Achieve a world without email

Why you should read Cal Newport’s book “A World Without Email” on finding focus, transforming productivity and improving communication.?

TL;DR. Managing our work through email and instant messaging is not productive and can lead to stress and burnout. We should redesign our workflows to reduce or eliminate our dependence on ad hoc, often random communication. Instead creating moments of uninterrupted focus and clarity.

The work many of us do falls into the category of “knowledge work”. Knowledge work is work that requires creativity and complex problem solving. Peter Drucker, the great management thinker, pointed out that knowledge work could not be directed in the same way that manual work could and it required the worker to be autonomous.?

This approach has been wholeheartedly adopted in many companies, how you do your work is, literally, up to you. The upside is that when you are asked to, say, analyze last month's sales numbers, you’re trusted to come up with the right insights and present them in the best possible way. The downside is what Cal Newport calls “The hyperactive hive mind”.

The hyperactive hive mind is how we structure much of our communication in today’s workplace. It’s a workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. This minor convenience, “I can ask anybody anything at any time” is a major drag on productivity as context switching, even briefly, induces a heavy cost in terms of mental energy.?

To overcome this problem we must first break knowledge work into two distinct parts: Execution and workflow.?

Execution, how we do our job, will for the most part be up to each knowledge worker. We can have models and predefined patterns to help us be faster but ultimately this is the core of the creativity that knowledge work requires to make information more valuable.???

Workflow should not be left up to the individual, however. This is what must be managed with the human brain in mind. Context switching and the sense of communication overload should be minimized while still getting done what needs to get done. Any workflow should also optimize for quantity and quality of work.?

Other sectors don’t use a hyperactive hivemind approach and we should be thankful that they don’t. Imagine what air traffic would be like if pilots communicated with each other ad hoc about who should land when, or how long it might take you to order shoes online if each order was managed through workers emailing or texting whoever they thought might know somebody who was driving in the direction of your home that day ??.?

Improving workflow is a team effort. It requires collaboration and iteration and no one solution is right for every team. Getting to the best workflow takes time but the payoffs are worth it.?

The promise of the book comes from an assumption that knowledge workers are in terms of productivity where manual workers were in 1900 and since then productivity of manual work has increased 50 fold. We must find ways to realize a similar gain for knowledge workers.

What should guide our way to this massive productivity boost? It all revolves around understanding and optimizing for how people do their best work even if other things become more inconvenient or slower. We do so by focusing on these 4 principles.

The attention capital principle. “The productivity of the knowledge sector can be significantly increased if we identify workflows that better optimize the brain’s ability to sustainably add value to information.”

The process principle. “Introducing smart production processes to knowledge work can dramatically increase performance and make the work less draining.”

The protocol principle. “Designing rules that optimize when and how coordination occurs in the workplace is a pain in the short term but can result in significantly more productive operations in the long term.”

The specialization principle. “Working on fewer things, but doing them with more quality and accountability, can be the foundation for significantly more productivity.”?

How specifically do we apply these principles? Here are some of the ideas put forward by the book. Cal Newport is a computer science professor, so if you’ve been around modern software development teams you’ll recognize some of these.?

Tip 1) Use multiple Kanban boards, both as a team and individually. Each card on such a board should be clear and informative and should preferably contain all communication on the matter to reduce the need to jump elsewhere to find the information.?

Pro tips for Kanban:?

• Create the columns you need but keep it simple. When in doubt default to having 3 columns: to do, doing, done.?
• Hold regular reviews of every board, even if it’s a personal kanban board.
• Introduce a “Discuss” column where cards that need a decision can be placed and then dealt with in a single meeting once there’s enough cards to merit it.?

Tip 2) Create proper channels. Make sure that there’s only one channel where requests get funneled through. Nothing gets lost and this makes it possible to measure the actual requests, which is good since you can’t manage what you can’t measure.

If you do something 30x a year you should probably automate it.

Automate processes. A rule of thumb, if you do something 30x a year you should probably automate it. The automation does not need to be in the form of software it can simply be: On the first Wednesday of the month - team A creates data X. The day after team B picks up data X and does Y to it, etc. This kind of automation makes work predictable and reduces or eliminates the need for back and forth emails.?

• Introduce office hours for important but non time sensitive requests.?
• Use scheduling services. Services such as Doodle, Calendly or recurring meetings. There are few things as taxing as scheduling over email.?
• Outsource what you don’t do well. You can also outsource the management of your proper channels. There is a reason why software teams have product owners who are responsible for prioritizing what gets worked on.
• Trade accountability for autonomy. Be an owner. By being accountable for the results you can become more autonomous.?
• Use status meetings. Like the daily standup in SCRUM. What did you do yesterday, what are you working on now and what’s blocking you? Keep it short. Have any technical discussions after the meeting. These status updates keep everyone in the know about what’s going on and allow for quick interventions in a timely manner without breaking concentration.??
• Use sprints, both in terms of “Scrum” style sprints, but also design sprints for getting all the stakeholders in a room to do the difficult ideation work in a condensed amount of time.?

Designing workflows has a huge impact on our working lives. When we create moments of focus rather than waste time and energy on planning, coordinating or looking for information we can improve productivity, reduce stress and truly deliver outstanding work.?