#385 - Why Architects Can't Say No

Summary

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Archispeak #385 - "Why Architects Can't Say No"

Hosts: Evan Troxel & Cormac Phalen
Date: March 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this candid episode, Evan Troxel and Cormac Phalen tackle the pervasive challenge of saying "no" within the architectural profession. Their conversation weaves through the realities of distracted, overburdened workdays shaped by endless virtual meetings, technological interruptions, and unclear professional boundaries. They reflect on how cultural shifts and new tools like AI are altering work habits — often for the worse — and ask why architects, in particular, find it so difficult to assert limits, protect deep work, and simply refuse when appropriate.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Virtual Meeting Chaos & Modern Professional Etiquette

• Distracted Meetings: Both hosts begin by sharing stories about people eating during meetings and the new normal of inattentive behavior in virtual settings.
  • "Now you're so bombarded with meetings ... people work during lunch, people work during the meetings." (A, 03:44)
• Changing Expectations: The expectation for undivided attention has eroded; multitasking in meetings is now expected, fostering a distracted culture.
• Prevalence of "You're on mute":
  • The most-used phrase in meetings now is “You’re on mute,” representing a major roadblock to conversational flow and productivity.
    • "The most used term ... for at least, let's just say the last five years: 'You're on mute.'" (A, 06:54)

The Fractured Flow of Work

• Metaphor of the Meeting 'River':
  • Virtual meetings, with lag and interruptions, are compared to repeated rocks in a river halting progress.
    • "If you're in the river ... and every time you have to say, 'you're on mute,' that's a rock that halts your progress." (A, 08:06)
• Technological Distractions: The constant switching between apps, devices, and notifications means deep work is almost impossible.
  • "I have 17 apps open right now ... I've got my phone and I've got my iPad… boundaries and discipline. And those things are gone." (B, 09:58)
• Attempting Deep Work:
  • Some technological solutions (full-screen apps, minimal interfaces) fail to restore true focus; the real issue is personal and cultural boundaries.

AI's Impact: Helpful or Just More Noise?

• AI Assistance:
  • Cormac describes using AI (like ChatGPT) for smoothing out communication and tone in emails.
    • “I wrote an email ... I asked, ‘Can you take a look at this?’ ... It basically rewrote it as very minor edits, ... would you like this to be more direct? ... more confrontational?” (A, 14:11)
• Proliferation of Choices:
  • Instead of saving time, AI sometimes prompts users to produce even more options, increasing workload instead of decreasing it.
  • "It's not... you're not actually getting that time back that everybody talked about. Right. And so by continuing to operate like that, your mind is ... talk about distractions and more things to do." (B, 16:44)

The Shattered Workday: Multitasking and Productivity Failures

• Constant Interruptions:
  • Examples are given of how tasks (like sending a simple email) stretch for hours or days due to interruptions and task-switching.
    • “I started writing that email at 7:30 in the morning. I sent it at 7:30 pm. Really, really Cormac.” (A, 22:30)
• The Myth of Productivity:
  • The hosts reflect on the erosion of sustained focus in favor of constant firefighting and the increasing expectation of immediate responses.
  • "I constantly refer to several of our projects as just constant fire drills. We're always running after putting out one fire after another." (A, 23:02)

Professional Boundaries: Why Architects Can’t Say No

• Lost Discipline & Saying ‘No’:
  • The default answer for most requests, the hosts argue, should be ‘no,’ but architecture’s customer-service mentality often prevents this.
    • “We are the pleaser. We are a customer service profession, and we feel like saying no to somebody...” (A, 29:54)
• Scope Creep:
  • Illustrative stories abound of quietly messaging colleagues in meetings to remind them what's truly within scope, and of the difficulty of backtracking after agreeing too quickly.
  • "That's not in our scope. Don't agree to that." (B & A, 29:35-29:36)
• Institutional Lessons:
  • They recall advice from professors: always use “additional services” forms when a client asks for more, but note how hard it is to enforce.
    • "[Professor holds up additional services form] ... you get the signature and now we can move forward ... Otherwise? No, then we're not doing it." (B, 35:34-36:23)
• Cultural & Psychological Barriers:
  • Riffing on British politeness ("we’ll take that under advisement") as a noncommittal but effective way of saying no.
    • "To me, that's noncommittal... And you interpret that as a no. Oh, that's not happening." (B, 34:43)

