Greg McKeown:
Welcome everybody. Before we get to the podcast itself, a reminder to sign up for the 1-Minute Wednesday newsletter. You’ll be joining more than 175,000 people. You can sign up for it by just going to gregmckeown.com/1mw. And every week, you will get 1 minute or something close to it of the best thinking to be able to help you design a life that really matters and to make that as effortless and easy as possible. So go to gregmckeown.com/1mw.
Welcome back, everybody. I’m your host, Greg McKeown. And, of course, on this podcast, we are interested in how to live and lead as essentialists, to be able to apply that in every possible way. And today, we have a most interesting guest, doctor Mithu Storoni, who’s a University of Cambridge-trained physician, neuroscience researcher, and ophthalmic surgeon, that’s an eye surgeon for the rest of us. She advises multinational corporations on mental performance and stress management. She’s the author of the forthcoming book Hyperefficient. That’s an interesting idea, hyperefficient. It caught my attention in a few different ways. The subtitle is Optimize your brain to transform the way you work.
Methu, it’s such a pleasure to have you.
Mithu Storoni:
Thank you for having me.
Greg McKeown:
Can you define for us what efficiency means now? In some ways, it gets a bad name from my point of view, and so I’m really curious to get into that. Has its definition changed since the 1970s, for example?
Mithu Storoni:
So efficiency now means producing as much as you can of a quantity, whether that quantity is work hours, or whether that quantity is number of meetings or a certain target. Hyperefficiency, which is the title of my book, suggests a radically different angle where efficiency is not about quantity but about quality. So, not how many ideas you’re producing, not how many meetings you’re going to, or how many hours you’re putting in, but how many workable, sellable, qualitatively excellent ideas, solutions, or innovations are coming out of that process.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so I like that change in definition. Why does the definition change from the seventies to now? I mean, are you just not talking about quality outcomes and just calling it efficiency?
Mithu Storoni:
I think the definition needs to change for the following reason. If we go back a little further than 1970. So if you go back actually as far back as the Industrial Revolution era, the era of Taylorism and Fordism, back then was all about how many cars are you producing, how many parts are you assembling per unit time on an assembly line, on a moving conveyor belt? And that worked extremely well. Productivity boomed. Industry boomed. Two world wars later, we shifted to a larger sector of knowledge work. And because the knowledge work sector was larger, the transition happened quite quickly. But even though the work was different, we continued working in the same way, using the same measures of productivity as we did when we were working on assembly lines.
Now, for, I’d say, a good part of the last century, this more or less worked, because the majority of knowledge work was clerical, which meant your work, could indeed be measured by the number of reports you’re producing, the number of letters being written, the number of meetings being handled.
And also this knowledge work really set the basis for quantitative output. However, we now are going through a new revolution within the knowledge age, which is the revolution of AI assistance and automation. This revolution is different because what this is doing is the quantitative aspect of work is being taken over by technology and machines, leaving humans to do the higher cognitive level aspects of work.
And we see this. We see data on this. McKinsey and others have published data on this, that knowledge work jobs, which involve higher cognitive processing, are less affected and will be less affected by automation and AI than other kinds of work, which means that both for relevance and for competitiveness and for productivity in general, the bottleneck now arises at the level of work quality. And so in order to overcome that bottleneck and continue and even really boost productivity with AI assistance, we need to shift to a different method of measuring how we work. And this method should involve the quality of things that we’re doing because when it comes to quantity, machines will be doing things and are doing things faster and better at larger volumes.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, so let’s dig into this a little bit. I’m with you. I sync with you completely in the massive transformation that took place in the industrial age, 50 times increase in productivity. And Drucker famously says, “Well, the industrial age increased worker productivity by 50 times. The challenge of the knowledge age will be, can we get the knowledge worker to increase productivity by 50 times?”
And so far, that hasn’t happened. Now, you’re saying that the industrial age model of efficiency was fine in the first wave of the knowledge era because everything was more clerical. And I don’t know if I agree with you about that. So I want you to talk to me about that. Why? Why is that true? Because it seems to me that as soon as you’re not dealing with physical things, as soon as you’re dealing with humans, you need to be talking about quality output. And in fact, the second wave of the industrial age was the quality movement. Right? That totally transformed Japan’s economy into the second largest economy in the world for many years. So even in the factory system, quality became the measurement, not just traditional efficiency. And I just can’t see why, over the last 30 years, knowledge work shouldn’t have been about quality versus quantity of output. I’m not sure I understand why you think that.
