312. Remote Work Makes You Lonely, Should You Trust Your Gut or the Data, PLUS workplace surgery with Dr Jake Tuber

20:30Dr. Jake Tuber:What's so hard? Get a job. Doesn't your uncle own an emerald mine somewhere? Just go get a job. And so we push people in that direction. My guess is, I should have looked this up, Al. my guess is we probably have a slightly better ratio of 25 to 1 in terms of dollars spent in general on unemployment benefits versus funds that go into creating job opportunities only because we probably spend so little on unemployment. Right. I do think that relatively speaking, we'd have a better ratio. That's not to say that we do a better job. When we were stuck in Lithuania in covid times, we were told that in Lithuania, they've got a really quite an interesting way of dealing with unemployment you get full pay for about six weeks then you get half pay for about six weeks then you get nothing and the plan is at that point you've got 12 weeks to get your shit together you've got 12 weeks and i know that the economy is slightly different in in the in baltics slightly different um but still it sounds on paper that's a cool idea But then also, we've got to fold in as well, Dr.

21:36J. We've got to fold in the idea that AI now is screening so many CVs that there's stories almost every week or even every day on the BBC saying, I've applied for 600 jobs. I've not even got an interview.

21:50Dr. Jake Tuber:It does seem something like there could be a targeted sort of government interventionalist way to create opportunities for public benefit that would provide somebody with work, that provide some opportunities for labor, that would provide, you know, a sense of accomplishment and dignity for the people in those roles. I mean, I don't know if there's a solution that works from one country to another, because to your point a moment ago about Lithuania, the economic differences are so different, right? If you're in Norway and you have vast oil wealth that you can use to kind of provide the population with a series of resources, it's very different for other places as well.

22:26Dr. Jake Tuber:So I do think there's probably a good amount of differentiation that's needed. But I think the solve for this is actually pretty straightforward, Al. One word, you know, it just comes down to one idea. prison. Okay, hear me out. If you don't have a job for six weeks, you go to jail. All right, that's going to mean, you know, where there's going to be a lot of job openings, prison, you're going to need a lot more prison guards. And so you need to have these young kids in prison or guarding the prison. Either way, they spend time together opportunity for entrepreneurship and innovation. They're in the same space.

22:58Dr. Jake Tuber:They're interacting in person. There's no phones because you can't be on your phone while you're working at the prison. Certainly, you're not even supposed to have a phone while you're in the prison. Gets them out face to face to get a little outdoors time, one hour a day, easy fix, you know? Listen, that's the American solution for youth unemployment is prison. And I think we should be exporting this. Do you know what? All joking aside, we had a guy called Dr. Ryan Sherman. He's part of Hogan. He's part of the— Yeah, sure. I know Ryan. Sure. Right. Of course you do. You know everyone. But we had Ryan on the show very, very early doors, and he was saying that in terms of people in prison and entrepreneurs, there's just one degree tick further to be in prison and a criminal as you are an entrepreneur.

23:39So you're right. There should be some kind of entrepreneurial program in prison.

23:42Dr. Jake Tuber:They have better health benefits than us entrepreneurs do. I'll give you that. It's very true. Yeah, Ryan, his episode was great. I do know Ryan, not exceptionally well. We worked together on a bit of a project. Him and the folks at Hogan helped us out with a study. We put a series of elite athletes through the Hogan to look at a couple of personality dimensions. and I actually shared the copy of my friend's book where the results of the study were written up for folks in the room. So shout out to Ryan for helping us out with that. Good guy. Yeah, really, really nice guy. Will you send me a link to that book and I'll put it in the show notes.

24:12Will do. Okay, right, we've rambled on enough. We should probably take a very short break after the break. We've got our Truth or Lie segment, which is you've done three of these and they've been excellent. So I'm really looking forward to this. Lower the bar, please.

24:24Dr. Jake Tuber:Lower the bar, please. Come on. You may crash and die, in which case I will definitely, definitely take the piss out of you. See you in a second. Welcome back. Welcome back. Dr. Jake is here for the truth or lie. It is that time of the week we take a popular workplace idea and ask if the research actually backs it up. This week's topic, Dr. Jake, well, in fact, Dr. Jake, tell us what this week's topic is. Ah, yes. This week's topic is one of my favorites. Is gut instinct and trusting your intuition better than looking at the data for making decisions? So I'm going to give you the answer and then I'm going to give you a bit of a twist at the end.

