CORE IDEA: The Case Against Email

00:00:00.000 | So what I want to do is a core idea.

00:00:02.920 | I think the series has been going well.

00:00:05.800 | These, the core idea videos,

00:00:07.560 | which we have been releasing as standalone videos

00:00:10.160 | at youtube.com/CalNewportMedia

00:00:12.760 | have been some of the most popular videos

00:00:15.380 | we've been releasing.

00:00:16.760 | When Jesse and I had the original idea

00:00:18.640 | for doing a series of core idea segments, I made a list.

00:00:22.860 | Well, here are top of mind,

00:00:24.720 | the core ideas I come back to again and again

00:00:27.080 | in my writing and on this podcast.

00:00:29.040 | We have almost gotten through that entire list,

00:00:30.900 | but there is one topic left on that original list,

00:00:33.680 | and that is the topic I want to cover today,

00:00:36.980 | which is the case against email.

00:00:42.020 | Now, this is the ideas that I fully articulated

00:00:47.080 | in my most recent book, "A World Without Email."

00:00:51.100 | I also explored a lot of these ideas

00:00:53.320 | in my New Yorker writing.

00:00:55.040 | So if you look back at my New Yorker archive

00:00:57.120 | from before and even after the publication

00:00:59.680 | of "A World Without Email,"

00:01:00.520 | I also explored a lot of these ideas

00:01:02.460 | in the pages of the New Yorker as well.

00:01:04.320 | I want to capture them all now in one core idea segment.

00:01:08.660 | There's four parts here that I want to tackle.

00:01:12.040 | One, I'm going to introduce the notion

00:01:13.600 | of the hyperactive hive mind.

00:01:16.560 | It's the most important piece of vocabulary

00:01:19.040 | that you will come away from this segment having learned.

00:01:21.280 | If you listen to one thing, know this term.

00:01:24.360 | Two, I want to get into why the hyperactive hive mind

00:01:27.960 | is such a villain in the context of modern knowledge work.

00:01:32.120 | Three, I'm going to tackle if it's so bad,

00:01:34.520 | why is it so common?

00:01:36.660 | And then four, we will briefly touch on,

00:01:38.280 | so what should we do about it?

00:01:40.640 | All right, so that's my goal.

00:01:42.440 | So let's start with this first point,

00:01:44.800 | the hyperactive hive mind.

00:01:46.720 | So the name of my book was "A World Without Email,"

00:01:49.280 | and I got any number of seemingly clever,

00:01:54.600 | notes from people, often in response to,

00:01:57.560 | let's say a mailing list, mailing from my mailing list,

00:02:00.000 | where they would say, "Ha, I'm reading an email from you,

00:02:03.800 | and you are saying we should have no email in the world.

00:02:07.440 | Gotcha," right?

00:02:08.600 | They're joking, but I would get that comment a lot,

00:02:10.600 | like how ironic is this?

00:02:12.120 | And this is where I need to clarify

00:02:13.880 | that the issue that I come after in that book

00:02:16.920 | is not email by itself.

00:02:19.480 | No particular beef with email as a technology.

00:02:23.440 | The actual villain of that book,

00:02:25.240 | the thing I think we should have banished more

00:02:28.160 | from our world is what I dubbed

00:02:29.720 | the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

00:02:33.100 | Now, this is not an elegant title.

00:02:35.620 | I couldn't call the book

00:02:36.720 | "A World Without the Hyperactive Hive Mind Workflow,"

00:02:38.960 | but that's probably what I should have named it

00:02:40.640 | because that is accurately what the book is really about.

00:02:43.360 | So what is this thing, the hyperactive hive mind workflow?

00:02:46.460 | It is a means of collaboration

00:02:49.880 | in which the bulk of your collaboration

00:02:52.680 | occurs with ad hoc, unscheduled digital messages.

00:02:57.680 | So we're trying to figure something out.

00:03:01.960 | I'll send you a message, you'll send me one back,

00:03:03.800 | I'll bounce it back to you.

