What the fuck are you talking about?

I don’t mind that meetings are often dull and tedious—so many things are and it doesn’t mean they aren’t necessary. The bigger problem is at the end of a meeting, everyone in the room can agree on something and you can go your separate ways, confident in the work you are about to do. But then a few days later, you realize that each of you left with a different idea about what you decided and none of you are pulling in the same direction. So now you need another meeting.

The reason for this problem is obvious: you work with idiots. Every single day you are surrounded by them. You talk to idiots, you email with idiots, you Slack with idiots. Your boss is probably an idiot. The guy at the desk next to you is probably an idiot. And, bad news, you’re most definitely an idiot, too.

We all have biases and make assumptions. And most of us lack the self-awareness to think we’re anything less than brilliant, when really, most of us working in one of those modern jobs (some terrible mix of marketing and design and technology where people use the word “innovative” a lot and there’s probably a foosball table in the office) are barely competent because these professions didn’t even exist five years ago. Of course, there’s miscommunication!

It doesn’t happen to me in every meeting, but it does happen more than I’m proud to admit. Or at least it did. Then I discovered the wisdom of Billy Beane and figured out the one productivity trick that is universally valuable. Seriously, you’ll want to write this one down. Here it is: at the end of every interaction you have with someone, look them in the eye and ask: “What the fuck are you talking about?”

When Michael Lewis wrote Moneyball, the book explored how the Oaklands A’s baseball club managed to stay competitive against teams like the Yankees and Red Sox, despite a comparatively small payroll. It’s the story of Billy Beane, the A’s general manager, deciding to use the advanced baseball statistics other teams were ignoring. He found value where other teams weren’t looking and exploited it. It’s a good book—you should read it; a lot of businesses could benefit from Beane’s approach.

But when Moneyball the book was turned into Moneyball the movie, creative choices were made. They added drama, renamed characters, changed events, and went about the business of creating a Hollywood movie with a bankable star. Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane spends his time on screen mostly snacking and staring into the middle distance because I guess that’s what they decided best visualized what the actual Billy Beane was going through. Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane also asks a lot of painfully simple questions, most of which are variations on “What the fuck are you talking about?” It’s amazing and, once I noticed it, it changed my life.