25:00Dr. Jake Tuber:So the answer is that when it comes to making decisions, the answer is generally speaking, data and analytical thinking usually outperform gut instinct on important decisions. And there's a lot of good evidence for this. So I went and looked at some of the data, some of the strongest evidence, a seminal research study back in 1954 and several other impressive studies decades later, some of the same researchers there, Dawes et al. in 1989, again, really found that when they put people in situations and tested them against decision-making capabilities, taking a much more analytical, statistical analysis of the situation generally performs trusting your gut.

25:40Dr. Jake Tuber:And this was really looked at heavily about 20, 25 years ago in two major meta-analyses. So Grove et al. in 2000, and I'm going to mispronounce this gentleman's name or this gentlewoman's name terribly, uh, I guess to tear, uh, I guess to tear, I guess to tear. I don't know. I guess I tried so hard. I almost looked it up. I thought it'd be funny if I mispronounced it. That was in 2006. Um, really looking at over half a century of research and really found the same that generally speaking, when you have to make tough decisions, you're much better off at trying to analytically understand the data available rather than trusting your gut.

26:17Dr. Jake Tuber:And it's because as you might expect, Your gut instinct is prone to biases. It's prone to sort of random guesswork and seeing patterns where they really aren't there. It's prone to overconfidence, etc. So everything that we all know about cognitive biases and decision making, that really gets into this notion of our intuition and why it's not good. However, there are circumstances when we ought to defer to our gut instinct. And that's particularly true when someone is a real expert on the topic at hand. So when you really have expertise on a topic, you are more likely to get a good answer than if it's a topic you know nothing about.

26:55Dr. Jake Tuber:And in particular, as some research in 2009 and later in 2010 found, that expertise is best when the environment that someone is in is very regular and predictable and the decision maker is getting quick and high quality feedback. So if you're a real expert on a subject area and you're encountering a situation that's very much like the past and you have real data, you probably want to trust your gut. In these cases, what your gut instinct is, it's really reflecting what I would call tacit, unarticulated knowledge rather than just a cognitive bias guesswork. So I'll give you an example of this.

27:32Dr. Jake Tuber:I'll give you a current real world example. Let's imagine, and I know our listeners will not have any trouble imagining this, that Al, you are the goalkeeper for the British national soccer team here at the World Cup. You are down to the World Cup final. It's a penalty shootout situation. And you have, thanks to your coaching staff and their analytics department, all sorts of analysis about which way the player in front of you is likely to kick the ball. You have done this thousands of times. You know that, you know, pick your favorite, you know, Mbappe, Messi, whomever is likely to go bottom right or top left, depending on, you know, how they played that day and how many shots have been taken so far.

28:13Dr. Jake Tuber:And you have all the data and you could look over to the sidelines and your coaches could sort of, you know, flash you a subtle hand signal that would indicate what the data say. So you don't need to memorize it. But if you're a goalkeeper and you've done this for a living and you've been in a lot of penalty shootouts and you just are processing all sorts of information about what's just happened a few moments ago and how's this person performed over the course of the day and what's been going on recently, there's a good case to be made that this is the kind of situation where if your gut instinct is telling you wait half a beat and then move left as opposed to dive right early because that's what the data say, I am as a coach going to trust your gut instinct.

28:50Dr. Jake Tuber:Now, if it's me in goal, you got to go with the data, right? You got to go with what the numbers say. I just stand to the right and, you know, hope I get hit in the head or something like that. But when you are really an expert facing a situation that's not all that dissimilar than before, you may want to trust your gut in those cases. Interesting. Now, as you were saying that, I was just thinking about Malcolm Gladwell. And he's got an example in one of his books, I can't remember which one it is, where there was, I think it was a painting or a sculpture where all of the data. Oh, they knew it was fake.

29:19Dr. Jake Tuber:Is that the one? Yeah. Yes. Everyone believed it was real or something because all the data said it was real. And then a guy walked in and said, that's fake. And it turned out to be fake. My guess is this is in Blink, just because that is his book that talks about cognitive biases and whatnot. And there's some problems with that book, although I really do like Malcolm's work and generally is a brilliant writer. But yes, there are certainly examples of somebody with real expertise coming across a situation and something they can't quite articulate leads them in a direction that's different than all the publicly available data might say.

29:56Dr. Jake Tuber:There's something buried in there. And this to me is the twist that I think is perhaps most interesting about this question of gut instinct versus data. The twist is that these are not binary. They're often presented as one or the other. But intuition can really be understood as the brain unconsciously integrating past experiences, learned patterns, all sorts of subtle cues. You can imagine something about the movement on the sculpture that this individual is looking at and the example that you're referencing, etc. That they can't quite put their finger on, but there is essentially a reservoir of muddy data.

30:34Dr. Jake Tuber:And their intuition is listening to that as well as other things in the world around them. And it's coming to a conclusion. and analytical reasoning is examining some of that same information just more explicitly and systematically. So rather than operating as two competing systems, the two often work together in a lot of ways. Now, historically, they used to think that, you know, rational analysis and intuition were kind of very different system one and two. The latest neuroscience, and this could get really heavy really quick, so I'll keep it at a practical level for us. We're using some of the same mechanisms in our brain for that decision making.

31:09Dr. Jake Tuber:They're not completely binary different systems, but they often work together, right? So our intuition is going to generate impressions that we have, a hypothesis to test patterns, and then we go and use analytical evidence and data and analysis to evaluate and refine them, right? So this is an interesting finding that, you know, the real debate isn't gut versus data. Your gut is made up of data. It's years of experiences of observations and patterns that your brain has learned without making them fully conscious. And then a more rigorous systematic analysis would allow us to inspect those signals more deliberately.

31:45Dr. Jake Tuber:And the best decisions usually come, especially if you have expertise, from letting intuition generate hypotheses and then utilizing a more rational analytical process to test the evidence around them. So, you know, when you meet someone and you're just like, oof I just don't trust them now at that point how do I differentiate between that is gut gut instinct and I'm going to try and back it up with data over the next few days versus it's just outright I'm being massively biased well I'm the wrong person to ask Al because that was the reaction I had but this is my fourth time here so clearly I haven't been able to make that jump no you're getting into something that's very real right which is to what extent And if you're allowing yourself to be informed by initial impression, and we know how strong first impression bias is, it's quite strong.

32:37Dr. Jake Tuber:It's very hard to disconfirm initial impressions because, in many respects, we then seek out information that's confirmatory. That's confirmation bias. I meet somebody, something about them that just doesn't feel right. I don't usually go through a much more robust process to try to look for disconfirming evidence the way a scientist ought to try to disconfirm an initial hypothesis. I'm much more likely to see the signals that my intuition's right, that I shouldn't really trust this person. I do think that to some extent it really depends. Like, have you come across people before that have sent similar signals to this person?

33:11Dr. Jake Tuber:Or is there something very odd and atypical about them that makes you not trust them, but you can't really pinpoint exactly what that is? So the more similar this is, oh, yes, you know, you know, so-and-so has brought home boyfriends like this before and they always do X, Y, Z. And this is how it turns out. So, yeah, it's a real pattern that you're seeing. Sure. But if that person is just very different and you can't relate it to anything else, that's fair. And also, to what extent are you an expert in judging people? But I think this is really complicated. You know, practically, I I've historically tried to make a point of not listening to my intuition about really large decisions.

33:48Dr. Jake Tuber:And then in the past few years, there are just a few areas of my life where I've come to find that I do think I ought to trust my gut a little bit more. Like I do feel like I've finally honed through enough experiences, enough examined experiences, honed some decision making about whether or not to work with this client or to what to do in this particular situation where I do actually tend to trust my gut. But I'm very clear about not trusting it carte blanche, really not giving it the opportunity to kind of move the mouse around the whole screen. Really just in this particular task, I'm going to trust my gut.

34:24Dr. Jake Tuber:But it takes time. It takes practice. And you've got to be willing to constantly update your priors and refine your thinking. And I suppose because we're all wired for survival, then our gut instinct is probably going to skew much more towards if there's any kind of possible risk, let's avoid it. Or have we evolved past that? I don't know why I would say we've evolved past that or with it. I do think that certainly our survival instinct is pretty primed, right? We need to survive before we can thrive. And so, yes, if there's something risky, it's going to be hard to pay attention to that. But you can also, listen, it really does differ.

