Attention switching costs are huge on our brains and workflows. This means that constantly jumping from one task to another brings with it a significant cognitive load that slows down our ability to focus and get the most out of our work. Yet, reactively replying to emails appears to be a “productive” use of our time on most occasions, due to the perceived convenience of this workflow in the short run.

Email reduces productivity

There's nothing fundamental about these newly increased workloads; they're instead an unintended side effect—a source of stress and anxiety that we can diminish if we're willing to step away from the frenetic back-and-forth that defines the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

Attention capital is creating workflows that optimize the human brain's ability to add value to information. Not just to chase our own tails and send and receive more emails. The optimal way to deploy our human brains is sequentially. There are 2 main components to knowledge work: <ul><li>work execution, which requires more autonomy and is where knowledge workers use their brains and skills</li><li> workflow, which is where you need less autonomy because it is the structure and coordination of the work</li></ul>

The attention capital principle

By spending more time setting up rules or protocols for work in advance, we can spend less effort coordinating the work at the moment. An eg: The standard protocol meeting scheduling is "energy-minimizing email ping pong," which has a low energy cost at the moment but large cognitive costs long-term. Something like a scheduling link or open office hours can change that dramatically. Consider, customer support protocols like using team emails instead of personal ones Also, consider email protocols like not promising to reply to every email and keeping emails short.

The protocol principle

Always keeping emails short is a simple rule, but the effects can be profound. Once you no longer think of email as a general-purpose tool for talking about anything at any time, its stranglehold on your attention will diminish.

For those individuals who score high in neuroticism (a <a href="https://simonesmerilli.com/life/personality-big-five">personality trait</a> that is correlated with high levels of anxiety and negative emotions), the mere thought of batching email replies or using a more mindful approach to this tool can be stress-inducing. This is because of the paleolithic nature of our social-animal brains, who feel FOMO (fear of missing out) and uneasiness at the mere thought of not replying instantly to interactions with other human beings who are part of our same tribe.

Email makes us miserable

The rate of spread of email since the 90s has been outstanding, almost to such a point that the hyperactive hive mind workflow has chosen us. 3 main drivers for this<ul><li>“The hidden costs of asynchrony”: synchrony might be “expensive” to set up, but constant asynchrony is much more expensive in the long term, as issues that may be solved in a couple of minutes tend to stretch in long threads of mindless back and forth.</li><li>“The cycle of responsiveness”: Email fuels an endless feedback loop, that no one actually actively decided to implement rationally.</li><li>"The caveman at the computer screen"</li></ul>

Email has a mind of its own

According to data gathered by the time-tracking software <a class="idea-content-link" href="https://www.rescuetime.com/">RescueTime</a><ul><li>Half of the users check communication applications like email or Slack every six minutes or less.</li><li>The most common average checking time was once every minute.</li><li>For half the users studied, the longest unbroken period of work was no more than forty minutes, with the most typical longest time being only twenty minutes.</li><li>More than two-thirds of users never experienced an hour without an interruption.</li><li>For business users, the average email volume was 126 messages per day.</li></ul>

A terrible way to extract value from human neurons

Once we understand the contours of our frustrations with knowledge work, we recognize that we have the potential to make these efforts not only massively more productive but also massively more fulfilling and sustainable.

Incorporating efficient production processes into knowledge work can make an incredible difference in increasing performance and minimizes ambiguity as to what to work on at any given time. Task boards like Asana and Trello are some of the key tools when it comes to setting up processes. For a production process to be effective, it should be:<ul><li>Easy to review who's working on what and how that work is going</li><li>Possible to make progress without lots of unscheduled communication</li><li>Known procedures for updating assignments to minimize both unscheduled communication and ambiguity</li></ul>

The process principle

There is an underlying belief, in the knowledge sector, that hyper-communication equals work. We are part of a workflow centered around ongoing conversations fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. Constantly switching tasks and responding to email fuels our human need to rationalize what is happening around us, often helping us flee from the more nuanced and complex reality.

The Hyperactive Hive Mind

The specialization principle says that doing fewer things with higher quality and more accountability can significantly improve productivity. Basically, applying essentialism to knowledge work. Less intense ways to further specialize are:<ul><li>Outsourcing what you don't do well</li><li>Giving your <a href="https://workbrighter.co/remote-management/">team</a> more autonomy</li><li>Sprinting on specific projects</li><li>Considering budgeting attention, workloads, or meeting time</li></ul>Companies should also consider supercharging support staff and making those roles more efficient, building smart interfaces between specialists and support or different departments.

THE SPECIALIZATION PRINCIPLE

Easy to implement strategies to better manage your email and keep messages in your inbox to a minimum.

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Managing Email Effectively

Outlines recommendations for business leaders on how to maximize a working team's professional productivity by improving administrative support and streamlining digital traffic.

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A New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller From New York Times bestselling 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. Above all else, important communication is streamlined, and inboxes and chat channels are no longer central to how work unfolds. The knowledge sector's evolution beyond the hyperactive hive mind is inevitable. The question is not whether a world without email is coming (it is), but whether you'll be ahead of this trend. If you're a CEO seeking a competitive edge, an entrepreneur convinced your productivity could be higher, or an employee exhausted by your inbox, A World Without Email will convince you that the time has come for bold changes, and will walk you through exactly how to make them happen.

Cal Newport is Provost’s Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, and the author of seven books. His ideas and writing are frequently featured in major publications and on TV and radio.From his website: "I write about the intersection of digital technology and culture. I’m particularly interested in our struggle to deploy these tools in ways that support instead of subvert the things we care about in both our personal and professional lives."

CAL NEWPORT

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