relaxing or cathartic or
just enjoyable. Those are the things that give me the energy to go back to the things where I do need to be focused and be productive and be able to have a balance between those two things. It's only helped my productivity.
I can totally relate something that I became aware of. So my appointment with my therapist is in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and what I realized is that I wasn't actually leaving any room after the appointment ended, before my assistant would just schedule a meeting
in my diary. And like literally this just occurred to me two or three weeks ago, And I now like a blocking out, just half an hour of buffer time to decompress and possibly journal, which I feel would be useful to do straight after therapy when you just have no idea what emotional state you'll be in at the end of that hour or fifty minutes. I'm curious, do you have any rituals or routines around what you do after your therapy session or what you do sort of in between the weekly sessions.
Mine is similar to you, but slightly different. So my therapist. My appointment with my therapist is also on a Wednesday, but it's Wednesday at the end of the day, so that there is no meetings afterwards. But it is right, and it's like my mental oasis right in the middle of the week and where you journal after your appointment. I try to journal throughout the week leading up to the appointment so that I know what it is that I want to talk about.
And that's mostly.
Because I sort of this applies to almost anything in my brain. I can think of something, something I want to write, something I want to do, something that I want to remember, and I'll tell myself i'll remember it when the time comes. I'll just completely lie to myself and think that I can recall it when it needs to be recalled, And of course that never works, right, So that's why we should keep these lists. That's why
we have these note taking apps. And I got in the habit relatively recently, i'd say, a few months ago, of keeping a really small notebook and when certain things go on during the week, or if I notice myself feeling particularly good or particularly bad, or something that's notable, scribbling that down so that when Wednesday rolls around, I can decide whether that's worth diving into. Did I feel better since that thing happened or since I felt that way?
Or do I feel worse? Is this something that's lingering is it not? And that informs the types of things that I discuss with my therapist, and it makes those sessions. I mean, it feels weird saying this because productivity isn't the goal, but it makes those sessions a lot more productive, right because I know what it is that I want to talk about, and we're not spending time with me wondering like what are we going to talk about this week? What's going on? You know, there's not that sort of
pulling teeth in the beginning. It's like, oh, this happened, and these other things happened, and I get to sort of triage my hour that way.
I really like that strategy.
I think I'm going to try adopting That's like, it's Wednesday now here in Velvet and I'm seeing my therapist in a few hours, so I can't adopt it this week, but I think I'm going to adopt it for the next whatnot, Now, you're a prolific radar. What's your approach to rating non fiction? And I guess like learning as much as you can remembering what you've learned.
Yeah, Thankfully having a podcast that's based on productivity and having conversations with dozens of authors every year sort of takes care of that for me, Like I always have a new book to read that is nonfiction that's about improving some part of my life, so that that is that's sort of carved out for me by way of this podcast, and I've been trying to just given since that exists in my professional life, I've been trying to continue to lean into stories to learn what I can
from fiction as sort of a going back to what I learned from Charles Duig about how we learn certain things, how we learn most things a better way through narrative. I've been trying to lean into fiction more and to find the lessons and the stories from there and try
to have a balance between between fiction and nonfiction. I find that when I do lean too much towards fiction, I or I'm sorry towards When I do lean too much towards nonfiction, then it becomes sort of a robotic process and I don't retain as much as I need to. I think we've all had that experience reading a nonfiction book, because they can tend to be drier, where you know, you read several pages, so you could read several paragraphs and you're like, I don't even remember what I just read.
And I find that the best way to retain the more serious, you know, more serious, rigid nonfiction work is to balance that out so that it's it's complemented by fiction as well.
Now, given how many nonfiction books you've read, what A two, a three that have had the biggest impact on your life?
So there's Atomic Habits. Have you read that one?
I sure I have?
Yes by James Clear Yes. Did you like Tiny Habits by BJ Fog?
I did not read Tiny Habits?
Tell me about it?
That is a really good one. I guess.
It is sort of somewhat self explanatory, and it's about the idea of making permanent behavior change is to break habits down into really tiny components, like things that you can do in thirty seconds or less. And so that's sort of the premise of the book, and then how we can make those tiny habits stick through similar to what you were saying earlier in this chat around linking new habits that we're trying to form onto existing ones and also then associating them with positive emotion.