Mithu Storoni:
So I think that because, first of all, we’re talking about proportions. So, I’m not saying that there is an absolute absence of quality, nor am I saying there’s an absolute absence of quantity in either of these two phases. But what I mean by quantity is that at the start of the knowledge age, when we didn’t have computer assistance, the way we have had for the last 20 years or so, when we didn’t have digital assistance, when the ease of communication wasn’t quite as easy, a large portion of cleric of knowledge work was clerical.
Now that is changing, because the very gradual, and I’m not talking about it happening overnight, it has already been gradually happening. Automation, improved communication, the speed of information transfer, the price of information transfer have all been progressively improving, which means that email, for instance, writing letters and reports, these would have been done by a large clerical pool about 40, 50 years ago.
So you think where we disagree, or where you perhaps don’t understand. What I’m trying to say is that. I’m not saying that this is all suddenly happening, but immediately after the Second World War, there was no real transition in measuring quality because a very large portion of knowledge workers performed clerical work, performing the communication byways. Avenues that are now have since become automated.
So you’re quite right in that the quality of work is progressively getting more, has grown more and more important in this within an office, within a knowledge workspace. But now, with automation and AI, it’s no longer something; it’s no longer negotiable. Quality will become the all-important.
Greg McKeown:
Okay, I’m going to try and restate what you’ve said because what you’re saying is that maybe we misunderstand each other, and I’m not sure that’s what it is, but I’m going to just try and see if I’m getting it. What you’re saying is, look, of course, quality and quantity have mattered from the seventies until, you know, until a couple of years ago, when AI has hit a certain tipping point. Of course, both mattered.
But now, with AI, it is the last nail in the coffin of the old way of thinking about efficiency. Because so much can be produced so effortlessly, quantity it’s becoming an irrelevant point. You can produce so much so quickly that that’s not a differentiator at all. Now, is that what you’re saying?
Mithu Storoni:
I think you said it really well. And to your point, quality control is a facet of automation. But just to really illustrate the point, quality control means you are maintaining the same level of quality. It doesn’t mean that the human brain is allowed to work with flair or that it’s required to rise above the level that has now become a requirement because that is where the new bottleneck of output, of mental output, of knowledge, work output, lies because intangible products are now increasingly dominating the industrial landscape.
Greg McKeown:
The only hiccup I have, even though I think the main argument I’m completely in support of, I’m just not convinced that the last 50 years haven’t needed the same thing. In fact, not only haven’t needed the same thing, but the same dynamic has still been at play. That the companies that have become most valuable over that 50-year period have been the companies that have been able to extract higher quality thinking from individuals and from teams.
And so I’m willing to go with the idea that AI ups the ante and makes this difference even more clear. But I just think the industrial age mindset of efficiency is so unhelpful when it comes to humans trying to be creative, trying to be innovative, trying to see things in different ways. You know, I sort of imagine, and not just imagine, we have a fairly good record now of Jony Ive, and Steve Jobs sitting together every lunch, almost every day for certainly for ten years, exploring ideas, exploring. Could it be this? Could it be that? What about that? That’s an idea. What about this? This could be crazy. But that endless conversation, all for the occasional moment of genius, that suddenly an idea. Johnny said, take the oxygen out of the room. They were looking at a thousand ideas in order to try to find the one that they said, oh, this is a game changer.
So let’s just move forward because we would hate to be completely taken up on this difference in the past when we’re agreed on the way of thinking going forward.
There’s something that you wrote in your book in Hyperefficient, and I’d like you to unpack it with the story that you share around it if you don’t mind it. The phrase was this peculiar dismembering of reality, and I thought that was such a delightful turn of phrase, but I also thought that the story around it was helpful and illustrative of the challenge of our times. Can you speak to that, please?
Mithu Storoni:
Yes. So I believe you’re talking about how technology has distorted our relationship with space and time. The context of that is really has a direct impact on how we work.
Greg McKeown:
And it also, just to interrupt, irritatingly, you shared the story of the residents of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and they shuddered in terror.
Mithu Storoni:
Krakatoa right. So, the story.
Greg McKeown: Tell us about that.
Mithu Storoni:
Yes, the story I refer to is how we do now complain about email, about communication and so on. And if you really look around at how we are living and how we exist and how we communicate, and compare that with how things used to be actually, not so long ago, you’ll see how our relationship with space and time has changed so much, because, and I illustrate this with a story that when the telegraph first came to the United States, shortly afterward, there was a huge explosion of the volcano Krakatoa on the island of Java in Indonesia.
