I recently listened to Tim Ferriss interview the prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson (see here for my coverage of Sanderson’s insane underground writing lair). Tim traveled to Utah to talk to Sanderson at the headquarters of his 70-person publishing and merchandising company, Dragonsteel Books.
The following exchange, from early in the conversation, caught my attention:
Ferriss: “It seems like, where we’re sitting –and we’re sitting at HQ — it seems like the design of Dragonsteel, maybe the intent behind it, is to allow you to do that [come up with stories] on some level.”
Sanderson: “Yeah, yeah, I mean everything in our company is built around, ‘let Brandon cook.’ And take away from Brandon anything he doesn’t have to think about, or doesn’t strictly need to.”
As someone who writes a lot about knowledge work in the digital age, I’m fascinated by this model of cooking, which I define as follows: a workflow designed to enable someone with a high-return skill to spend most of their time applying that skill, without distraction.
It makes sense to me that Dragonsteel goes out of its way to protect Sanderson’s ability to think and write. The roughly 300,000 words he produces per year is the raw material with which his company’s revenue is ultimately built. To significantly reduce Sanderson’s ability to produce those words might make some of his employees’ lives easier, but it would be like reducing the amount of steel shipped to an automotive assembly-line; eventually you’re going to ship many fewer cars, and your sales will plummet.
What doesn’t make sense to me is why this cooking model is so rare in knowledge work more generally. To be clear, this approach doesn’t apply to all jobs. At the moment, for example, as a full professor in Georgetown’s computer science department, I’m taking my turn as the Director of Undergraduate Studies (DUS). This is not a position built around a singular high-return skill, so it would make no sense for the department to orient around “letting Cal cook” as DUS.
But, it’s also true that there are many jobs where, like for Sanderson, letting individuals focus on a single high-return activity could really boost the bottom line. I’m thinking, for example, of programmers, researchers, engineers, and any number of creative industry positions. And yet, we almost never see something like Sanderson’s focused setup replicated.
A major culprit here is technology. Digital communication eliminates most of the friction required to command other peoples’ time and attention toward your own benefit. It costs essentially nothing to shoot off a quick message with a question, or to ask someone to jump on a call, or to pass along a task that just occurred to you.
In such an environment, in the absence of hard barriers, most people get inexorably dragged toward a degenerate equilibrium state defined by constant distraction and obligation saturation. (I’ve written two books about this effect if you want to learn more about it.) If Sanderson didn’t explicitly build his entire company around letting him cook, in other words, then he would likely find himself instead spending much of his day answering email.
What I would like to see is a world in which many organizations have, at the very least, a handful of Sanderson-type positions — employees with super high-value skills that are left alone to apply them in a focused manner. This would only impact a relatively small percentage of workers, so why would it matter? Because it would represent a notable incursion against the broader embrace of pseudo-productivity — the idea that busyness is synonymous with usefulness, and more activity is better than less. It would open our eyes to the idea that some activities are more valuable than others, and in-the-moment convenience is over-rated in the office setting. It would empower more organizations to explore more radical and interesting ways of structuring how they get things done.
I don’t need us to figure this out immediately, but it would be nice, however, if we could make some progress before my stint as DUS comes to an end. By then, I’ll for sure be ready to cook.
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In other news…
If you want hear more on this topic, listen to Episode 339 of my podcast, in which I discuss this topic in more detail, including more practical ideas about how to formalize and spread the cooking model.
My good writer friends Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, over at The Growth Equation, recently published a great essay on their newsletter titled: “A Letter to My Younger Self: On Regret, Resilience, and Dealing with the Messiness of Life.” [ read online | subscribe ]
(Note: Steve also just published a great new book that I highly recommend: Win the Inside Game.)
Have you checked out my new book, Slow Productivity, yet? You should! In case it helps persuade you, it was recently revealed to be one of the top #5 most popular non-fiction books of 2024 in the Seattle library system, and the #1 most popular self-help audiobook of 2024 in the LA library system. (Wait, do I live on the wrong coast?)
I remember this example well in the book “Maverick” by Ricardo Semler.
Ricardo’s company was set up with no rules wherever possible, and that included that people set their own work hours, work activities, and even their own income. And most importantly everyone knew everyone else’s income – and even voted on it!
So there was one guy in the company who basically spent his time doing nothing. And everyone was okay with this, because he was also an incredible fix-it guy who was renown for his ability to do what was needed to sort out mechanical problems when they arose.
In a company with no rules, he not only survived, he was rewarded. The main difference was that he didn’t need to do busy-work in between times.
Fantastic insights, as usual, Mr. Newport.
I might point out it also costs others essentially nothing *socially* to attempt to command our time and attention toward their benefit. The reality is today’s world is saturated with meaningless chatter and vocal busyness aligned to the interests of whoever is doing the speaking.
“In such an environment, in the absence of hard barriers, most people get inexorably dragged toward a degenerate equilibrium state defined by **constant distraction** and **obligation saturation**.” [Emphasis mine]
Perfectly stated. This is why I believe choices we make moment to moment regarding who we give our attention to are *not* created equal. If we are to design our lives, we must be intelligent and vigilant regarding those choices.
Those interested in producing results in the important areas of their lives (versus engaging in busyness/activities) know they must exercise intelligence in their interactions. They have to remain laser focused on eschewing anything which scatters energy and does not add value. The alternative is exactly what you have described.
To the casual observer this all may sound extreme, but to those experienced in producing results, it is the recipe for success, peace, and productivity.
I most definitely have designed my life so that I can let myself “cook”. I just never thought of it that way (although the great success author Brian Tracy spoke of this mental orientation in a different manner back in the 1990’s).
I deeply appreciate your work!
As much as I appreciate the insight, as a business person I also worry about the incredible risk the business is taking on relying on a single person to produce the output. What if Brandon gets hit by a bus, has a stroke or whatever?
The single point of failure for this business, that employs 70 people is Brandon. That is a huge risk.