It seems, at least sometimes, that we live in a world where the work that we do is always set by someone else and to their agenda.
Sometimes I'm not entirely sure who this someone else is (perhaps Elon Musk). The work comes in like drinking from a fire hose and we get down and get to work, never really accomplishing a great deal, never feeding our souls or our spirits just getting through a meaningless banal list of things to do.
I realised this a long time ago and one of the main culprits of this direction, of other people's work is a system of emails that has become so cemented into our society that no one can envisage a way around this or out of the trap.
Social media and in particular for me, historically, Facebook messages were another terrible place to find this stuff.
And so, a while ago (2016) I stopped social media because it was always directing me to someone else's work or someone else's urgent.
At the time, several people told me that I was missing the boat and that it would have a detrimental impact on my career.
If that is the case, god knows where my career would be now.
Following on from that, we identified a group of people, a company who were trying to make things better by taking emails out of the equation.
It was when I was going to see Seth speak in London, the only time I've ever seen him and the time I embarrassed myself in front of him.
Immediately before that there was a Slack group set up (and this is back in 2016 or 17). You could join the Slack group and discuss what was coming up in Seth’s lecture (he wasn't on the group) and get into the community spirit.
And so, we dropped into this new thing called Slack, me and Tom and guys from the Academy.
All the colours came out and we could see the future.
Today's Slack directs me and my team every single day.
It guides us and helps us, but it makes us 1000 times more effective and more efficient than we've ever been.
The only email traffic that comes into almost any other inbox is external. Other people's work.
Of course, we need that, but we can schedule time to do it, spending more and more of our time on our own work and the things that make us better.
Understanding the tech stack, understanding how you will use technology moving forwards to give yourself a better life and to make yourself a better business is absolutely fundamental and critical, not just thriving with the way things are today, they're actually just surviving.
Blog Post Number - 3407