Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat

Bruce Daisley - Avoiding Burnout and Remembering the Lost Art of Feeling Bored

November 08, 2020 Mo Gawdat and Bruce Daisley Episode 59
Slo Mo: A Podcast with Mo Gawdat
Bruce Daisley - Avoiding Burnout and Remembering the Lost Art of Feeling Bored
Show Notes

Today's guest is Bruce Daisley, one of the most respected thought leaders on the subject of workplace culture and the future of work. He has helped lead some of the world's biggest media companies, including Twitter, Google and YouTube, and has dedicated himself to making work better using evidence to devise creative solutions. He is the host of top business podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat and the author of The Joy of Work, a bestseller.

As a fellow ex-Googler, Bruce and I immediately connected over sharing stories from the company's early days. Having been a leading force in some of the world's most revered tech companies, Bruce knows a thing or two about what makes a happy workplace. In this time of mass working from home and the other pandemic of burnout, his expertise and insights will help you, and your bosses, optimize your time by understanding what actually helps workflow efficiency and what sabotages it.

Listen as we discuss:

  • Bruce and I swapping stories about working at Google in the early days
  • How a feeling of community gets lose when a company scales
  • The number 150: the average limit of meaningful relationships we can have
  • Millennial burnout
  • "Whenever we treat energy as infinite, burnout is the result."
  • Elon Musk's insane work schedule
  • Research showing that more work does not mean more output 
  • Optimizing productivity, and how anything more than 50 hours per week is too much
  • The 3 systems of cognition
  • The creative and disarming space created by boredom that allows for new ideas
  • Boredom is the opposite of stress
  • The toxicity of weekend emails and taking a "digital sabbath"
  • How to talk to your organization about changing your work culture
  • Purpose with a capital P vs. lower case P
  • The Monk Mode Morning: an hour of uninterrupted focus
  • Barack Obama, and how he hired someone to make trivial decisions for him

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Connect with Bruce Daisley on  Twitter @brucedaisley, Instagram @brucedaisley, and his website, eatsleepworkrepeat.com

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YouTube: @mogawdatofficial
Instagram: @mo_gawdat
Facebook: @mo.gawdat.official
LinkedIn: /in/mogawdat
X: @mgawdat
Website: mogawdat.com

Don't forget to subscribe to Slo Mo for new episodes every Saturday. Only with your help can we reach One Billion Happy #onebillionhappy