Now, normally, if the volcano Krakatoa explodes, the people who’d be most terrified are the people living on Java, and indeed, if it’s very, very loud, perhaps some of the neighboring islands. Now, for the first time in history, in Milwaukee, the people of Milwaukee felt as terrified by the explosion of this volcano in Java, Indonesia, as the Indonesians themselves, even though the event was taking place hundreds and thousands of miles away. And the sound of this loudest sound on earth was not perceptible at all. And this really shows, was a great demonstration of how people there reacted as if the volcano had just exploded in their own backyard, simply because of this extraordinary kind of dissociation between space and time created by the telegraph. And it’s really an example of how space and time have been distorted progressively through technology, as Marshall McLuhan is one of the many writers I quote, as he talks about quite extensively.
But as others have pointed out also, I mean, a very long time ago, in all kinds of old cultures, distances used to be measured by feet. And we still use that terminology 10ft away, 20ft away, because you moved to sense, to get a sense of distance. And, of course, the wheel changed all that. But following the wheel, every single revolution in technology has changed that relationship to the point where today, of course, we are taking our cell phones into our beds.
So this volcano in Krakatoa isn’t just exploding in your backyard, in your head; it’s actually exploding on your pillow next to you. And you can hear it, and you can watch it while it explodes, even though it’s hundreds and thousands of miles away. This is very odd because we have not evolved with this peculiar sense of dissociation. And it’s something we’re having to get used to very quickly.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah, we’re not built for this. You wrote it really beautifully. I want to read it exactly as you wrote it, “Thereby shattering the immutability of space and time as the scaffold of existence. Human beings could now hop into a reality thousands of miles away without needing hours or even weeks to arrive. Or as Marshall McCollum put it, today it is too easy to have dinner in New York, in indigestion in Paris.”
This phrase that you wrote, “this peculiar dismembering of reality,” this is nontrivial because we talk a lot about overload, and you write about this in Hyperfficient, and that’s a sensation we know and experience. But I don’t think it does justice for what really is the biggest disruption, and that is to feel disoriented. I mean, as soon as you had a library, you had information overload. In one sense, too much information, can’t learn it all.
As soon as you have a to-do list that’s too long for you to do, then you’re overloaded. It’s something beyond that that people are experiencing and trying to make sense of. And I think at least part of it is a blitzing disorientation. When you, as you’ve identified here, remove space and time from trying to make sense of your world, how do you make sense of a world that has no space, no time, no separation between your own experience and everybody else’s?
So one terrible thing that happens now gets viewed by many, many millions of people that didn’t see it but feel like they did see it, feel like they’ve been a part of it, even though they are in no direct threat from it, and so on. So, I don’t know quite how we’ll connect the dots here, but I wonder if there’s more that you’d like to say about this. Do you agree? Do you see it the way that I’m describing?
How have I got it wrong?
Mithu Storoni:
No, you’ve got it exactly right. That’s exactly what I tried to convey and just elaborate on that. Your sense of an event taking place is incredibly tightly woven into how soon after the event you become aware of it. And you can imagine how evolutionary we are wired to have this kind of perception, where if we know an event has just taken place, we feel it must have taken place in our immediate proximity, and hence we are directly affected by it, and hence we need to react in some way.
Greg McKeown:
In addition, we have development that what is physically closest to us, literally something that’s within our actual arm space, gets the best attention because it’s the thing that is of greatest threat. If an arrow’s coming at you, it doesn’t matter so much if it’s 100 yards away, but if it’s within a meter, okay, then you’re going to die. And so, same with a bear chasing you, right? Like what’s immediately there gets has helped us. Prioritizing what is most immediately in our vicinity has helped to protect us.
When you put the phone, and of course, whatever the phone is, it’s not a phone. Put this disorientating machine in one’s hand and to make us believe that everything awful and shocking that’s happening in the world is actually happening to us in this moment, in this location. I mean, that’s a recipe for what? Give us a word for it.
Mithu Storoni:
It’s a recipe for hype, for feeling that every event taking place is happening in your own backyard or even in your own home. In your face. In your face. And I’d add another angle to it, which is that this also has an angle of social responsibility and relatability, in the sense that if something is happening in your home or just next to you in your immediate vicinity, you think it’s happening to a neighbor or to going back to a fellow tribesperson, which means that an event happening very far away to someone completely unknown to you feels incredibly familiar, and you feel you have a stake in it and you feel involved in it.
Not only does it feel more threatening because it’s near you, but you also feel you have a personal stake. And so that also grabs at your attention. And you’re absolutely right. This is an enormous, underappreciated aspect. Angle of cognitive overload. But just to flip it on its side a little bit, one of the ways in which our attention is being captured for profit at the other end is by making us feel that these events are happening to us personally because if we did not feel that way, we would not pay attention.
