Antonym Four-daze Edition
Five minutes to read. Two hours of faffing with apps to follow.
Dear Reader
This week: what I learned about four-day weeks, some top iPhone apps for focus, battening down the macroeconomic hatches and a blizzard of recommended links.
The dawn of the four-dayer
Things I learned about four-day weeks over the last five days:
The goal is reducing the working hours required to achieve the same or great output. The label “four-day week” has emerged as the convenient shorthand, but the movement, at least The Four Day Week movement championed by the author of the book by the same name, is about 100-80-100: 100% of the pay for 80% of the hours for 100% of the productivity.
Every organisation considering it has the same questions…
What do clients think? How can you provide the right cover for them?
What about people who are already working four days or other part-time?
Every organisation comes up with slightly different answers. The variables seem to be culture, the type of services are products the company provides and the demographics / specific needs of employees.
“The only way to do it is to do it.” (To borrow Amelia Earhart’s axiom.) Start with a trial and find out what the challenges are and try out fixes. It seems that you will have worked out most of the kinks in about two-to-three months.
It helps over-workers come down to a manageable level. One company with a large number of over-workers (they classified as 50-hours+), those individuals brought their hours down to something more like a normal 37.5 working week when they moved to reduced hours.
It’s less about less work and more about less waste and poor management. The only way for this to work is to increase productivity. The assumption is that at least 20% of time is wasted, for instance by unnecessary meetings, poor briefs and delegation, management bottlenecks.
On a personal level, I’m hopeful the four-day week can reduce stress and burnout and lead to a more rounded life. For my organisation and business in general, I think we can force ourselves to understand more about what productivity means. That will be a precious kind of progress.
Why is productivity so hard to pin down. A cynic would point to the concept of bullshit jobs (work that is invented to look busy), but there’s more to it than the “modern life is rubbish” vibe of that argument. Serendipitously, I watched a short TED talk (shared by Caroline Webb, author of How To Have A Good Day, an excellent book on personal productivity) in which Dorie Clark, a leadership consultant, talks about the reasons that we are so busy. To summarise: busy is something we do to ourselves without realising it, because there are some strong incentives:
Busy-ness is a form of status in the modern world. (I noticed I was feeling proud when someone told me I was one of the busiest people they’d met this week, but at the same time I live at the edge of burnout for stretches of time and would dearly love to be calmer).
Looking busy (usually by being busy) is an unconscious response to extreme complexity and ambiguous goals. I may not be sure how to achieve my profitability target for this quarter (something only obliquely in my control) but if I’m intensely busy at least no one can say I didn’t try.
Business distracts us from big, scary questions. In studies that Clark cited, people said they wanted to spend more time on long-term strategic thinking rather than busy-work and meetings. So, why didn’t they? Well, done properly, long-term strategic thinking requires asking very difficult questions of yourself, your organisation, and the world. Unconsciously we’re shying away from that by keeping busy. We’re saying: “Here’s comes a big scary question: look busy!”
TED | Dorie Clark: The Real Reason You Feel So Busy (And What To Do About It)
Quote of the week
I have to pose these questions to the sceptics: Why, after years of advancements in technology and process, would innovation cease now? Does the five-day week, the 9 to 5, the relentless slog through rush hour represent the pinnacle of everyday commercial endeavour? Is there nothing we can do better? – The Four-Day Week, by Andrew Barnes
Preparing for the storm
Mike Lander, a negotiation and procurement consultant, looked at some of the signs of coming economic turbulence for marketing companies in his newsletter this week (not linkable to, but sign up here):
Big (enterprise) organisations are putting the brakes on. It's not that they've stopped spending, they've just slowed down decisions to spend.
Inflation hangs over all of us like a sword of Damocles. Forecasts vary but we're looking at 7%+ by the end of 2022
Input costs are soaring right now. Domestic fuel (e.g. oil, gas, electricity) is up by over 30% in some cases.
Clients want short-term contracts with variable/capped commercial models. In some cases, they're using their terminate-at-will contractual rights to reset the clock and negotiate completely new terms.
It's a candidate led market. Finding and retaining high-quality people with specialist knowledge is extremely challenging, especially in big cities like London.
Mike recommends a pair of articles from marketing agency sector analysts Convivio for advice on preparing for what may be a bit of a shock to the system.
iOS Tools
Clay Shirky said that technology becomes really powerful when it gets boring. VR is fascinating, but not boring enough to be powerful. Yet. QR codes were fascinating 10-15 years ago, and all of the geeks mocked them mightily. Now they are everywhere and boring and saving lives and we use them without thinking.
I’ve tried to spot some digital tools that I use that are so useful I hardly even notice anymore, but that not everyone knows about for my phone, iPad and laptop. Here they are…
Dark Mode
What?: Dark mode is a great little browser extension for iPhones and iPad. Gives you a lot of control over how bright or how distracting websites are in the built in Safari browser.
Dark and Softer Dark: I can't discern much difference between these modes—they both take the edge of the brightness of a screen without making it harder to read.
E-ink will make it look like a kindle. Flat and monotone.
Dark E-ink. As you'd expect.
Dark Curtain applies a black filter which you can adjust.