The Cost: Career Longevity & Mental Health

• Burnout & Never-Ending Work:
  • The inability to say no leads to overwork, extended project timelines, and a near impossibility of achieving "deep work."
  • "We have been inundated... you are always available, you're always on call... And so again, I guess this goes back to that original idea of boundaries and discipline." (B, 27:09-27:41)
• Archispeak’s Confession:
  • Both hosts acknowledge the profession’s unique vulnerability to these pressures and the personal struggles that result.
  • "We've all got our own mental illness, Cormac. We're not special." (B, 37:33)
• Retirement as Unfinished Business:
  • Joking about never really retiring from architecture — perhaps another symptom of never learning to say "no."
    • "There are a few examples of retirement, and I think I might be taking the latter of them... Why is that? ... Because you don't know how to say no." (A & B, 36:58-37:19)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You're on mute. I can't hear you. You're on mute. You're muted." (A/B, 06:54)
  A recurring symbol for the friction and disconnect in modern work life.
• "Boundaries and discipline. And those things are gone." (B, 09:58)
• "We are a customer service profession, and we feel like saying no to somebody is... and then we wonder, well, we didn't hit our target profitability on this project." (A, 29:54)
• "That's not in our scope. Don't agree to that." (B & A, 29:35-29:36)
• "[Professor holds up additional services form] What's the answer to that question? Additional services." (B, 35:34)
• "We've all got our own mental illness, Cormac. We're not special." (B, 37:33)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00-04:00| Distracted meetings & eating during Zoom calls | | 05:14-07:00| Most-used phrase in architecture today: “You’re on mute” | | 08:06-11:00| The ‘meeting river’ metaphor & tech glitches halting flow | | 12:01-15:57| The reality of using AI for emails and productivity—and its downsides | | 19:29-22:34| The anatomy of a distracted, never-finished email | | 23:02-24:00| “Fire drill” culture & lost focus | | 27:09-27:41| Always-on culture: boundaries, discipline & the ‘boiling frog’ | | 28:50-29:54| Why architects struggle to say ‘no’ | | 35:34-36:23| Real-life pro practice: Additional services & contracts | | 37:33 | The cost: burnout and lost mental health |

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Final Takeaways

Archispeak #385 captures the honest struggle of architects to maintain boundaries, focus, and self-respect in an “always-on,” hyper-distracted work environment. The conversation deftly blends humor, real-life anecdotes, and professional wisdom to highlight a core challenge: the inability — or unwillingness — of architects to say "no," and the personal and professional costs of that failure. Their advice is clear: reclaim boundaries, reacquaint yourself with deep work, and remember that "no" is sometimes your most important tool.

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Transcript

[A]

So we have this guy that every meeting, and he's running the meeting, he is eating. And yeah, all the cameras are off. He's just eating. And all you hear is this, Evan.

[B]

I would just be like, I'm out. I. I would not be able to handle it. I. I wouldn't be able to handle it. I. I can't.

[A]

The messages. The messages back and forth between me and my team as we're, you know, talking is like, really seriously, like, so, so we.

[B]

We.

[A]

We sit there, we guess, like, all right, what is he eating today?

[B]

Jolly.

[A]

Is. Is he eating Jolly Ranchers?

[B]

Oh, my God. Wow. So. So my first year professor, Bernard Zimmerman, rest in peace. Bernard Zimmerman. He used to. Used to eat during studio every day. I. It must have been around that time. You know, studio was a long class, so it was.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And he was. He was working on his figure, so he was bringing salads to studio to eat. And during crits, it was just constantly mowing down salads.

[A]

What's interesting is, okay, so I'll bring a cup of coffee with me, you know, like a tumbler and Totally fine.

[B]

Cup of coffee. Totally fine.

[A]

Which I feel like that's fine because. Take a sip. Because I talk a lot and my voice gets, like, kind of strained by the time, you know, coffee's end of the day. Exactly. It's lubricating the vocal cords, you know, and all of that other stuff. But. Yeah, but I. I have seen some strange behavior from students in presentations. Crits and things like that.

[B]

Eating a bag of chips.

[A]

Like the people in the movie theater

[B]

who have to open the loudest packaging of candy that is possible during a movie.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Right behind you, by the way.

[A]

Or. Or it's just like, what do you think they meant by that? And you're like, really? That's. That's a whole different conversation in its own right.

[B]

But commentary track needs to be turned off right now. Thanks.

[A]

Exactly. I wasn't going to see Mystery Science Theater 3000.

