A World Without Email
author Cal Newport comes a bold vision for liberating workers from the tyranny of the inbox--and unleashing a new era of productivity. Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations--a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. There was a time when tools like email felt cutting edge, but a thorough review of current evidence reveals that the "hyperactive hive mind" workflow they helped create has become a productivity disaster, reducing profitability and perhaps even slowing overall economic growth. Equally worrisome, it makes us miserable. Humans are simply not wired for constant digital communication. We have become so used to an inbox-driven workday that it's hard to imagine alternatives. But they do exist. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, author and computer science professor Cal Newport makes the case that our current approach to work is broken, then lays out a series of principles and concrete instructions for fixing it. In A World without Email, he argues for a workplace in which clear processes--not haphazard messaging--define how tasks are identified, assigned and reviewed. Each person works on fewer things (but does them better), and aggressive investment in support reduces the ever-increasing burden of administrative tasks.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
17mentions
12people
2021–2025years
41% recommend59% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Email is the proxy for work management in many orgs. I think it could be a stand-in for GitHub issues instead, and the desire to process it while not observing the screen makes sense. (But I agree with your overall distaste for managing work that way. “A World Without Email” by Newport speaks directly to to that)
- Very interesting. I will take some time tonight to run the demo. I am a big believer in not switching tasks if it can be avoided. I loved Cal Newport's book "A World Without Email" which discusses context switching in the 'information worker' space as something that brings productivity to a halt. I believe he is right.
- "Where work happens" was the funniest tagline for Slack, because it's really more of a social network that distracts people and promotes unstructured back-and-forth.
If you're interested in learning about how decreasing barriers to communication in workplaces have resulted in over-communication and poor processes, check out the book A World without Email by Cal Newport. I highly recommend it.
Chat engages the small percent of active participants, but neglects people who are too busy (e.g., doing work) to follow along with the streams. This is a problem at work, but also in online communities like Discord. That's why I'm working on a threaded, forum-like communication tool. I'm focused on online communities as the first use case (e.g., investor networks or professional groups), but I hope companies start to adopt it for internal communications, too. https://www.booklet.community
Related, I found the article's discussions of Jira and Trello interesting. Modern project management hates ambiguity. So, all projects need to be broken down into tasks and acceptance criteria ASAP. But, this means that you have bloated backlogs reflecting yesteryear's priorities. We conflate "not forgetting things" with "obligations", and that is where a lot of this bloat comes from.
- Cal Newport's work may help. Check out "A World without Email". https://www.calnewport.com/books/a-world-without-email/
- Highly recommend World Without Email by Cal Newport on this exact topic: https://www.calnewport.com/books/a-world-without-email/
- Here's a list of books I found helpful when reflecting upon my recent burnout. Very similar thoughts around lack of purpose, lack of direction at work, common disruptions at work leading to not being able to work deeply. And much more.
Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization by Scott Barry Kaufman
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson
Inspired / Empowered by Marty Cagan
Build What Matters by Ben Foster
High Output Management by Andy Grove
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
Much by Cal Newport (Deep Work / A World Without Email / etc)