35:01Dr. Jake Tuber:There are some people who we know of that are too trusting, right? They find themselves ingratiated to people too quickly. So I don't think it's completely universal, but I would agree we're probably more likely to have a negative instinct about somebody than a purely positive one insofar as you're going to have that, you know, hair on the back of your neck reaction to somebody. I do think that that's, you know, ingrained in our DNA and for good evolutionary reasons for the most part. So our summary seems to be that it's if you if you are particularly skilled or something, if you are the England goalie, then it's OK to rely more on that, more on your gut instinct.

35:41But you should probably be. Remind me again. What are we learning from this, Dr. Jake? I'm confused.

35:46Dr. Jake Tuber:If you have real expertise, it's safer to trust your gut, especially if the situation you're encountering is similar to situations that you've encountered in the past. But ideally, you're still supplementing that gut instinct with good data. And you're not confusing having expertise in one area for being just a generally smart and wise person and therefore able to use your intuition across the board. So in general, try to defer to good data unless you really have a lot of expertise in an area, in which case your gut is a better indicator. And you should still look for disconfirming evidence to make sure you're not trapping yourself.

36:22Right. So we're on to our world famous weekly workplace surgery. We're up to your questions, not to Leanne, but to Dr. Jake Tuba. My favorite American, I think I'm going to say that. Well, today's. Yeah, for today.

36:33Dr. Jake Tuber:What about me, Al? You don't forget about your favorite American? what did i do what did i do right oh no all right so we're gonna go into our three questions first question is about a star player who's turned into the biggest headache so this person writes i run a small company and for two years one of my guys was genuinely brilliant then something shifted there were missed deadlines she pushed back on everything and last week she told me that my feedback wasn't worth listening to. Wow. When I raised it, she said she's been carrying the team for years and I should be grateful. Part of me wonders if she's right.

37:11Okay. But her attitude is starting to affect everyone else. Do I owe her patience or have I already been? Do you know what, Dr. J, there's a lot to unpack here. What's your gut instinct on this?

37:23Dr. Jake Tuber:Oh, well, my gut instinct honed by years of expertise on the subject, Al. So I'm very qualified to weigh in on this particular case. When she says, do I owe her more patience? If the question is, do I sack them right now, to use a British term, the answer is probably no. You owe them another conversation or two. And I think it's really about being forward looking in that case, which is to say, you may be right that you've been carrying the team. How do you think you're carrying them now? How do you think that our interaction right now is helping the team going forward? That's a bit confrontational.

37:55Dr. Jake Tuber:I might not put it exactly that way. But I would really look and say, You may be absolutely right in the past, but right now, missing deadlines, pushing back on everything is jeopardizing all the hard work she's put in to get the team here. So that's kind of where I would start the conversation, I think. But it does sound, you know, annoyingly insubordinate and seriously worth dealing with. I don't think it's just either you fire her or you'd agree to let things go status quo. I think a conversation is warranted. What about you, Al? Where are your thoughts here? I'm thinking of the US office, which actually was better than the UK one, and Stanley, where he exploded one day and said, did I stutter?

38:33And that was genuinely, I think, shocking to everyone because he had pushed the boundaries as much as he possibly could, but that was the point where I think everyone in that room, I know they're all characters and they're made up, I know this Dr. Jake, but it was very well acted that they've gone over the line there. And all of this sounds to me like it's gone over the line. However, there's Leanne's voice back ahead just shouting or whispering the words sexually to me in my ear, toxic superstar. Is that what this is?

38:59Dr. Jake Tuber:Toxic superstar, toxic superstar. It's not as sexy as when she does it. It really isn't. No, it's not. But is that the similar thing or have I got the wrong idea? It could be. There's a wonderful Harvard Business Review case study from years ago that I still occasionally use. I believe it's called The Unmanageable Star Performer or something like this. And it really is a case where somebody is out running an off-site office at a location and the person goes out to visit that office and everybody there is feeling that they've been pushed too hard by this person, they're not being listened to, but this person is a real star.

39:33Dr. Jake Tuber:And sort of the case that the students have to deal with is, what do I do about this situation? I do think there's a bit of toxic star performer syndrome here, potentially. But I don't think the answer is just to look at this person as the challenge. Like, let's look at what's going on with the kind of direction we're giving them. Why is it they keep missing deadlines? Is there something we should be doing? Is there something a team should be doing? So I certainly do want to consider that. But I also think that the smart way to consider that is to look a bit systemically first before we just look at this person as the source of the problem.