[B]

So your students bring food, like, during. During class or during crits?

[A]

During, like, during class.

[B]

What. When is during class?

[A]

I'm fine with. Because, you know, again, they're, you know, they're working a lot and all of that other stuff, but, you know, a lot of times they'll have. What we require is if somebody is giving a presentation, the other people in class have got to, you know, come and give their full, undivided attention.

[B]

Pay attention.

[A]

Yeah. And contribute. You know, they're all on their phones, they're eating, they're doing everything else. And like, you know, I don't think the last time. I can't remember the last time I was in a client meeting that wasn't like a working lunch or something like that, that we were having a meeting where people were eating while you were trying to present. It's this common courtesy kind of thing that, that is going to be learned behavior. I mean, they've never done it before,

[B]

so I was gonna. I wanted to go that direction because I feel like, is this just the way things are going, which is multitasking? You have to do everything at the. Because there's no set aside time to do things anymore. Because everything bleeds into everything. Is that what's going on?

[A]

Probably. I mean, here's the funny thing is like, we always. I think we've joked about this on previous episodes, but it is a real thing. You know it, I know it. That when now you're so bombarded with, with meetings

[B]

during lunch because of people

[A]

work during lunch, people work during the meetings. You know, people work. You know, it's just like, hey, hey, Evan, what do you think about that? I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?

[B]

Yeah, When I was working, which I,

[A]

you know, I, I actually had all intentions of starting this conversation off with asking you this, and, and it's like, prompt me.

[B]

Like, like an LLM. There should be a rap about that. Prompt me.

[A]

What is the most used saying term, whatever you want to call it, let's just say saying or the most used phrase. Sorry. That's what I meant to say. What is the most used frame. Phrase? Phrase. Phrase. Phrase. Say phrase.

[B]

Why are you distracted right now, Cormac? Are you reading an email?

[A]

I. I'm. I'm doing work. You know, what is. What is the most used phrase in architecture? And it's probably almost every profession, to be quite honest with you now, but at least in architecture, over, let's just say the last five years.

[B]

Did you already give it away? I don't know. What is it?

[A]

I haven't, but I wrote it down here on a piece.

[B]

And how, how scientific is this? How have you come up with this? Is this just your intuition? Is this something you've documented many times?

[A]

It's because of the frequency. Either I say it or somebody else says it during a meeting.

[B]

Guilty. You're guilty. I see. Okay, you're feeling the guilt. You want to get this off your chest.

[A]

I. I'm not the one who's actually guilty, because I'm. I can't. I can't say it without giving it away. But what do you think is that.

[B]

Well, I. What always used to show up when I was in meetings was. And especially in design meetings. So I don't know. I don't know like what kind of meeting you're talking about, but there's so many things where, where the, these little triggers for me, which is like. Well, as you can see, you know, it like during a presentation to a client. And it's like, it's those kinds of things. Those, they're almost cliches. Like it is what it is. And.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And they're circling back and there's all these corporate terms as well. So I mean, I feel like this could go a lot of different directions. I. I don't know.

[A]

It can. And here's in. The reason why I. So I wrote it down and I wanted to talk to you about it.

[B]

Let's put that in the parking lot.

[A]

But. But the, the reason why I brought it up is because of another thought that I was having. So most used term that I have that I have seen that I've either used or has been used in meetings for at least, let's just say the last five years. You're on mute.

[B]

You're on mute. I can't hear you. You're on mute. You're muted.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

This is the new. It still is going on. Yeah, I mean, it's still going on. It's still going on.

[A]

And now the, the reason I say that is because I don't recall the last time in a face to face meeting that I never said that. That you're on mute.

[B]

No, of course.

[A]

And, and so that's the thing is like, if most of our meetings are now on zoom and most people go on mute when they're not speaking and all that other stuff, and then they start speaking. You know, the, the natural flow of a meeting is completely shot, completely gone. Like.

[B]

Right.

[A]

We don't have the conversations that we, that we used to have before.

[B]

Okay. So the term for that is like the flow of thought, the flow of work, the speed of thought. This, you know, it's like you're in the river.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right. And it is moving at whatever clip it's moving at. And everybody's moving along until you hit a rock, until you're on mute, until there's a technology problem, until something like that.

[A]

Right. So if you're in the river and you're flowing down the river and every time you have to say, you know, you're on mute, that's a rock that

[B]

actually likes a capsizing size Rock.