00:03:05.280 | So maybe it's Jesse and I scrambling over the furor created

00:03:11.200 | when we mixed up Brandon Sanderson with Pat Rufus,

00:03:14.480 | and maybe I sent him an email,

00:03:15.560 | "Hey, what should we do about this?"

00:03:16.640 | He sends one back, like,

00:03:17.540 | "Well, maybe we should meet about it."

00:03:18.840 | And he's like, "Well, what about these times?"

00:03:20.760 | You're just sending messages back and forth.

00:03:22.200 | They're ad hoc,

00:03:23.040 | so it's not like you had a particular plan.

00:03:24.480 | It's just in the moment,

00:03:25.320 | let me send this message, and they're unscheduled.

00:03:26.960 | So there's not like a particular time

00:03:29.520 | when this communication is going to happen.

00:03:32.000 | Email made the hyperactive hive mind workflow possible,

00:03:36.140 | but two key points here, it doesn't make it inevitable.

00:03:41.700 | So having email around makes it possible

00:03:43.840 | for you to do ad hoc back and forth messaging

00:03:45.600 | as the main way that you coordinate,

00:03:46.680 | but it doesn't mean that's the way you have to.

00:03:48.320 | And two, once that became dominant,

00:03:50.840 | other tools came along that made it even easier

00:03:53.640 | to engage in the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

00:03:55.600 | So you got, for example, instant messenger tools

00:03:58.040 | like Slack, like WhatsApp,

00:04:00.680 | they all are enabling the same workflow.

00:04:02.880 | And it's this hyperactive hive mind workflow

00:04:04.720 | that I want to put our attention on.

00:04:07.180 | So this brings us to the second point,

00:04:09.880 | what's wrong with the hyperactive hive mind workflow?

00:04:12.280 | Well, let me start by saying in the abstract, nothing.

00:04:17.400 | It's actually a very natural way to coordinate.

00:04:21.060 | It is in a pre-digital age,

00:04:24.520 | the primary way that human beings work together.

00:04:27.800 | If there was three of you out hunting a mastodon,

00:04:32.920 | it's a hundred thousand years ago,

00:04:35.880 | you would coordinate using the hyperactive hive mind workflow

00:04:38.040 | it'd be ad hoc back and forth, unscheduled messages.

00:04:40.160 | Hey, you come over here, stop there.

00:04:41.640 | I think he's over here.

00:04:42.480 | You go around that way.

00:04:43.680 | It's a natural way to human beings collaborate.

00:04:45.880 | So there's nothing fundamentally wrong

00:04:47.120 | with it's very natural.

00:04:48.560 | It's also quite flexible, right?

00:04:50.000 | You have one tool, one communication tool.

00:04:51.960 | You figure things out on the fly.

00:04:53.600 | There's very little overhead,

00:04:55.280 | very little predetermination required

00:04:57.760 | to figure out how to get things done.

00:04:58.640 | We just sort of rock and roll and get things done.

00:05:00.160 | So abstractly speaking, there's nothing particularly wrong

00:05:03.120 | with this mode of collaboration.

00:05:04.800 | The issue is that it doesn't scale.

00:05:09.000 | So email, the arrival of email made it possible,

00:05:13.400 | made it possible for very large groups of people

00:05:17.020 | to coordinate with each other on a large number of things,

00:05:19.400 | all using this hyperactive hive mind.

00:05:21.440 | Because now with almost no friction,

00:05:23.280 | I can shoot off a message to almost anyone in my organization

00:05:25.880 | almost any of our clients, any of our contractors.

00:05:28.240 | We have this very low friction simplified

00:05:31.200 | way of communicating.

00:05:32.880 | It is in the scaling that the hyperactive hive mind

00:05:35.760 | began to weave its web of negative implications

00:05:40.480 | in the modern office.

00:05:41.400 | And here's why.

00:05:42.680 | Let's walk through this thought experiment.

00:05:45.340 | If I work with one other person

00:05:47.640 | and we're working on one thing

00:05:49.720 | and we're not in the same room,

00:05:51.280 | going back and forth with unscheduled email messages

00:05:54.580 | is a perfectly reasonable way for us to coordinate.

00:05:57.280 | All right, well, did you get this?

00:05:58.400 | Should we meet?

