Less Busy Lab (http://lessbusylab.com/) is the productivity podcast for people who want to get the right things done and still feel calm when the laptop closes.
Moah & Alex met at MIT and later went on to build Boomerang (https://boomerangapp.com/?utm_source=lessbusylab_description&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=lessbusylab&utm_content=description), the multi-million-dollar productivity suite used by millions while amassing more than a dozen patents on productivity technology.
After fifteen years of leading an efficient team that consistently out-performs its size without burning out, they’ve learned that real productivity isn’t a single system or a 4am morning routine. Alongside parenting two energetic kids together, they continue to hack on their own productivity and enjoy reading research papers with a glass of wine after the kids go to bed.
In each episode, they unpack the research behind focus, overwhelm, habit change, task management (https://www.gqueues.com/?utm_source=lessbusylab_description&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=lessbusylab&utm_content=description), and procrastination while sharing honest stories of the methods they’ve tried—what stuck, what flopped, and why. You’ll leave with practical, actionable tips to discover your own “productivity persona,” lift team performance, and feel less busy while getting more done.
If you’re looking for thoughtful guidance on getting the right things done faster while feeling less busy, you’ll feel at home here.
Nobody Blames the Room: Optimizing Your Physical Environment
When a workday goes badly, we blame the coffee or the sleep. Almost nobody blames the room. But the air quality, temperature, and noise around you have a measurable effect on how well you think and make decisions.
Alex and Moah recorded this episode with a CO2 monitor in the booth and watched the number climb while they started having trouble finding words.
Harvard's Joseph Allen put office workers in a controlled office and dialed the air quality up and down. Cognitive scores were 101% higher with enhanced ventilation, and dropped 50% at 1,400 ppm of CO2, a level plenty of bedrooms and conference rooms hit routinely. A modest rise in fine particle pollution made expert chess players 26% more likely to blunder. Students in dorms without AC performed 13% slower during a heat wave.
Air, temperature, and pollution have an ideal range no matter what you're doing. Everything else depends on the task. Alex and Moah get into why a 60-decibel air conditioner beats a 45-decibel conversation two desks away, what ceiling height does to a brainstorm, why open-plan offices backfired, and how to fix your space when you don't control the thermostat. Also: Moah's plan to monetize all of this with a scented candle.
This episode is dedicated to Ryeon, our editor, who made us sound better than we deserve to.
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Links from the show!
CO2 is a big deal https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502459/ (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26502459/)
Temperature for health and productivity in offices https://www.osti.gov/biblio/886957 (https://www.osti.gov/biblio/886957)
Colour of noise and work efficiency https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347958829_Spectral_content_colour_of_noise_exposure_affects_work_efficiency (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347958829_Spectral_content_colour_of_noise_exposure_affects_work_efficiency)
Aromatherapy: effects on cognition and mood https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10808709_AROMAS_OF_ROSEMARY_AND_LAVENDER_ESSENTIAL_OILS_DIFFERENTIALLY_AFFECT_COGNITION_AND_MOOD_IN_HEALTHY_ADULTS (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10808709_AROMAS_OF_ROSEMARY_AND_LAVENDER_ESSENTIAL_OILS_DIFFERENTIALLY_AFFECT_COGNITION_AND_MOOD_IN_HEALTHY_ADULTS)
Chessmaster paper: Indoor air quality and strategic decisionmaking - https://dusp.mit.edu/news/how-indoor-air-quality-impacts-decision-making (https://dusp.mit.edu/news/how-indoor-air-quality-impacts-decision-making)
Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com (http://gqueues.com)
Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com (http://boomeranggmail.com)
Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com (http://boomerangoutlook.com)
2 Jul 2026
Everyone’s a Manager Now: Delegating, for Humans and AI
Everyone needs to learn to delegate effectively in the age of AI, even if you don’t manage any humans. AI agents will research the paper, write the draft, crunch the spreadsheet, just about anything you need, short of grabbing your coffee. So why does it still go sideways so often? In this episode, Alex and Moah reveal the ways delegating tasks to a machine are the same as delegating to a person — and the science that explains why most of us are bad at both. Research shows the CEOs who delegate well make 33% More revenue — yet 75% of top CEOs admit they're bad at this one skill.
Along the way, Alex and Moah dig into why we struggle to let go, like the psychology that makes your own work feel superior and the cognitive bias that mistakes long hours for good results. To help you level up your ability to delegate, they walk through the five levels of managerial delegation, the 1974 Harvard Business Review classic that asks "who's got the monkey?", and the military’s concept of "Commander's Intent". You'll leave with one concrete assignment: find the single task on next week's plate that only you can do, and hand off something else to a person or a machine. The hard part was never the handoff. It's the trust.
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Links from the show!
Gallup: Companies with CEOs who delegate better https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182414/delegating-huge-management-challenge-entrepreneurs.aspx (https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182414/delegating-huge-management-challenge-entrepreneurs.aspx)
9 Tips to Delegate Effectively https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively (https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively)
Commander’s Intent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_(military))
Who’s Got the Monkey? https://internalmedicinefaculty.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Whos-Got-the-Monkey-HBR.pdf (https://internalmedicinefaculty.wustl.edu/app/uploads/2018/05/Whos-Got-the-Monkey-HBR.pdf)
Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com (http://gqueues.com)
Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com (http://boomeranggmail.com)
Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com (http://boomerangoutlook.com)
*Correction: We misstated a statistic in the audio. Delegator CEOs had a 3-year growth rate that was 112 percentage points higher (1,751% growth vs. ~1,639% for low delegators.)
27 May 2026
AI Brain Fry Is Real, And It's Coming for Your Best Employees
Ever close your laptop and realize you're snapping at your kids over the smallest thing? You might be experiencing what researchers are now calling AI brain fry but even if you've never touched an AI agent, the underlying problem is one we all share: our brains were never built for the amount of multitasking we are handling today.
Moah and Alex dig into why multitasking exhausts us (even as we're getting more done), the unsettling stat that our average focused attention has dropped from 3 minutes in the early 2000s to 47 seconds today, and what actually helps.
In this episode, you will learn:
Why our brains weren't built for the always-on workday
The 7-second cost of a single notification glance
The 2.5% of people who are actual "supertaskers"
How to leave a "start here" note for your future self
Good news, though: you don't have to become a luddite and swear off AI to maintain your sanity. Moah and Alex share practical tactics like subtask boundaries, self-interrupted context switching, and the "routine complex cycle" for making the work more sustainable for your mental energy. If you've ever snapped at someone at the dinner table because your brain was still stuck at your desk, this one's for you.
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Links from the show!
Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com (http://gqueues.com)
Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com (http://boomeranggmail.com)
Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com (http://boomerangoutlook.com)
Switching at breakpoints is better for your focus than being interrupted: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/oasis-a-framework-for-linking-notification-delivery-to-the-perceptual-structure-of-goal-directed-tasks/ (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/oasis-a-framework-for-linking-notification-delivery-to-the-perceptual-structure-of-goal-directed-tasks/)
Gloria Mark: Why our attention spans are shrinking https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans (https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans)
Digital dementia and shrinking gray matter: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32062336/ (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32062336/)
*Correction: In the audio we said time between task switches used to be three to six minutes, but the median was actually two and a half minutes.
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5.0 / 5
8 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 24 / 100
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YouTube
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Engagement
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