[A]

It halts your progress going downstream.

[B]

And then you get caught in the end, the rock sucked under the rock.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Never to recover.

[A]

Because. Because then they're like, oh, I'm sorry, you know, because then there's always this apology for, oh, I'm sorry, I couldn't find the mute button or I didn't realize I was on mute or something like that. And again, that whole flow just goes away, vaporized. And, and I was, I don't know why. I guess I was just lamenting, reminiscing, you know, pining, whatever's a good term for like those face to face meetings, those in person meetings where you couldn't get away with, you know, missing cormorants,

[B]

eye rolls or, or you couldn't be texting people in the background wondering what the person's eating. There's stuff, there's stuff in the pros and cons list here. Gormick to in person versus virtual meetings.

[A]

Well, but so, you know, now virtual meetings, because they've become so, so prevalent

[B]

and so you live in another state from the firm that.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, but there's. Now, not only are they so prevalent, but they dominate your entire workday now you don't really have time to actually do the work work that you're doing. And so say you have all of these meetings and you still have to get that work done that needs to be there, then you need to actually do more work. And you know, it starts to draw

[B]

out, okay, so that you're, you're muted. I can't hear you. Is the rock in the river? There's so many other rocks in the river when it comes to getting work done nowadays.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So it's. The phone's going off, the instant message is coming in, the email notification on the screen. The. I've got four apps on the screen at all times. Let, let me just, let me just look in my. If I hit a command tab on my Mac, okay? There are. I have 17 apps open right now, Cormac. All right, that's just normal. Okay. And I've got my phone and I've got my iPad and et cetera, et cetera. And there's been ways that they've tried to address this with technology over the years. Like, okay, full screen apps, right? Like there's this go full screen, go minimal interface so you can really focus on your writing or whatever these things are. None of it seems to work because what is it all actually about? It's all about boundaries and discipline. And those things are Gone. Like, there's no such thing as boundaries and discipline anymore. You are muted, Cormac. Cormac. You are literally muted.

[A]

That was. That was. I was like. I wanted to see how long I was. Set me up.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

But, you know, and that's the thing is just like, you know, actually, I liked it.

[B]

Could you go back on mute? I'll keep talking.

[A]

I like my. I like the sound of my own voice. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Did I just derail you? We just derailed the conversation.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Look, you. You don't have anything to say.

[A]

There you go. Proof, just. Just out of, you know, pure humor of, you know, trying to say something, I actually completely derailed myself.

[B]

That was great. Yeah.

[A]

Couldn't have scripted that one.

[B]

So. So, I mean, I think it's come up on the show many times, and. And it's just actually not changing. I think. I think AI is the new version of whatever this is. So. So, okay, let me ask your observations of people using AI or with you using AI yourself, do you find that you are using it to help you get things done faster, or might I lead the witness a little bit here and say, are you just doing more stuff?

[A]

Doing more stuff?

[B]

You can go to observations as well. Like, if it's. If you're not using it that much, I mean, what are you seeing? People.

[A]

So say I'm having a conversation with somebody and I asked them a question, and then the next thing I hear is, right.

[B]

Notes Cormac. They're actually.

[A]

No. And then. And then there's a slight pause, and they're like, Well, I think that. And then you can sort of real time.

[B]

Real time. It's like. It's like the. It's. I've got the thing in the ear, and it's. It's telling me what to say. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And it's just like, really? You're like, really? Yeah. And you just like.

[B]

Did you just say delve.

[A]

I'm sorry, wait, what did you say in. And, you know, when people are. Are not paying attention or they're not working, you know, like. Or they're.

[B]

As long as they're on camera. Yeah, yeah, usually. Or in person.

[A]

Well, or. Or. Or if they're not on camera, because we. A lot of my meetings, the client actually prefers to not be on camera, so nobody's on camera. And when, you know, people say, I'm sorry. Can you say that again? Or, Sorry, my. My mic was cutting out.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Or my. My audio was cutting out. What did you say? I love the. I love the excuses of like, of not paying attention. Right, Yep. Yeah. Because it's, it's the, the interesting thing is, like, how many, how many examples of excuses can you get for not paying attention?

[B]

Like, I've been mowing the grass, Cormac. I sneezed, I muted out of.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Respect title podcast.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

And don't have to edit that out.

[A]

Exactly. Use, use, use AI to edit out heaven Sneezes.

[B]

Remove sneezes.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

This whole thing is actually getting worse, I think, because what does every response from an AI end with? It ends with a question.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

It ends with a question.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

Do you want, do you want to know more? Do you want me to look at this other. You want to look at other options? Which one do you, which one of

[A]

these do you like?

[B]

And it's super encouraging to, like, keep going.

[A]

Right. So I wrote, I wrote an email today, and the email was a little confusing chat.

[B]

GPT did.

[A]

No, no, no. I, I, I wrote an email and the email was a. Either I didn't like the tone. I didn't like it. So I did, I went in and I asked him like, hey, can you take a look at this?

[B]

And I like how you have this self awareness. I don't like my tone. Yeah.

[A]

And, and so how, how did it end? It, it basically rewrote it as very minor edits, and I think that's a

[B]

legit use of, of. Yeah, this is great.

[A]

It's doing a lot of tone. So, so here, here was like the last comment because I, I actually have it up on another screen as a snapshot of the outstanding list, for instance, workflow, blah, blah, blah. And it, and it suggested by way of example, workflow, blah, blah, blah, which is shown as the most overview item, you know, and so I'm like, okay, that, that makes perfect sense. It takes. Cormac's very standard. And I'm sure you've seen this because I text you a lot where I have a conversation with you, but then I have a conversation in my head that I'm having with you, but I put that in parentheses because that's the conversation in my head that I don't want to forget saying, but it's not part of the stream of consciousness. It is a side thought in my head for the stream of consciousness, but squirrel. And so that was totally like, those are the ways that I use it at best. And you'll have things like, would you like this to be more direct? Would you like this to be less confrontational? Or more, would you like it to be more confrontational or whatever. It's like, do you want me to put the proverbial foot in their hind quarter?

[B]

I'm sure, be the tough guy. So, I mean, this is. I think that is part of the struggle that. I mean, we definitely have it in technology side of things, which is there's an enthusiasm for said tool. And it doesn't mean you actually see the benefit of that tool. It's like, what happened when we went from CAD to bim. What happened with CAD to bim? Well, you could add way more detail now, and so you could nitpick all kinds of things and continue to zoom in. Zoom in, zoom in. Like, this is CAD in general, right. Going digital. Just said, now you can zoom in forever and be accurate.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And I'm using my podcast in air quotes because accuracy. There's a lot of ways to define accuracy. Right. And when you're talking about design intent, you're talking about something entirely different than what you're talking about when somebody says LOD 350 or 400 or all the way up to whatever, 500. And so I feel like those are all symptoms along the way of what we're continuing to experience with this stuff, which is, oh, well, if. Okay, yeah, it wrote the thing. It was good enough, but let's try three more versions. Let's try these options. Let's stress test this. Let's go. Go. Keep going, keep going. And it's not. You're not actually getting that time back that everybody talked about. Right. And so by continuing to operate like that, your mind is. I mean, man, talk about distractions and more things to do and more things to hold in your brain and more things to try. And now you start making lists about things to try. And it's like, this is never ending. And so can you actually blame people who have literally been trained to not pay attention to something for more than three seconds? There was some study that said that you. And I don't know that this number sounds a little crazy, but I think it was on. I want to say McKinsey, but I could be wrong, but it was something like, you switch applications 1200 times per day. That's a lot. Okay, 1200 times a day is once, like, every 27 seconds. So if you're in revit all day long, okay, probably not, but how many monitors do you have going at one time? How many apps do you have on the screen at one time? Visually, you're switching. So you have four monitors.

[A]

Well, I have three monitors and an iPad sitting Right, Okay.

[B]

And so it's not accounting necessarily because you know as well as I do, like I can scroll over to my email program right now and I can scroll the list of emails while I'm still actively in this app.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And so that doesn't count as a click. That just, that's a visual click if we want to call it that. Same thing on the phone, you've got notifications popping up, you're swiping between apps, you're going to this. I feel this so strongly, which is like I went into the email to do something and pretty soon I'm doing something else and I forgot what I went in there for. And that is like the minorist version of this.

[A]

Right.

[B]

There are so many things that need to happen and I have zero way now today. I mean, this is, I'm blaming myself for this. I have no way to stay on track. I, I have no ability to stay on track. How do I do it?