00:05:59.240 | Well, when can you meet?

00:06:00.060 | What do you think about this?

00:06:00.900 | We could go back and forth.

00:06:01.720 | It's a perfectly reasonable way for us to coordinate.

00:06:05.140 | So let's say a typical thing,

00:06:08.020 | just so we can use round numbers.

00:06:09.060 | So we want to coordinate about,

00:06:10.080 | it's going to require about 10 back and forth messages.

00:06:13.200 | That's fine.

00:06:14.040 | 10 back and forth messages over the course of a day or two,

00:06:15.740 | no big deal.

00:06:16.900 | Now imagine like the typical knowledge worker,

00:06:18.580 | we've now scaled up the number of people we work with

00:06:21.220 | and the number of things we work on.

00:06:22.780 | And now we have 10 different things that are going on.

00:06:25.180 | A big project over here,

00:06:26.260 | a report that has to get to a client,

00:06:28.100 | trying to reschedule a visit with a candidate

00:06:30.260 | that's coming in to interview.

00:06:31.980 | We're trying to figure out a problem,

00:06:33.940 | working back and forth with facilities

00:06:35.660 | because there's something that has to be repaired.

00:06:37.780 | So we have like 10 different things going on.

00:06:39.700 | Each of them are being worked out

00:06:40.940 | with the hyperactive hive mind workflow.

00:06:42.860 | Each of them on average,

00:06:44.080 | maybe it's going to require about 10 back and forth messages

00:06:46.440 | to figure out.

00:06:47.440 | Each of them on average is relatively time sensitive.

00:06:50.440 | We need to get a resolution in the next day or two.

00:06:53.360 | So we have 10 messages for each of these things,

00:06:55.840 | each of which needs to be seen, processed,

00:06:58.360 | and replied to within the next day or two.

00:07:00.600 | Let's multiply these numbers through.

00:07:03.760 | 10 things, 10 messages,

00:07:04.960 | that's a hundred total messages that have to be seen,

00:07:07.840 | received, and replied to all within a day or two.

00:07:11.880 | This is where we begin to get into trouble

00:07:14.580 | in the modern workplace,

00:07:15.780 | because now if there's going to be a hundred messages,

00:07:18.500 | I'm going to have to get through each of them

00:07:20.420 | in a relatively timely fashion.

00:07:22.220 | In the next day or so,

00:07:23.620 | there is no alternative for me,

00:07:25.240 | but to constantly check

00:07:26.940 | whatever communication channel we're using.

00:07:29.100 | If it's an email firm, I'm always in my inbox.

00:07:31.900 | If we're a Slack firm, I have to keep checking Slack.

00:07:34.460 | And the reason why I have to do this

00:07:35.680 | is not because I'm lazy, not because I'm bad at tools,

00:07:37.860 | but because there's a hundred messages

00:07:39.660 | that are going to have to be hit back

00:07:40.980 | over that virtual ping pong net

00:07:42.660 | pretty quickly after they arrive.

00:07:43.980 | So I have to check constantly.

00:07:45.920 | And the data on this shows this is exactly what we do.

00:07:50.500 | In my book, I talk about a really good comprehensive data set

00:07:53.560 | from the software company RescueTime.

00:07:56.180 | They studied tens of thousands of knowledge workers

00:07:58.620 | and found that they were checking inboxes on average

00:08:01.180 | once every six minutes.

00:08:03.900 | It's required.

00:08:05.140 | If you have hundreds of messages

00:08:06.540 | that are going to have to be seen,

00:08:07.580 | each of which is going to have to be responded to

00:08:08.980 | relatively quickly, just so progress can be made

00:08:12.980 | on the various projects you're working on.

00:08:15.500 | All right, so now we have a situation

00:08:17.140 | where we have to check an inbox or a chat channel

00:08:19.700 | once every six minutes,

00:08:21.740 | because this is the only way network is going to unfold.

00:08:24.500 | Every one of those checks induces

00:08:27.740 | a cognitive context shift.

00:08:30.580 | You see an inbox full of information,

00:08:33.580 | different than what you're primarily working on,

00:08:35.820 | a lot of which is urgent,

00:08:37.120 | all of which is tied to specific individuals

00:08:39.260 | that need things from you.