40:06Dr. Jake Tuber:They may be more of a symptom of larger organizational challenges than the cause or certainly part of the cause, but not the entirety of it. That's kind of where my mind goes here. I think you've just given some really, really good advice there to just chill out a second. Don't go in there with your ego and go, how dare you talk to me like this? But also don't lie down and go, oh, my God, they've been so great. Because as you said, there was a line you said in there I really liked saying you may well have carried the team, but how do you feel like you're carrying? What was it you exactly said?

40:34Yeah.

40:34Dr. Jake Tuber:How is this helping them now? You know, another way to approach this conversation would be to go with them with genuine curiosity, but ideally framing it in an honestly self-critical way, which is to ask them, how come you feel as though you've been carrying the team for years and didn't voice it? What could I have done to make sure you voiced that you felt like you were doing more than was required or weren't doing enough? I hate the thought that I've been putting you in this position, sort of come in hat in hand, not in an accusatory way. Why do you think this is the case? But how come you haven't had a chance to tell me about it?

41:05Dr. Jake Tuber:What have I done that's prevented you from being able to speak up so that right now this is how you speak out. That would be an interesting way to approach this because, again, it's putting the onus on you as the leader, as the manager in this case, to say, am I creating the circumstances for your success enough? And if I haven't been, let's figure out where I went wrong years ago so I don't keep making the same mistake for you going forward. Fabulous. Okay, so question number two is about returning to work and the struggles of returning to work. So this person writes, Hi, Al Leanne, and I'm going to add Dr.

41:36Jake because I didn't know you were going to be on. I found that every time I take a few days off, I come back feeling like I've forgotten how to function. The first day back is a write-off and honestly, the second one is too. What's strange is I actually enjoy my job. So why does re-entry feel so difficult? I've tried to leave myself notes before I go, keeping my phone off on the last day of holiday, even easing back on a Thursday so the week feels shorter, but nothing really sticks. Is Dr. Jake, is this their problem? Is Is it a universal thing? I know when I come back from like two weeks away, like at Christmas, I come back three weeks away, sit down to podcast and I'm like, I've got a keyboard in front of me.

42:13I don't know what any of these buttons do. I have no idea what I'm doing.

42:18Dr. Jake Tuber:Yeah, Al, I mean, one word here, prison. That's really the answer to this situation. You stopped saying stuff when I got a mouthful of water.

42:30Dr. Jake Tuber:I don't think this is them, but I don't think that this is universal. It's just a bit of an adjustment period. You know, it's a task switching. It's an environmental switching. You've got to kind of re-immerse yourself in the work. I don't think it's a terribly big deal. I would say if you know what's going to happen, create circumstances that minimize its negative impact. So make sure you're not scheduling things right when you get back, as they seem to be doing, that are truly, truly essential or really high value or high risk tasks. Give yourself a bit of a buffer if that's what it takes. I love the fact that they are doing things like leaving themselves notes before they go.

43:07Dr. Jake Tuber:Some people refer to this as the Hemingway effect, this notion of figuring out where you're going to get started when you come back from a break. I think that is one of the best pieces of advice that anyone who ever asked me about being productive is I go to in terms of sort of leaving yourself very specific notes about where you would continue onward had you had the opportunity to keep going so that coming back from a break doesn't feel like you're starting from zero, but you can jump back in as if you were just going to be able to get started. just taking a quick run to the restroom of the loo, as some might call it.

43:37Dr. Jake Tuber:So I think they're using good strategies here. I wouldn't stress about it. Honestly, this is a pretty common phenomenon. And yeah, just make sure you're not setting yourself up to have to do something really consequential when you get back, whether that's a Thursday or a Tuesday. I don't think it makes much difference. Yeah, I think I agree with you. And by the way, my Hemingway method is the whole write drunk, edit sober. So very different ideas we're taking from the man. assuming it's the same Hemingway, is it? You know, I guess there's no way to know, right? Maybe there are multiple Hemingways.

44:07Dr. Jake Tuber:That's a good point. We often quote people assuming that, like, we're just talking about the same Einstein. You could be talking about Jeff Einstein, right? Different guy, right? And he was Austrian, wasn't he? Probably. He's the only Austrian soccer fan, actually.

