Laura Mae Martin is a big believer in the settings menu. Martin is Google’s Executive Productivity Advisor, and spends much of her time working with other Googlers on improving their productivity and communication systems — and one of the things she often recommends is taking a few minutes to poke through the options. “With your phone, with your email, your Slack, all these things, the features are there but we don’t take the time to dive into them,” she says. She even thinks you should maybe have to look at settings before you can use the app. “Like, you can’t get into the app unless you spend 10 minutes figuring out what it can do.”

On this episode of The Vergecast, the first in our three-part miniseries about all things 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, are we finally figuring out remote and hybrid work? Are managers realizing that butts-in-seats isn’t, and maybe was never, a good metric for productivity? And is the era of the hard-charging hustle bro finally giving way to a healthier, more holistic way of thinking about being productive? Martin sees all these things from so many perspectives, and has lots of thoughts on everything from communication styles to energy flows.

We also talk about the rise in digital productivity tools like Notion and Slack, and why email is still so important — and still so terrible. One of Martin’s jobs at Google is to consult with the teams building Workspace apps like Docs and Gmail, and she has lots of thoughts on how those product works and how they could be better. We also talk about whether AI stands to change the way we get things done, and whether it’ll help us do more or just give us more to do.

Along the way, Martin offers us lots of practical tips on how to manage our digital lives a little better. Charging your phone outside the bedroom, no-tech Tuesdays, and a couple of prettier email labels might actually go a long way. And if you have too many notes in too many places, it’s time to get a Main List going.

If you want to know more on everything we talk about in this episode, here are a few links to get you started:

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