[A]

So funny example or real example? We're in a meeting, we were talking about a bunch of things I wrote down. You know what those things that I needed to kind of track were? Right. One of them was, is I needed to respond to an email that had, that we had agreed upon a couple of different dates for some deliverables and I wanted to make sure that I memorialized those along with a couple of few line item details of things that we need from them. Right. So hung up, you know, kind of did like a little after action meeting with some of the people who were on our team that, that were on the meeting. We just kind of made sure and said, yeah, I'll go ahead and draft and send off that, that email. So I click reply all to the email, start doing some, start writing it out, right? And then zoom pops up and somebody says, hey Corma, can you help me out with something this or do you have a second to chat about a question that I have on a submission? One second, like, sure.

[B]

Got time for a quick chat.

[A]

And then about later, four hours or so later, somebody had reached out and said, hey, did you ever send that, that email? I didn't see it. I was just wanted to make sure it was squared away. So I'm like, got it written. All I got to do is hit send, not a big deal. And they're like, okay, cool, thanks, appreciate it. So then here I am, I run off to, to school right after I had that whole not a big deal, I've already written it. Just got to hit send normally like a fool. Normal, no no, no, it gets food. It gets. I haven't hit my level of foolishness yet. So. So I was just like, well, let me, let me just. Let me just read it, make sure it sounds all right. Make sure I've got everything that we wanted to cover in the, in the email response. All right. It's looking good. Looking good. Something else pops up. Somebody calls me, hey, Cormack, you got a real quick second? Sure. Let's start talking. Start talking. Start talking. Right. This is on a Friday where I have to leave at 11 in the afternoon to go teach. Leave to go teach. I get a text like almost at the end of the day. Just double checking. Make sure you've sent off that email. No, I did not. Again, it is written. It is ready to go. I have not hit sent. So I'm like, damn it. Sorry, I have not. It's written. It's sitting in my inbox or my, my draft box. I'll do it when I get home. Thankfully. Thankfully I did remember to do it when I got home. I started writing that email because this was our overseas client. We have early, early meetings with them. Started writing this email at 7:30 in the morning. I sent it at 7:30pm really, really kormic.

[B]

Productive. Yeah, you are. Model of productivity.

[A]

Model of productivity.

[B]

Model of focus, product of the times, more like it. It's. Yeah, it's. What do we do about that? I mean this is the life that. Which is just constantly putting out fires.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And right.

[B]

What happened to those days when you used to like open up a book and start reading and then eight hours were gone and you were like, what just happened?

[A]

I constantly.

[B]

You could get so deep into one thing.

[A]

Yeah. I constantly refer to several of our projects as just constant fire drills. We're always running after putting out one fire after another, after another after another. I mean everybody as you know, because of the expediency of our responses to people, the expediency of being. Of our availability and things like that where connected every. Exactly. Everybody thinks that this. What used to the immediacy of the priority. Right.

[B]

And so what's the, the Eisenhower matrix? Right. It's like, it's like urgent but urgent and important. Urgent but not important. Important but like there's four boxes and. And it was like basically anything that's in these three boxes, you don't need to do those yet. You need to do only the things that are in this box. But there's like, we don't necessarily have the right filters for urgent and important it seems like.

[A]

So it goes back to this kind of like earlier conversation that we were having about the meetings. The in person meetings versus the online meetings. Online meetings. It's very easy for people to get distracted during those meetings. Oh yeah. Whether they're on a, on camera or not, if they're not talking, they might be looking at something else or they may be having to like do a slide deck or draw door detail stuff.

[B]

They have to have deadlines. Right.

[A]

That getting in the way of.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

And if you think about it, when you're in the office and you're face to face with somebody, there's just so much time that I can legitimately take up of your time when I come to talk to you about something that I will walk away from you and go and do my work. And. And now it's, it's become so easy to have multiple distractions. I literally will have people queue up in that. Once they see my little red dot go green, they'll immediately say, hey, Cormac, just want to catch you before your, your next call. Need to have a chat with you about something.

[B]

It's a, it's actually called stalking. That's called stalking. That's, that's.

[A]

I, I feel like I'm stalked an awful lot.

[B]

These little, these little indicators of availability are evil. That's indicators of availability. There's the title.

[A]

Could you just imagine if you are actually sitting in the office and you have like a little red light, green light at your desk.

[B]

You like at your desk and you

[A]

hit it and when it goes red, it's like, don't talk to me. Let me just sit there and focus and work. And then you can like click it and it goes green and it's just like, okay, now, now I am free for talk.