44:24To be fair, he was very relative. Okay.

44:30I think you're right. I think the main message, like there's lots of practical stuff you just said there and the Hemingway method I'd never heard of, but I think the main thing, the message I'm getting from you is don't be so hard on yourself. Just say, if this is always going to happen, then don't let it happen, but don't be surprised if it does and don't go stressy when it does. Is that what we're saying?

44:51Dr. Jake Tuber:Yeah, and if it happens again, prison.

44:58I'm wondering about the title of this. should just be something like why every answer, why every answer to a question is prison.

45:04Dr. Jake Tuber:Honestly, that's the American education system. So be careful what you wish for, Hal. That does seem to be the answer to a lot of questions here in the U.S. Hey, how do you think we can set these people up to be successful if they haven't had a lot of great opportunities for prison? What about prison? I don't know. We could send them to prison. What if the prison, let me tell you this, what if the prison was across state lines? That might set them up even better. That's basically how we do things here in the U.S. So it's either college or prison. That's the pipeline to success. That or training yourself on Claude.

45:34Dr. Jake Tuber:Those are the three options we have. Okay, so question number three, as you requested. Hi, Alan Leanne. I run a, and Dr. Jake, I run a small consultancy, fully flexible, no core hours. As long as the work gets done, I don't care when people do it. Good for you. But I keep noticing my team sending emails at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. and responding to messages instantly on weekends it feels very performative and almost like they're trying to provide trying to be always on version that i've never actually asked for so i've told them people i don't want this so why are they doing it dr jake this is a this let's get to the bottom of this mystery so they say they don't care when the work gets done as long as it gets done i gotta be honest with you al it kind of sounds like they care when the work gets done It kind of sounds like they're not really sure about when the work is getting done.

46:30Dr. Jake Tuber:It's just interesting because normally people say that and then they sort of expect them to work at odd hours. And this person's saying, I don't want them working at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m., even if that's when they want to get the work done. So is this part of it, because we don't know the full situation, but this could be what you're suggesting or alluding to is that they might be just saying that to everyone, thinking, oh, well, that's what I should be doing. or they're saying it genuinely meaning it, but they're actually not living it and they're just the ones sending messages at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning.

47:00Or is there another, is there a third possibility?

47:02Dr. Jake Tuber:I think they probably don't realize that they do care when people are getting work done. And it's just off-putting to them that they don't want to feel, if I had to take a guess, they don't want to feel like somebody who is driving people to work at really tough, difficult hours, right? They don't want to think of themselves as somebody who's running a small consultancy where people are working at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. and sending messages on weekends because they don't like thinking of themselves that way. But listen, if you are truly telling them you don't expect it, then one of two things is happening.

47:35Dr. Jake Tuber:Either they are not getting that message and they think you are just saying that, but you really do expect it, in which case we've got a whole other can of worms. Or you are committing to this idea that you don't care and you do care and you really do care. And they actually want to work at those hours and you've got to find a way to adjust. So this is either about personal adjustment that needs to get made or it's possible that whatever you're doing that seems to be signaling to them that you don't expect it is not getting through. And that would be a bit more concerning because that's a bit of a harder fix than just, hey, give it up.

48:10Dr. Jake Tuber:That's when they want to work. Let's look at this from the other side of the coin. And like this person says they're very worried about it, but maybe this is fine. Maybe everything's fine and you just crack on. I was kind of wondering that, Al. Like, is there really a problem here that needs to be solved for? I mean, if truly, truly you're saying, guys, I don't expect it, and they believe you, and they're working those hours, then this is an internal problem for this person. This person needs to get over the fact that this is when these people do, in fact, want to get their work done. And if everything's going fine, if they're engaged, if they're performing well, I don't see what the issue is.

48:45Dr. Jake Tuber:I suspect that there's more underneath the hood though here Al I suspect that there's something else going on it must be the case that they are not really convincing their team that they don't have to work those hours because otherwise if this is really when they want to work what's the problem I think you're right and I think there may be this there's an element of them going I don't want to be seen as a bad boss so I'm gonna say oh well no I tell everyone to go home at five o 'clock When actual fact, that's just what they're saying. I don't know. It also begs the question, right? Is this person working those hours?

