Thread by @punk6529

1/ On Being Efficient With Busy People

This is a thread for people at junior to mid stages in their career (people at senior levels generally operate this way and, at very senior levels, they all operate this way).

It is updated for 2022 practices

2/ First the obvious, but still not really obvious until you have lived it.

Any sufficiently senior level person in any field - business, non-profits, art, entertainment, government, athletics and so on - is very busy.

3/ "Very busy" in this context does not only mean "lots of things to do" as in "lots of work to do" but also typically a huge inbound information flow.

Emails, calls, zooms, IRL meetings, text msgs, twitter DMs, discord, whatsapp, telegram, signal

4/ Every year the information flow gets worse.

It used to be: letters + email + phone calls + text messages and even then we thought we were busy.

Now it is wild - i look at hundreds, possibly thousands of messages per day, on a variety of topics.

5/ So you want something from a busy person.

That busy person might be your boss or it might be someone not in your organization, someone you are reaching out for something you want.

What should you do? How should you think about it?

6/ The first question, more typically relevant at work, is "do you actually need your boss or is this just a crutch?"

In other words, can you go ahead and finish the task you were doing without further input, take some decisions yourself, and bring a finished product

7/ This is very situation specific.

It depends on the task, on your own skills, on your boss's managerial style and temperament.

So you have to judge your own situation and maturity and capability.

8/ But the *general* rule of thumb is that senior level executives who have other senior level executives reporting to them, do not want meetings and reports and so on.

They just want the job done.

My favorite reporting relationships are those where I am needed the least.

9/ So over time, and as a general rule of thumb, and based on your own professional maturity and capability, if it is a low-risk decision (severity, amount of work involved), consider if you should make the decision yourself, and bring a finished task to the table.

10/ You noticed I said the word "decision" here.

A "decision" is really the only reason you want to reach out to someone with a request.

People sortof know this in their gut, but not in their mind and this makes their approach inefficient

11/ So let's go to "how to ask for a decision"
1: What is the decision?
2. What data is needed for the decision?
3. Do you have the data? (if not, go get it)
4. What decision would YOU make with that data?
5. Do you still need to ask for a decision or did you just make it?

12/ If you have gotten to Step 5 and you still need a decision, then the correct structure for asking it is

1: This is the decision I want
2: Here is the data for making that decision
3: Here is my own recommendation, given the data in #2
4: Please let me know if you agree

13/ The goal is to have enough information in 1 shot for the person to be able to answer you.

I tell people my response time is bimodal.

Either "within a day" or "never" is a reasonable approximation.

Why? If I can't manage it in the current inbound flow it gets buried

14/ So nothing is more professionally satisfying than to be asked something in a format above where I read the situation and the person's analysis and recommendation.

And I can send my favorite reply of all: "yes" or "ok" or "proceed" or "i agree"

15/ A short detour to highlight the worst DM of all time

"Can I ask you a question?"

This is utterly pointless because if the answer is going to be "no", then it would be "no" anyway and if it is going to be "yes" you wasted a cycle

16/ Also not great

"Can we hop on a call?"

There are [x] people personally and professionally important enough to me to get a "yes" to this, but it is not the majority.

Let me explain why in the next tweet

17/ The way calendar software works, is that it pushes you to half hour meetings.

To take some limit case that every half hour was a meeting, it means that I can make 10-20 decisions per day.

The real number to keep my life in order is at least 10x that.

18/ So "calls" become very "expensive"

Zoom > IRL Meeting
Email > Zoom
DM > Email
Solving The Problem Yourself > DM

Most (non-sales) calls are 15-20 minutes of filler that could have been read in advance with 2-5 minutes of "discussing an actual decision"

19/ It is very possible that some of you right now are reading this and saying "my goodness, 6529 sure thinks he is important"

also, why did he not answer my DM/follow me/etc

To this I can only smile and say "I hope one day you end up in this situation and you will see"

20/ At the limit case, this is how all super senior people operate.

My DM chats with the most senior people I know (where I might be the junior party in the chat) are something like:

2-3 sentences from me; 1 sentence back.

Maybe we had a call once or never.

21/ There are no absolute rules in life, you need to use judgment for your specific situation but tl;dr

✅Make a decision
OR
✅Make a recommendation
AND
✅Communicate it in one, compact, organized shot

And enjoy your professional development along the way 🫡