Alumanak CEO Adam Nathan believes in the value of deep work. He's seen how effective it is and knows firsthand how satisfying it can be. But in recent years he's learned that this doesn't automatically make shallow work the greatest enemy to productivity or job satisfaction. Instead, he's discovered that most professionals consider their time well spent if they're able to check everything off there to do lists, even if some of that work is shallow. What really matters is simply getting stuff done. And the real enemy of getting stuff done is unexpected interruptions. And the key lies in being able to learn from these unexpected interruptions or fire drills as they're called at Almanac, when they do occur. 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's quick Win episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out a quick win that you can apply today. In today's show, I speak with Adam Nathan on his approach to dealing with unexpected interruptions.

Alumanak CEO Adam Nathan believes in the value of deep work. He's seen how effective it is and knows firsthand how satisfying it can be. But in recent years he's learned that this doesn't automatically make shallow work the greatest enemy to productivity or job satisfaction. Instead, he's discovered that most professionals consider their time well spent if they're able to check everything off there to do lists, even if some of that work is shallow. What really matters is simply getting stuff done. And the real enemy of getting stuff done is unexpected interruptions. And the key lies in being able to learn from these unexpected interruptions or fire drills as they're called at Almanac, when they do occur. 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's quick Win episode, we go back to an interview from the past and I pick out a quick win that you can apply today. In today's show, I speak with Adam Nathan on his approach to dealing with unexpected interruptions.

When we started this work, I used to think that people got satisfaction from work, from spending time on deep work. There's whole books that are really great written about this, and I thought it was all about flow and focus and that's where people find meaning. And when we talked to these amazing professionals, what people evaluated whether a week was effective based on if they got stuff done on their to do list. And the enemy of getting stuff done is a fire drill, and so what people hated them most wasn't that they sometimes are just processing past, but it's when something got in the way of them being able to cross stuff off there to do list. So it shifted our thinking from how do we enable through our tool time for people to do deep creative work, to how do we help people just get through their to do list faster so that they can and get done with their days get back to other things that might matter them. Because everybody hated ending a week feeling like they weren't able to get important work done for with themselves and their teams, and so this idea of minimizing fire drills became an important principle to this end because it's not just about something that makes the team faster, but it's also directly correlated to people feeling like their week was a success and getting meaning and value from work. The second idea to your point is that we love the slogan from the US Marines. Slow means smooth and smooth means fast. Where a lot of teams go wrong isn't that they had to respond quickly to a new event that they've never seen before. It's that they don't stop afterwards, take a breath and say, like, what just happened, how did it go? How do we make sure that the next time this happens that we have some smoothness in how we respond. Because this, when you have calmness and order and structure, it's not just a more enjoyable experience, that actually increases business and team velocity, and so you can actually go faster while it feels like everybody is moving at a sustainable pace. If you look at paddling races, what you'll see is that the teams that win aren't the teams with the strongest men. They're the teams that are putting their paddles into the water at exactly the same time. Because when everybody is moving together you get more momentum behind the boat, and that's much more important than just like chaotic strength throwing stuff into the water that actually ends up working at cross purposes. And so what's critical is that a team is working together with some structure, with some transparency, so that in the end everybody feels like if they're doing work that's sustainable for them, but the whole boat is moving faster as a result.

When we started this work, I used to think that people got satisfaction from work, from spending time on deep work. There's whole books that are really great written about this, and I thought it was all about flow and focus and that's where people find meaning. And when we talked to these amazing professionals, what people evaluated whether a week was effective based on if they got stuff done on their to do list. And the enemy of getting stuff done is a fire drill, and so what people hated them most wasn't that they sometimes are just processing past, but it's when something got in the way of them being able to cross stuff off there to do list. So it shifted our thinking from how do we enable through our tool time for people to do deep creative work, to how do we help people just get through their to do list faster so that they can and get done with their days get back to other things that might matter them. Because everybody hated ending a week feeling like they weren't able to get important work done for with themselves and their teams, and so this idea of minimizing fire drills became an important principle to this end because it's not just about something that makes the team faster, but it's also directly correlated to people feeling like their week was a success and getting meaning and value from work. The second idea to your point is that we love the slogan from the US Marines. Slow means smooth and smooth means fast. Where a lot of teams go wrong isn't that they had to respond quickly to a new event that they've never seen before. It's that they don't stop afterwards, take a breath and say, like, what just happened, how did it go? How do we make sure that the next time this happens that we have some smoothness in how we respond. Because this, when you have calmness and order and structure, it's not just a more enjoyable experience, that actually increases business and team velocity, and so you can actually go faster while it feels like everybody is moving at a sustainable pace. If you look at paddling races, what you'll see is that the teams that win aren't the teams with the strongest men. They're the teams that are putting their paddles into the water at exactly the same time. Because when everybody is moving together you get more momentum behind the boat, and that's much more important than just like chaotic strength throwing stuff into the water that actually ends up working at cross purposes. And so what's critical is that a team is working together with some structure, with some transparency, so that in the end everybody feels like if they're doing work that's sustainable for them, but the whole boat is moving faster as a result.

I hope you enjoy this little quick win episode today. If you would like to listen to the full interview, you can find a link to that in the show notes. 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 the interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me by listening to How I Work. If you're keen for more tips on how to work better, connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the cool And Nation. I'm so grateful for being able to work and live on this beautiful land and i want to pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging. How I Work is produced by Inventium and hosted by me Amantha Imba and a big thank you to Martin Imba who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.

I hope you enjoy this little quick win episode today. If you would like to listen to the full interview, you can find a link to that in the show notes. 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 the interesting research findings. You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot co. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me by listening to How I Work. If you're keen for more tips on how to work better, connect with me via LinkedIn or Instagram. I'm very easy to find. Just search for Amantha Imba. How I work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the cool And Nation. I'm so grateful for being able to work and live on this beautiful land and i want to pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging. How I Work is produced by Inventium and hosted by me Amantha Imba and a big thank you to Martin Imba who did the audio mix and makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise.