A World Without Email - Book Summary and Notes
Can you imagine a world without email? This would have been a very simple question to answer a bit more than a decade ago before email became an incredibly widespread tool the wide majority of organizations and individuals would rely on daily. A world without email seems unimaginable in this historical period when this communication tool is extensively embedded in our daily lives. Despite the prominent role of email in the way we work and interact in the digital age, professor and writer Cal Newport puts forward a solid argument for a more intentional knowledge economy, where email goes back to merely being a communication tool (the purpose it was invented for), as opposed to a means of hyperactive hive mind collaboration. Newport postulates that we can in fact exist without such a mindless use of email if we put in place orderly processes that centralize the way we collaborate. The problem is: email has been mistaken (and widely accepted) for a productivity-enhancing tool by the wider population, where collaboration can happen rapidly, although in an asynchronous manner. This is far from the truth, as professor Newport argues. The issue with email is not the tool itself; in fact, the author does not suggest email be completely banned from knowledge work. The email issue is the way we are currently using it: with a hyperactive hive mind approach.
The book A World Without Email is composed of two main parts, which is the logical way prof. Newport breaks down the central thesis presented in the book. Part one illustrates “The Case Against Email” (reduction of productivity, miserable workloads, the unscheduled and asynchronous nature of email); part two is all about the key principles for a world without email. Before beginning with these two sections of the book, however, prof. Newport introduces the book by explaining the hyperactive hive mind, which is the avoidable and cognitively costly workflow we base most of our work on. This makes it clear that this book is not against email as a tool (in fact, Newport underlines numerous times in the book how email as a communication tool — the scope it was invented for — is amazing); it is against the way we have been using email (and similar instant messaging tools) in the knowledge economy paradigm: a collaboration tool. The world without email is a place where most of the time is spent on doing hard work, as opposed to talking about the work.
The Hyperactive Hive Mind
“A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services. ”
There is an underlying belief, in the knowledge sector, that frenetic communication equals work. The perceived cognitive busyness caused by exchanging emails frenetically makes it feel like work and provides a soothing (short-term) antidote to the constantly changing circumstances around us, that are in fact driven by very complex mechanisms. 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 Case Against Email
““Every time you switch your attention from one task to another, you are basically asking your brain to switch all of these cognitive resources””
The case against email laid out by prof. Newport has its pillars in three main characteristics of email:
Email reduces productivity -> 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 makes us miserable -> especially for those individuals who score high in neuroticism (a personality trait 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.
“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.”
— Cal Newport - “A World Without Email”
Email has a mind of its own -> the rate of spread of email in the business world since the 90s has been outstanding, almost to such a point that the hyperactive hive mind workflow has chosen us, instead of the other way around (in the view of technological determinism). According to Newport, there have been three main drivers of the hyperactive hive mind:
“The hidden costs of asynchrony”: synchrony might be “expensive” to set up, but constant asynchrony (hyperactive hive mind) is much more expensive in the long term, as issues that may be solved in a couple of minutes during a face-to-face interaction tend to stretch in long threads of mindless back and forth.
“The cycle of responsiveness”: using email widely causes more people to rely on this tool, which fuels an endless feedback loop, that no one actually actively decided to implement rationally.
“The caveman at the computer screen”
Principles for a World Without Email
There are four fundamental principles that prof. Newport presents in the book as antidotes to the hyperactive hive mind workflow:
The attention capital principle -> “the optimal way to deploy our human brains is sequentially” (Newport, 2021). There are two main components to knowledge work: work execution and workflows. The former is what ultimately creates value for the organization and the wider society; the latter is what’s needed to optimize and maximize work execution.
The process principle -> incorporating efficient production processes to 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 are one of the key tools shared by prof. Newport when it comes to setting up processes.
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 operation in the long term” (Newport, 2021). Scheduling specific protocols of communication is at the very core of the protocol principle, which may feel like a waste of time in the moment, but can make everything smoother in the long run.
The specialization principle -> “less can be more”. This is the core of the specialization principle, which postulates that, in the knowledge work sector, focusing on a small number of things deeply can significantly increase productivity.
“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. ”