[B]

You have all, you have just these signs going up every once in a. All over the office, different desks at different states and they're constantly moving. I mean, it reminds me of this work, this book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. And it's all about the ability for us to do real work and not just constantly be doing stuff that would qualify as keeping you busy, which isn't real work.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's kind of like accounting of. We have to do this all the time in architecture offices, right. You have to respond to those chats, respond to those emails, you have to file those emails, you have to prepare for the meeting, you have to do the after action review. You've got, you've got a. There's so many things, right? You've got to follow up on this and send this file to that person and. Oh, really? You needed a JPEG instead of a PDF and you can't do that yourself. Like there's just all of these different versions of got to load the paper in the printers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And none of that is deep work. And there's like, literally nobody even knows what that means anymore. You have to go into a windowless room and lock the door where no one can find you. You have to go to a coffee shop. You have to do it on nights and weekends. You have to do it on your lunch hour while you're eating. It's like, when do you actually have the opportunity and the profession that we are in benefits from and requires a level of deep work for the type of work that we do.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But we have been inundated. And this is like boiling the frog. Right. These things, I think is just kind of caught up to the modern way of doing business, which is you're always available, you're always on call, you have a leash right here, this phone that's in your pocket, right. That people can call on you at any moment and bug you, if not actually get a hold of you and require your time. It's like. And so again, I guess this goes back to that original idea of boundaries and discipline.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

Boundaries and discipline. And that falls on the individual. And okay, so this takes me back, like way back to Andrew Maynard's stuff from. From a long time ago. He had a blog, so Architect, is that his name? Right. He's the guy who does the videos now. Him and Kevin Archy marathon, they go out and do all these cool videos. And he used to keep this three ring binder on his desk, like with the employee manual in it. Right. And it was like there was all these things that were written down for the firm that nobody paid attention to, nobody honored these things, which. So it was like working overtime. And it was all nighters and it was all these things and it was basically like, I'm actually going to go buy this book that you have published and say this is your employee manual. And everything that you say to me that falls outside of this manual, I'm just going to say no to. And I think it's really applicable to what I'm talking about now with boundaries and discipline. Like, we don't. I think the default answer to most things should be no.

[A]

Right?

[B]

Because we have a job to do.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And all this other stuff is not urgent, nor is it important. And sometimes it starts to bleed into one of those boundaries, and that might not even be your problem, but you've been asked to do it by somebody else. How do you say no more?

[A]

Yeah, I could have easily started with what is the most difficult word for an architect?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

No. Well, we could look at that. Huh. That's interesting.

[B]

Study that.

[A]

Let us study that. That or. And I can't tell you how many times I've been on meetings where somebody will say something and I will kind of like quietly message them. It's just like, that's not in our scope.

[B]

Don't agree to that.

[A]

Don't agree to that. Or somebody will call me out on it and say, cormac, we've already gone through this. They've asked for this a couple of times. Let's. Let's just say no to them. And then, then halfway through me somewhat agreeing to do something, I have to figure out a way to backtrack.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Which is a gift, if you can do it. I don't know how well I am, but I try. I try to say no, but that's the hardest thing is like, we are. We are the pleaser. We are a customer service profession, and we feel like saying no to somebody. Is that. And then we wonder, well, we didn't hit our target profitability on this project. Does you care to tell us why? Because we couldn't say no. We kept saying yes.

[B]

Well, there's that. There's also. There's a million reasons why that might have happened.

[A]

Sure, sure.

[B]

There's a million reasons.

[A]

We couldn't say no to them. We couldn't say no to us. We couldn't say no to, you know,

[B]

we didn't foresee we had unforeseen conditions. We didn't know the computers were going to take a crap in the middle of the, like, whatever. There's so many.

[A]

There's so many things we didn't realize that we broke this project up into two models. And when you open up one model, it takes 57 minutes. When you open up the other model, it's only 43 minutes. And if you try to open them up at the same time, you can try to open them up at the same time, but that's an hour and 20 some odd minutes. I'm not saying that that's anything that I've ever clocked before, but what do I do for that?

[B]

Those are pretty accurate numbers.

[A]

Those are pretty. But what do I do for that time when I'm trying to actually open up something? It's just Like I have a meeting. I'm going to be talking to Evan in a few minutes about something. Okay. Where do I need to get that information from? Oh, I need to get it from the model. Okay, well, our meeting's at 11. At 9:30 I better start getting my stuff wound up or I won't be ready for that meeting. And so now here you are starting at 9:30 to do to get prepared for an 11, 11 o' clock meeting and half of your computer is bogged down because you're trying to open up this unruly, massive model. Not saying that that is something that I've lived through for in 13 days will have been exactly five years. But I'm not, I'm not counting, I'm not counting.