I do not think that this is in any way a separate aspect. I think it’s entangled in the original thing that you’re not going to care, to listen, to react, to give your attention to something if you don’t feel personally involved. Marshall McLuhan described it as a global village. He described how everyone is going to be concerned by the very same things, regardless of whom it affects or does not affect.
And I think that’s really what we’re experiencing at the moment.
Greg McKeown:
Marshall McLuhan is most famous for the phrase, “The medium is the message.” And how that’s generally interpreted is that the medium of communication that you use, whether you’re using newspaper or whether you’re using television, radio, of course we could update that. Now, whether you’re using email or texting affects the way that your message is communicated and the way that it’s interpreted. And everybody knows that that’s true. Everybody knows that if you say something in person to somebody that’s different than how it will sound and be absorbed through a text and so on. So that’s been the popular idea.
But I don’t think that’s even what he meant. It’s certainly not the primary thing that he meant, which is far bigger than that. What he was arguing is that the medium you use changes you. So it’s not just that the message you’re trying to send through that medium will be distorted, but it will change the very actors in the medium, the person who’s actually sending the message before they send the message, the medium will so act upon them that it changes the way they think about themselves, change the way that they think.
And so it’s a much larger point. He’s making a really dramatic point, actually, and one that is a shame. We have under understood; I don’t want to say misunderstood because it’s different than that. It’s just not having understood.
Mithu Storoni:
It’s under-recognized for sure.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. And so as radio takes place, as the telegraph takes place, the way we thought about ourselves as humans changed, but it’s so invisible to us, we’re not really aware of it. We think we’re using the telegraph, we think we’re using email, but the technology is using us too. It’s changing us too. And that’s a very strange, a little suffocating to say that out loud, at least to me, because I think about the social media and the era that we’re in, and I think, well, I have this sense, this awful sense that I, and we are being really used through some of the worst possible influences, you know, through contention and hate. And you think that you’re seeing the world as it is, but we’re really being massively manipulated through the process. Your reaction.
Mithu Storoni:
I love that you’ve picked up on this deeper angle of his work. And he also goes on to say that we are like fish in a goldfish bowl in water. So, if you are in the medium, you can’t see the effect of the medium on you unless you actually step outside. So you can’t see this. The fish don’t even know that they wouldn’t survive without it. And I think it’s a very, very important, very powerful and message in there beyond the medium being the message.
You’re quite right in the sense that I love how he has explored how this instantaneous ability to communicate, this instant message communication, and the evolution of technology from when we couldn’t read through the Gutenberg press, then through radio, then through television, has actually sort of brought us together and split us apart, because he points out how when we couldn’t read, we would have shared environments inside the home and we would leave to get privacy, whereas when we started reading, we came home to get privacy in our individual Gutenberg books.
But everyone heard the same story. So it was a sort of a group shared information communication, and it was.
Greg McKeown:
All personalized, and it became personalized to that exact audience. You knew exactly who you were sharing it within that moment. So if there was a reaction in the group, oh, that’s offended that person, or, oh, that’s. That scared that person more than I meant to; you can adjust your messaging to the relationship that you’re experiencing in real-time. One of the original, I think it was, I think it was Socrates, but Socrates, Plato believed that written communication was akin to prostitution because you didn’t know who would be absorbing the information and where they were in their world, so you couldn’t curate the message to that person in this moment, which is a really big thing to say, especially when we’ve lived in the world we live in, where, of course, we’re way, way beyond that time. Please go ahead.
Mithu Storoni:
We are going through a very peculiar time drawing on to both of these themes of this idea of the message going out blindly to you don’t know whom. And this idea of individual worlds versus a world of the whole village, when you’re listening to stories, is that at the moment, on the one hand, we have these massive blast radii of emails, of messages, of information, communication within an organization, within the wider world. We don’t know what the blast radius is, but at the same time, it does strike me that as information becomes faster and faster, we almost start reverting back to what he describes as the tendency to use pattern recognition because the world is becoming much more simultaneous.
So the world is sort of forced into listening to the same, into getting information it doesn’t want. So we’re all getting the same information eventually, because information is being shared out with such a huge blast radius at faster and faster speeds. And so there is this real distortion in terms of whom are you sending a message to? What level of privacy do you have in terms of allowing that message to be received by you? So, you’re forced into listening to this global conversation or story on the one hand, but on the other hand, you have this extensive blast radius, so you don’t know who else is going to get your message. So there’s a jumble at both ends.
Greg McKeown:
For everybody listening. What is one thing that stood out to you? What’s the news of this episode? And now, what can you do about it immediately, within the next few minutes, a tiny action to be able to as much just make things your life a little bit better? Thank you for listening.
