Laura Mae Martin is a giant believer within the settings menu. As Google’s govt productiveness advisor, Martin spends a lot of her time working with different Googlers on enhancing their productiveness and communication techniques — and one of many issues she typically recommends is taking a couple of minutes to poke via the choices. “Together with your cellphone, together with your e mail, your Slack, all this stuff, the options are there, however we don’t take the time to dive into them,” she says. She even thinks you need to possibly have to take a look at settings earlier than you should use the app. “Like, you possibly can’t get into the app until you spend 10 minutes determining what it will possibly do.”
On this episode of The Vergecast, the primary in our three-part miniseries about all issues productiveness and work, we discuss to Martin about how she sees issues altering. 4 years after the pandemic pressured us all to work at home, are we lastly determining distant and hybrid work? Are managers realizing that butts-in-seats isn’t — and possibly was by no means — a very good metric for productiveness? And is the period of the hard-charging hustle bro lastly giving option to a more healthy, extra holistic mind-set about being productive? Martin sees all this stuff from so many views and has a lot of ideas on every part from communication types to vitality flows.
We additionally discuss concerning the rise in digital productiveness instruments like Notion and Slack and why e mail continues to be so vital — and nonetheless so horrible. One in every of Martin’s jobs at Google is to seek the advice of with the groups constructing Workspace apps like Docs and Gmail, and he or she has a lot of ideas on how these merchandise work and the way they may very well be higher. We additionally discuss whether or not AI stands to vary the best way we get issues finished and whether or not it’ll assist us do extra or simply give us extra to do.
Alongside the best way, Martin provides us a lot of sensible tips about the right way to handle our digital lives slightly higher. Charging your cellphone exterior the bed room, no-tech Tuesdays, and a few prettier e mail labels would possibly really go a great distance. And if in case you have too many notes in too many locations, it’s time to get a Foremost Checklist going.
If you wish to know extra about every part we discuss on this episode, listed below are a couple of hyperlinks to get you began: