WRC-Dropbox-October-02

DAY-TO-DAY WHEN
Q: About 30 pages into When, a mounting sense
of lost opportunity waved over me as I realized
I've been doing it wrong all these years (damn
you, late afternoon meetings with Finance!).
This may well be one of the best books on
optimization I've read in years (and I've read a
lot of them). There are practical, executable
tips throughout.
With that in mind, how has your work routine
changed post-research compared to
pre-research for the book, if at all?
Daniel: It’s changed may own routines in several
ways. Let me offer two.
First, once I began understanding the research
on peaks, troughs, and recoveries, I reorganized
my day. Since I’m a more of a lark than an owl,
my peak is the morning. That’s when I’m best
doing analytic work - like conjuring words and
trying to make them march in formation. So
early in the writing of the book, I took a new
approach. Every morning, I came into my office
- the garage behind my house - around 830. I
gave myself a word count - usually around 700
or 800 words. And I didn't do anything else until
I wrote the required number of words. No
checking email. No watching sports highlights.
Nothing. I didn’t even bring my phone into the
office. By doing that every day - 700 words
today, 800 words the next
day, another 800 the day after
that - the pages begin piling
up. And, believe it or not, this
book on timing was the first
book I ever delivered on time!
Second, I’ve become more
systematic about taking
breaks. Each day, on my list of
ngs to do, I try to schedule at
least one afternoon break. And
those breaks almost always
abide by the design principles
that science tells us make
breaks most effective -
moving, outside, social, and
fully detached. So in the
afternoon, you might see me
walking around my neighborhood - often with
my wife, but never with my phone. I used to
think that amateurs take breaks and
professionals don’t. Now I understand that the
truth is the opposite: Professionals take breaks.
It’s the amateurs who ignore breaks.
COLLABORATION WHEN
Q: Daniel, as I mentioned, this book has
optimization tips throughout. If you and I had
the opportunity to walk the National Mall for
30 minutes chatting about When and its
relationship to the collaborative process,
what's one actionable tip I would take away?
Daniel: I’d ask us to spend 15 of those minutes
talking not about how to collaborate more
effectively and instead talking about why we’re
collaborating in the first place. What are we
trying to accomplish? Why are we doing this in
the first place? What’s the point of the exercise?
Then I’d schedule a separate time for a
pre-mortem. In this technique, created by
psychologist Gary Klein, we look out, say, one
year from now and imagine that our shared
project is a bust. Then we try to figure out what
went wrong. And then, returning to the present
day, we set up ways to avoid those pitfalls. I’d
much rather make mistakes in my head in
advance than in real time on a real project.
SINGING WHEN
Q: When has received a lot of press and reviews
since it came out and landed on the best-seller
list. Is there anything in the book that you
thought would receive more attention, but
hasn’t?
Daniel: I thought the material on choral singing
- the fact that it’s basically as good for us as
physical exercise - would have gotten more
attention. That said, there’s still, er, time!
Looking for more from Daniel? Check out his
fantastic Ted Talk on motivation below or visit
DanPink.com to connect with him on social media
and read more about When and his five other books,
including other New York Times bestsellers A Whole
New Mind, Drive and To Sell is Human.
The Puzzle
of Motivation
Dan Pink
FLOW OCTOBER 2018
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