Laura Mae Martin is a big fan of settings menus. As an executive productivity consultant at Google, Martin spends much of her time working with other Googlers to improve their productivity and communications systems—one of the things she often recommends is taking a few minutes to explore the options. “Your phone, your email, your Slack, all these things, the functionality is there, but we don’t take the time to delve into them,” she said. She even thinks you should probably check the settings before using the app. “Like, you can’t get into the app unless you spend 10 minutes figuring out what it does.”
As far as this episode is concerned edge broadcast, In the first of our three-part mini-series on productivity and work, we talk to Martin about how she sees things changing. Four years after the pandemic forced us all to work from home, have we finally figured out remote and hybrid work? Do managers realize that “all in” is not—and perhaps never has been—a good measure of productivity? Is that age of frantic hustle finally giving way to a healthier, more holistic productivity mindset? Martin looks at all of these things from multiple angles and has a lot of thoughts on everything from communication styles to energy flow.
We also discuss the rise of digital productivity tools like Notion and Slack, and why email is still so important but still so bad. One of Martin’s jobs at Google was consulting with teams building Workspace applications like Docs and Gmail, and she had a lot of ideas about how those products worked and how they could be improved. We also discuss whether artificial intelligence will change the way we get work done, and whether it will help us do more, or just allow us to do more.
Along the way, Martin provides us with many practical tips on how to better manage our digital lives. Charging your phone outside the bedroom, tech-free Tuesdays, and some fancier email labels might actually go a long way. If you have too many notes in too many places, it’s time to build a master list.
If you’d like to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get started:
