AWorldWithoutEmail

• Fantastic! (Changed my life for the better)
• A widely accepted premise of the modern knowledge work is that email saved us. Used To Believe [BROKEN LINK: 67F22]
• What if email didn't save us, but instead accidentally traded minor convinces for a major drag on real productivity, leading to slower economic growth over the last few decades? [BROKEN LINK: 67F22]
• Deep work argues that the knowledge sector is undervaluing concentration. While the ability to rapidly communicate using digital messages is useful, the frequent disruptions also make it hard to focus, which has a major impact on our ability to produce value output.
• Constant communication is not something that gets in the way of real work. it has instead become totally intertwined with how work gets done.
• As email spread in the 80s and 90s it introduced something novel: low-friction communication at scale.
• We didn't just shift our existing volume of voicemails, faxes, and memos to email. We completely transformed the underlying workflow that determines how our daily efforts unfold.
• There is a massive productivity currently latent in the knowledge sector. To unlock it will require much more systematic thinking about how best to organize.
• The future of work is increasingly cognitive. This means that the sooner we take seriously how human brains actually function, the sooner we'll realize that the hyperactive hive mind is a disastrously ineffective way to organize our efforts. NowIsDifferent [BROKEN LINK: 67F22]
• Knowledge work does not yet have its Henry Ford, but workflow innovations with impact on the same scale as the assembly line are inevitable. [BROKEN LINK: 67F22] UnpopularImportantTruth
• Our brains do not parallel process information.
• "I worry that ill face my death and realize that life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff."
• Study of the Stirrup: example of a technology introduced for a simple reason (to make riding horses easier) leading to vast and complicated consequences never imagined by its inventors (the rise of medieval feudalism). History
• Computer scientists investigating asynchronous communications discovered that spreading out communication with unpredictable delays introduced tricky new complexities.
• Since 1900 the productivity of manual labor increased by a factor of 50. The push to make knowledge work more efficient will be the central challenge of our times. Politics
• The attention capital principle: the productivity of the knowledge sector can be significantly increased if we identify workflows that better optimize the human brains ability to sustain-ably add value to information.
• Build structures around autonomy Mental Models
• Workflows should not be left to individuals to figure out on their own, as the most effective systems are unlikely to arise naturally. SystemsNotGoals
• Minimize mid-task context switching and minimize the sense of communication overload. Checklists Mental Models
• In knowledge work, "Innovation" applies to the products we produce, but not the means by which we produce them.
• Good is not the same as easy, fulfilling is not the same as convenient.

n- The process principle: introducing smart production processes to knowledge work can dramatically increase performance and make the work much less draining.

• Maintain a board for every major role in your professional life.
• You need set times each week to review and update your personal board
• Put your solo review meetings on your calendar and protect them like any other meeting or appointment.
• "You should spend 30x the amount of time training someone to do a task than it would take you to do the task yourself one time"
• By adding complexity to the rules we use to structure our communication, the actual amount of information required by the interactions can be reduced (ala Shannon). Rationality
• Central idea in Shannon's information theory: clever protocols that take into account the structure of the information being communicated can perform MUCH better than naive approaches. Mental Models
• Anyone whose job requires more than one or two scheduled events in a typical week should be using a scheduling service SystemsNotGoals
• Why are the recipients in email addresses almost always people, and not, for example, departments, projects, or activities.
• When you eliminate support staff, the skilled professionals become less intellectually specialized, as they have to spend more time on administrative work that computers made just easy enough for them to handle on their own.
• The specialization principle: In the knowledge sector, working on fewer things, but doing teach thing with more equality and accountability, can be the foundation for significantly more productivity.
• There are few things more valuable than someone who consistently produces valuable output, and few approaches to work more satisfying than being given the room to focus on things that really matter. Reliability
• Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new medium does not add something; it changes everything. In the year 1500, after the printing press was invented, you did not have old Europe plus the printing press. You had a different Europe. History
• Knowledge worker productivity is the moonshot of the twenty first century. NowIsDifferent