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I shared last Friday my conversation with Steven Kotler, the author and neuroscientist, whose work I first became interested in through his book “The Art of Impossible” about the science behind peak performance. Some readers asked for his full thoughts, so here’s his advice for leaders managing in this new era or AI, and on maximizing performance and prioritizing.
1️⃣ The first thing is you've got to make a list.
You should do this on any day. Figure out how many things you can be great at in a day. Prioritize the order of your process. Start with your hardest task and work backward. Most leaders don't have a clue about how many things they can do in a day before their skills start to erode.
2️⃣ When you approach a task, complete concentration matters.
First of all, practice distraction management. Turn your damn cell phone off. Cell phones were modelled after slot machines, the single most addictive and distractive technology on Earth. That's what your cellphone is designed to be.
3️⃣ Communication batching is a good idea.
Emails and messages get responded to early in the morning and at the end of the day. That's it.
4️⃣ Focus on the task and not the ego.
If you're interested in flow, focus requires task attention, not ego attention. Focus on the task, not how it’ll impress your boss or your friends. When you engage the ego like that, it blocks flow.
And here's more of our conversation...
Me: To create the right or optimal environment for leaders to think and be efficient, are there certain things a CEO or CFO should be implementing in the office?
Kotler: Meetings are, as you know, one of the largest wastes of time. Most meetings are not about meetings. They're about a whole lot of other things.
Meetings should be about determining who does what by when. That's what you're trying to figure out. All that really matters are the goals and the responsibility. Are you blocked? Let me help unblock you. That's the leader's job in a meeting. Most of the other stuff doesn't matter.
Me: Is there an optimal number of people for a meeting?
Kotler: Yeah, this is interesting. It's just our biology. There's a handful of things we know. Any time that you're in a pack, and this could be dogs or you, but it doesn't matter. You don't want more than about five to eight people in a breakout group. That's a perfect discussion size; above that, it grows unwieldy.
And then we have Dunbar's number at the top, which is the number of relationships you can actually hold in your head, and that number is set. It's about 150. (referring to British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who suggested that the human brain limits the number of interpersonal connections one can have to about 150 people.)
Me: What advice do you have for CFOs who are looking at these AI tools because they think it is making everyone so much more productive and efficient?
Kotler: There are 12 different ways AI will erode cognition and different aspects of cognition. It's a real serious problem. So CFOs who are bringing AI into a company, if they don't know the psychological and mental side, and the rules of how you work with AI without making you stupid, you've just dumbed down your entire company and you've created a lot of problems. I'll give you a simple one.
So if you spend the morning working with your LLM and then you go to a board meeting where it's a bunch of people talking and there's no LLMs, you are less intrinsically motivated to participate. LLMs can increase motivation, while you’re working with them, but afterward, the analog world is a pale comparison. The brain gets bored with normal reality. Motivation plummets, attention plummets and fragments. These are real problems.
Readers, what do you think of Kotler’s advice? Please hit reply, as I’d love to read your feedback. Meanwhile, I’m reading his latest book “We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance,” which he wrote with Peter H. Diamandis. What else would you recommend as a good summer read?
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