49:20Dr. Jake Tuber:Because oftentimes your team is going to wind up working in similar hours to you. If you really don't want them working those hours, make sure you're delay sending your messages and making sure that you're not doing the performative thing of showing them how committed you are as well. There's a real incentive for them to kind of match your hours, be available when you were available to at least show that you that they are as committed as they say they are. So I would say, first and foremost, make sure that first thing I would do is make sure you're not working those hours, even if that is when you want to get the work done.

49:50Dr. Jake Tuber:That would be the sort of first fix here to make sure that they're not doing it as well. But beyond that, yeah, I think some of this is about how they want to be seen by the others, maybe even how they want to be seen by themselves. Maybe they really don't want to think of themselves as a boss that has people working for them at those hours when either that is when folks want to do it or that is when the work requires it. And they have to solve for that dissonance between who they think of themselves as and who others see them as. That's a real possibility. Yeah. And I suppose one other possibility is there might be someone on the team who's like a type A personality and they're the ones who send emails at 7 a.m.

50:27and 9 p.m. and everyone's just trying to keep up with them and they don't even think about the boss at all.

50:32Dr. Jake Tuber:That's a possibility, too. It could be deferring to someone else, other leadership within the organization that's not yourself. And there are more drastic steps that you could take. I mean, we actually spoke about a version of this, I think, on a previous episode, Al, but, you know, use policy here, right? Like turn the damn email off, turn the slack off, make it not allowed if you really don't want people working those hours or demand that people use tools like delay send and other things so that they don't intrude on others' consciousness. Because I know, certainly, I'm the kind of person where if I get an email over the weekend, And I just my mind is almost certainly going to respond right away.

51:05Dr. Jake Tuber:Like, that's just how I'm wired. If somebody emails me, I'm going to respond as soon as I see it, provided I feel like I can get them a decent enough answer. I don't just wait and batch it all for later. And I think I can self-manage through it. But I also don't necessarily have a boss looking over my shoulder demanding it in a way that's a bit different. No matter how autonomous someone is, it's just a bit different for folks like you and me, Al, because we have a little bit more autonomy and say over that. But that's something I love about running the small consultancy here. But it's also something that I have to be very mindful of is not the case for anyone else.

51:38Dr. Jake Tuber:As much as their boss might say, you don't have to do this, you don't have to do this. To the extent that they are really sticking to their word and walking the talk is very different in a lot of real cases. And not everyone has the flexibility to actually take them up on what they say is the case when it comes to work outside of normal hours. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And there's always going to be some outliers. again Michael Gladwell some outliers who just love work so much. Okay I think we've reached the tipping point of your Gladwell references here. Oh very nice, very nice. I can't think of any more books.

52:10Right so talking of, talking of people who are obsessed with working because they just love it, there is a comedian from the UK, I'm pretty sure you've heard of him called Jimmy Carr very specific. I've been to see him twice at his gig well I tracked down his ex-manager from 25 years ago. His name was Mike Harle. He's living in the Czech Republic right now. And this is the actual guy who told Jimmy to quit his corporate job and pursue comedy. So if you hate Jimmy Carr, then this is the guy he needs to talk to. Something obviously seems to have worked out very, very well for Jimmy. So join us on Thursday as we learn about young Jimmy.

52:50We're going to hear all Mike's management stories from working at Shell UK and exactly what happened in that moment when he told Jimmy to quit. Dr. Jake, if people want to hear more about you, where do they find you?

53:02Dr. Jake Tuber:Oh, you can find me anywhere that the internet works. Find me on LinkedIn. Find me at substack, www.workwise.substack.com. Please join me there. And yeah, that's probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Appreciate those who do. Definitely. And if you do sign up, you come for the newsletter, you stay for what I only just noticed last week, your little tagline at the beginning of each newsletter, which I thought was very, very typically you and very clever. So very funny. So thank you, Dr. Jake. Genuinely, thank you for your time. All joking aside, it genuinely is a pleasure. And I'll probably just delete this bit from the interview because I don't want it to go to your head.

53:39Thank you so much.

53:40Dr. Jake Tuber:Yes, Jake, it's been such a pleasure to have you here, Jake. You were so wonderful. We'll see you soon. All right, bye, guys. She'll be so angry. Bye-bye.

53:56Thank you.