So it's a good one to read. I really liked it.
I will look into that. I will definitely look into that. Another one that I read not too long ago was Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
Love that book.
Yeah, that's one that sort of can change your life. I mean there's especially in productivity and hustle culture, where there's so much of a warped sense of pride in working hard and neglecting your sleep, sort of as a sense of pride, like oh, like, you know, we all say we're so busy, and you know, I only got four hours of sleep last night because I had to wake up and do this other busy thing because we're all, you know, such busy, important people, right, And it's like
you think that that's harder work. Like you think that that's hard work, and you think that sleep deprivation, at least in certain circles can be worn as a badge of pride, something that shows just how tenacious you are. But really it's just sabotaging you, Like there is there is no at least now the way that I've sort of shifted my thinking, there is no sense of pride or reward and exhausting myself and being so fatigued, so sleep deprived and so tired that I'm like not functioning optimally.
Part of being a productive, well rounded, well adjusted person is sleeping a pretty optimal amount and shedding some of those preconceived ideas about sleep being tied to laziness or naps being tied to laziness. That's another thing, going back to Daniel Pink's book, When is the sort of idea that many of us had, or many of us were taught about naps being this thing for the lazy this, or naps being this thing that you do because you, you know, because you're not this tenacious, go getting person.
And it's quite the opposite. You can sleep when you're tired. That's not a character flaw. That's something that your body needs and it's something that will ultimately probably make you more productive. So that's another example. There was a much of time where I was really into positive psychology, So there are a few books that I read around the topic. Then I'm trying to think of I think it was
the happiness Curve. There's a book called The Happiness Curve, and it was basically a compilation of a lot of research about what we know about being happy and what actually makes people happy is quite different than what most of us think makes us happy, Like we're really bad. One of the main takeaways from the book is that we are very bad at predicting what makes us happy,
like what actually makes us happy? I you know, in my head, my sort of knee jerk thought to what would make me happy would be having accomplished a lot of things. But that's not what's actually going to make me happy. That's not what's going to fulfill me as much as strong relationships and other things.
Right.
So that was another great book that sort of balanced out the productivity mindset with the why am I trying to be so productive anyway? And maybe I should also focus on my mental health and happiness aspect.
Welso, I will link to all those in the show notes. Now, Jordan, for people that want to connect with you, read what you're writing, listen to your podcast.
What is the best way for people to do that?
Absolutely?
So my podcast is called The Upgrade by Life Packer, so you can search that in anyone of your podcasting apps and you'll find the upgrade. I also recently have a newsletter a column that I launched with The Atlantic, So if you're an Atlantic subscriber, it's actually free for this month, but then you have to be an Atlantic subscriber, and it's called Humans Being.
Humans Being basically.
Looks at pop culture and tries to find the lessons in it. Similar to what we were talking about earlier in our conversation, where we can find a lot of lessons in the serious nonfiction stuff that we read, there's also a lot of lessons that can be found in the fiction that we consume as well, and my column Humans Being basically tries to explore that and tries to find the lessons in fiction so that we can decide, you know, how, how can we learn from the stories that we're consuming every day.
And you can.
Find everything else on my website Jordan MS and Michael jordanimcalhoun dot com and I'm on Twitter and Instagram at Jordan M Calhoun, so you can always find me on Twitter. That is probably where I would like interact with people the most, because you know, you're probably not going to get through to.
My inbox exactly.
I'm certainly not getting through to you. Fine, definitely, this has just made such.
A joy, Like where has the hour gone? I have no idea. I just loved chatting to you. I wish we had like another five hours, but I need to let you get on with your evening in New York.
So thank you so much.
I feel like I got so many practical tips from Jordan. There are so many things that I want to try out, and the very first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to work out how to block random numbers on my phone, so tell you what. I am sick of getting calls from all sorts of people that I don't know who are trying to sell me things. So that is something I'm definitely going to do.
Now.
If you have not hit subscribe or follow wherever you're listening to this podcast from, you might want to do that because next week I'm very excited to share my chat with Katie Milkman, who is an expert on the science of change, and we'll be talking about how she has created big and small changes in her own life. How I Work is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead Set Studios. The producers for this episode were
Liam Ridan and Jenna Cooder. And thank you to Martin Nimba who did the audio.
Mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.