Modern WisdomDoubling Facebook's Workforce Productivity & Fixing Your Calendar - Tim Campos | Modern Wisdom 248
Chris Williamson and Tim Campos on ex-Facebook CIO on taming calendars, email, and information overload.
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Tim Campos and Chris Williamson, Doubling Facebook's Workforce Productivity & Fixing Your Calendar - Tim Campos | Modern Wisdom 248 explores ex-Facebook CIO on taming calendars, email, and information overload Former Facebook CIO Tim Campos explains how he doubled Facebook’s workforce productivity by obsessively removing friction from employees’ daily workflows, from door badge readers to interview scheduling systems.
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Ex-Facebook CIO on taming calendars, email, and information overload
- Former Facebook CIO Tim Campos explains how he doubled Facebook’s workforce productivity by obsessively removing friction from employees’ daily workflows, from door badge readers to interview scheduling systems.
- He argues we’ve shifted from information scarcity to information surplus, making filtering, prioritization, and smarter tools (calendars, communication platforms, automation) more critical than simply accessing more data.
- Central to his philosophy is rigorous time management: defining long‑term life goals, planning weeks proactively, time blocking, and balancing “maker” (proactive) vs. “manager” (reactive) time.
- Campos describes how his company Woven aims to fix the broken calendar by integrating analytics, task-like events, and interoperability so people can actually spend time on what matters most.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasDesign systems to reduce friction in every recurrent workflow, even tiny ones.
Campos describes optimizing everything from badge-reader placement to IT vending machines at Facebook; small time savings compounded across thousands of employees result in massive productivity gains.
Treat time as your most finite asset and plan it deliberately.
He recommends defining long-term life goals, mapping them down to quarterly, weekly, and daily plans, and then using your calendar to intentionally allocate time to those priorities rather than letting urgency dictate your schedule.
Use time blocking to protect “maker time” from constant reactivity.
Campos pre-blocks strategic planning time, clusters planning early in the week, and enforces no‑meeting days so deep, proactive work doesn’t get crowded out by meetings, email, and other people’s urgencies.
Regular reflection on how you spent your day counteracts the pull of the urgent.
He keeps a daily journal of what was accomplished and what wasn’t; reviewing this exposes where urgent, low‑value tasks displaced important work and reinforces better choices for the next day.
Optimize communication tools for signal, not just access.
Email assumes every message must be read, leading to overload and poor prioritization; systems like Slack, newsfeeds, and future work tools should rank, filter, and constrain access so the most relevant information surfaces first.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesTime is the most valuable asset that we have.
— Tim Campos
We’ve gone from information scarcity to information surplus in probably 30 years.
— Chris Williamson
My job [at Facebook] was the productivity of the workforce.
— Tim Campos
The best engineers are the lazy ones. They don’t like to do repetitive work so they come up with mechanisms to avoid it.
— Tim Campos
Most people don’t fill their time until three days before the event occurs.
— Tim Campos
QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
5 questionsHow can an individual practically transition from a reactive, email-driven workday to a more proactive, time-blocked schedule without falling behind?
Former Facebook CIO Tim Campos explains how he doubled Facebook’s workforce productivity by obsessively removing friction from employees’ daily workflows, from door badge readers to interview scheduling systems.
What specific metrics beyond revenue per employee best capture true productivity and well-being in modern knowledge work?
He argues we’ve shifted from information scarcity to information surplus, making filtering, prioritization, and smarter tools (calendars, communication platforms, automation) more critical than simply accessing more data.
Where is the line between healthy automation and over-optimization that makes life feel overly rigid or mechanical?
Central to his philosophy is rigorous time management: defining long‑term life goals, planning weeks proactively, time blocking, and balancing “maker” (proactive) vs. “manager” (reactive) time.
How should organizations redesign their communication norms to reduce email overload while still remaining accessible to external contacts?
Campos describes how his company Woven aims to fix the broken calendar by integrating analytics, task-like events, and interoperability so people can actually spend time on what matters most.
In an era of analytics-driven calendars, how do we ensure that maximizing measurable productivity doesn’t crowd out unstructured time, creativity, and rest?
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
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