I’ve found myself leaving my iPad or iPhone browser in E-ink mode. The lack of colour makes it less likely I will be distracted. Below are examples of the same website (the very RED dominated BBC home page as normal, and in Dark Curtain, E-Ink and Dark E-Ink variations.
Drafts
I’ve used this for years and it continues to be the “inbox for my mind”. It’s the only app I have a red dot on my home screen, so that I remember to empty it regularly. Everything else is a potential distraction.
Rather than think about where to write an idea, store a highlight or a link, I just get it down in a Drafts note. In its default setting, Drafts opens with a blank screen, ready for you to write or dictate a note.
It is text only, super-fast at syncing between devices and is very simple but with lots of add-ons or extensions if you want to start creating fancy work-flows. For instance, I have mine format highlights from websites in a certain way ready to paste into a powerful knowledge management system called Roam Research. I also set up shortcuts to quickly send a Drafts note to my Things, a to-do list app, or to Ulysses, the app I use for writing articles. It makes triaging and sorting my inbox really fast. Think of it as a super-powered version of the pocket paper notebook and pen you might carry.
Background Sounds
I did blink, and did miss, the new(ish) feature that gives you background noise built in on iPhone. I’ve used apps for nature sounds and white noise as background for years, either to help focus while working in a public place or to help me drift off to sleep. Having them built in on iOS devices makes it very easy to switch this on without having to open another app. It’s a small thing, but any that reduces the chances of distraction while working is welcome and I find myself using it a couple of times a day. Think of it as a kind of rough-and-ready noise cancellation device.
To try it go the Settings app for the Command Centre add the “Hearing Devices” (Ear) icon to the icons that appear when you swipe down from the right.
Mind-blowing fact of the week
Babylon had a museum of ancient history. Archaeologists have found some of its exhibits including artefacts from the even more ancient city of Ur and cards explaining what the artefacts were. The Babylonians are closer to us in time than they were to some the older cities of Mesopotamia like Ur.
Source: The Rest Is History podcast
This week I have been…
Reading
The List, actually as an audiobook — brilliantly plotted, written and performed. A murder mystery told in the voices of several guests at a posh wedding on a remote Irish island. The tension and the uncertainties build slowly and steadily. Every bit as good as the hype suggests.
The Four-Day Week, by Andrew Barnes. For obvious reasons.
Watching
Apple TV+ is rapidly becoming as reliable as HBO in creating high quality original series. By that I mean, I’m starting watch things on the basis that there is probably something interesting about them.
Physical (Apple TV+). Just started this, which is now in its third season. In the mid-1980s a woman finds a path out of her troubles in the emerging aerobics scene. It’s pacy, funny and weird. A leading character as dark, flawed and compelling as Tony Soprano, and that side-steps so many clichés and tropes.
Roar (Apple TV+). An anthology series in the style of Dark Mirror with a focus on women. The first episode, The Woman Who Disappeared was confusing, intriguing and left you wanting more. As much a provocation as a complete story. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these.
The Northman (Apple TV+). The director of The Witch and The Lighthouse was handed a bigger budget for this and it is a weird, unsettling ride with Vikings from Russia to Iceland.
Thank’ee…
That’s all for this week folks. Hope you enjoyed it, found something useful to read or a tool to try out. Let me know what you think… all feedback very much appreciated.
Antony
P.S. Everything else…
Everything I didn’t get a chance to write about this week but that Ireally wish I could have…
NYTimes: Face Search Engine Anyone Can Use Is Alarmingly Accurate
PimEyes is a paid service that finds photos of a person from across the internet, including some the person may not want exposed. “We’re just a tool provider,” its owner said.
The Times: How Investors’ Love Affair With Tech Darlings Turned Sour
This week, it was Snap’s turn to crackle and pop. Shares in the social media group, which owns the app Snapchat, collapsed by 43 per cent on Tuesday after an abrupt profit warning blamed on wider economic conditions that it said were worsening “further and faster” than expected.
Predictably volatile. Machine-prediction hedge funds are able to predict better as “dead decade” ends:
FT: Quant hedge funds reap windfall during 2022 market ructions | Financial Times
Trend-following hedge funds, which use mathematical models to try to predict market movements, had struggled for years in an era dominated by central bank bond-buying — a stimulus tool that suppressed much of the volatility on which they thrive. But the $337bn industry is now making its biggest gains since the 2008 financial crisis, according to data provider HFR.
[…] “The one underlying theme has been the end of the benign decade we’ve experienced”, added Braga, whose BlueTrend fund is up 26 per cent so far in 2022, its best performance in 14 years. “Now there’s more volatility.”
The cultural tendency to understatement and conservatism in communications is putting German firms at a disadvantage.
FT: German companies struggle to be heard above the noise | Financial Times
Yet this divide is proving to be a problem, and not just for start-ups facing a rockier financing road than Celonis. Germany’s largest and most sclerotic industrial groups — namely, its carmakers — are finding it harder to capture the attention of investors. Volkswagen is the world’s second-largest electric vehicle maker, yet it is worth about €600bn less than leader Tesla, the value of which can spike based on an Elon Musk tweet. Mercedes-Benz posted a record €14bn in profits last year — albeit mostly from selling combustion engine cars — and its share price has hardly moved. The lesson Mercedes took from this, a person close to the company said, was that it had to “make more noise”.