People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast · Andy Kaufman, PMP, PMI-ACP

PPP 484 | Coping with Digital Overwhelm Without Logging Off, with author Craig Mattson

·51 min·2 clips

Expecting a book talk, Craig Mattson found only a table by the door, and a marketer's advice turned it into a relational evening.

1. The People and Projects Podcast, episode 484, examines "digi-whelm," the scattered feeling of being hyper-connected at work, through Craig Mattson's book Digital Overwhelm: A Mid-Career Guide to Coping at Work. 2. Host Andy interviews Mattson, a professor, researcher and author who teaches at a university and draws on interviews with mid-career workers, including a video game company employee. 3. Mattson's thesis is that his book is not another detox guide like those by Cal Newport, but advice for people who cannot leave platforms, built on "digital flexibility" and the idea that humans are "users and switchers of modes." 4. He chose "overwhelm" over "overload" because it can be positive, as in his childhood memory of warm Pensacola Beach waves, and following David Ford he says the choice is to be "overwhelmed better" since it cannot be eliminated. 5. Mattson distinguishes mode switching from context switching as a whole-person relational shift rather than a thin screen change, illustrated by a video-game interviewee's "stacked overwhelm" and by Andy's car-buying moment where "I like to start with hello" relaxed the salesman. 6. In his bookstore story, he expected a talk but got a table by the door, so he used a video, QR-code bookmarks, a "wall of digital overwhelm" and conversation, and ended the night tired but pleased. 7. For email, he asks writers to consider its voice, covering volume, speed and tone, and he and Andy agree that phrases like "as per my previous message" can carry disguised passive aggressiveness. 8. Citing John Durham Peters, who says dialogue has an "almost sacred place," Mattson argues that one-way dissemination can be generous, such as letting a team member talk for 45 minutes or a leader sharing vision with the company, while Andy adds that he once wrote letters to his future wife. 9. On signaling, he cites J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words and a Zoom workshop story about a Black woman who stepped off camera and then managed her expression, and he warns leaders that "I listen to the words and I miss the music" and that silence after "anybody have questions?" may signal something. 10. Project managers, team leads and mid-career professionals who cannot log off will get the most from it.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from People and Projects Podcast: Project Management Podcast