[B]

Again, weirdly precise numbers for things you're not tracking.

[A]

Yes. Think of how many times over the course of just this five year prior, the five years that this project has been going on. And we've always talked about some of the projects that, that you're. That of that you've worked on, that I've worked on, that I have right now that have taken so long. How many times a good no would have saved us so much time, effort. I wish somebody would have said no to me when I mentioned to them, hey, let's just do these eight buildings in two models rather than eight models.

[B]

Yeah, hindsight, exactly.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And. And you'll never make that mistake again.

[A]

I mean they say that the best way for someone to learn is from their mistakes, not from their successes.

[B]

They do say that that is where

[A]

learning and may have architects mastered their profession because. Yeah, yeah. And then, I mean, I don't know if you consider RFIs or change orders or ASIs or anything else like that a mistake, but sometimes you're like, man, I wish I would have caught that. I don't know if you've ever thought

[B]

RFI stands for room for improvement. Cormac.

[A]

Oh, okay, cool. I like that. Yeah.

[B]

Thank you for pointing that out.

[A]

I appreciate it. That's a very interesting, it's a very interesting observation. I'll take a look at that.

[B]

It's in the drawings. Cormic.

[A]

We were, we were talking today, I was talking to a friend who was talking about what is the professional proper way of saying no or the colorful two word metaphor for no. The other one, the FU version of it. And we were, we were commenting that the British. And since I've dealt with a lot of British architects and engineers recently over the course of this last five year project, one of the interesting things is they'll say, well, we'll take that under advisement.

[B]

Very polite. That's a very polite engineer thing to say.

[A]

Exactly, exactly.

[B]

I will, I will not admit whether this was right or wrong. I may or may not take a look at this in the future.

[A]

But we will take, I'll take it under advisement. You're right.

[B]

They do very general.

[A]

They seem to say that often.

[B]

To me, that's non committal. I mean, that's basically. I mean. And you interpret that as a no. Oh, that's not happening.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah. Or is that going.

[B]

Yeah. I remember in pro practice class, my professor, every time he would like, role play a conversation with a client, and basically every time the client asked some kind of a question about what if we explored, blah, blah, blah, what if we. Well, now, I want this many, whatever bedrooms or bathrooms or whatever it is. And every time he would say, he would quiz the class, now what do you do? And like every class, he would bring this piece of paper with him that was an agreement for additional services. He would bring it to class and he would hold it up. He'd say, what's the answer to that question? And he would hold up this piece of paper.

[A]

Additional services.

[B]

Additional services, Yep. That wasn't in the contract.

[A]

Although I don't really, I don't remember during propractice, the discussion.

[B]

No, no, no, you were ditching class.

[A]

No, the discussion about your phone. Additional services. Yeah, no phone back then the discussion about additional services and the painful back and forth negotiations of you submit something that's basically just the hours that you've already expended on said task that they asked you to do. And they push back and say, I don't really think that these hours are justified with the work that has been produced. Like, but all the meetings, all of the this, all of the that, we did this, this, this and this. And they're like, yeah, well, we don't, we don't see it that way.

[B]

See, you're doing it back, you're doing it backwards there. You pull out the additional services. When the request comes up, you get the signature and now we can move forward and actually do these things. Because if they don't want to do that, then what's the answer, Cormac? No, no, no. Then we're not doing it. You're going to pay me to do it or we're not doing it. There's a lesson in there, isn't there?

[A]

There is a lesson. One of these days I'll learn it. Not your win. But before you retire, which kind of retire.

[B]

Whenever that is.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

We'll just leave that open ended.

[A]

Exactly. There are a few examples of retirement, and I think I might be taking the latter of them. Which one? I'm talking about.

[B]

Why is that? Because you love this profession so much. Because you don't ever want to leave it. Because.

[A]

Don't know how to say no.

[B]

Just trying to figure this out. Trying to figure out the psychology of

[A]

you don't ever try that. Won't ever try that.

[B]

Lose that game.

[A]

Yeah, I lose that game every day.

[B]

Yeah. We've all got our own mental illness. Karmic. We're not special.

[A]

True, true, true.

[B]

We have to deal with it more than anybody else.

[A]

Yep.