00:08:40.700 | That is a arresting context shift.

00:08:43.700 | Your brain begins to immediately shift over its context

00:08:47.340 | to those things you see in your inbox.

00:08:49.760 | Now, the issue is you're just checking your inbox real quick

00:08:51.700 | because you're seeing, hey, did the reply come back yet

00:08:53.960 | from Jesse about when we're going to set up our next meeting

00:08:56.420 | so you pretty quickly try to bring your attention back

00:08:58.500 | to what you're doing,

00:08:59.340 | but you've already induced that context shift.

00:09:01.820 | That has a cost.

00:09:04.000 | Your cognitive capacity is going to be reduced

00:09:07.080 | and for a while after that check,

00:09:10.100 | 10, 15 minutes after that check,

00:09:11.780 | you're still going to have a reduced cognitive capacity

00:09:14.720 | as your brain is now in this intermediate state

00:09:17.620 | between what you were focusing on before

00:09:19.140 | and what you just saw, and then you stopped looking at that,

00:09:20.820 | you tried to go back to the main thing,

00:09:22.460 | you have what's called attention residue,

00:09:24.780 | cognitive capacity is reduced.

00:09:27.380 | Not only that,

00:09:29.220 | but you're going to get a low grade sense of anxiety

00:09:30.860 | because you see all of these unresolved tasks

00:09:34.300 | in that inbox all tied to people

00:09:36.060 | and we take seriously requests from people

00:09:38.880 | and you get an overall fatigue.

00:09:40.880 | This is this burnout effect that office workers feel

00:09:43.080 | whereby two in the afternoon,

00:09:44.360 | they're just done trying to do anything hard

00:09:47.320 | because they burnt out their brain,

00:09:48.520 | shifting those contexts back and forth.

00:09:50.040 | It's the shifts that kill you, the shifts that kill you.

00:09:53.220 | So we've created a hyperactive hive mind scaled up,

00:09:57.360 | creates this need to have to check inboxes or channels

00:09:59.960 | all the time because you have 100 messages a day

00:10:02.180 | that you have to hit back over the ping pong fence

00:10:04.040 | and you can't wait four hours to do that.

00:10:06.540 | And all those context shifts completely fry our brain.

00:10:09.740 | And so it's misery making, it's fatiguing,

00:10:12.700 | it's anxiety producing and we get a lot less done.

00:10:14.940 | So it's a huge problem that we try to coordinate

00:10:17.800 | so much work with the hyperactive hive mind workflow,

00:10:20.540 | not because it doesn't make sense, it's very flexible,

00:10:22.380 | but because it doesn't scale.

00:10:24.220 | At scale, it requires constant shifts

00:10:26.820 | and our brains simply can't do that.

00:10:29.840 | So if the hyperactive hive mind is so bad,

00:10:33.100 | this brings us to our third point, why is it so common?

00:10:35.880 | Well, I looked into this in my book

00:10:38.420 | and in my New Yorker reporting,

00:10:40.440 | and here's the story I uncovered.

00:10:42.180 | It is largely accidental.

00:10:45.520 | No one ever said coordinating all of our work

00:10:50.040 | with these rapid back and forth unscheduled messages

00:10:52.020 | is gonna make us more productive.

00:10:53.880 | No one ever said, look, there's gonna be some sacrifices

00:10:56.120 | to this, but it's gonna be the right way to work.

00:10:58.700 | It's gonna unlock new levels of production.

00:11:00.760 | No one ever thought that or said that.

00:11:02.480 | We stumbled into this way of working

00:11:04.520 | and here's how it largely unfolded.

00:11:06.880 | In the 1990s, email made a rapid move

00:11:10.640 | through the front office.

00:11:11.800 | That is when most businesses that have standard computer

00:11:15.760 | cubicle style knowledge work adopted email

00:11:19.040 | and began to use it extensively.

00:11:21.320 | And the reason they did, again, I went back to the archives,

00:11:25.680 | was looking at the New York Times business section,

00:11:27.480 | I was looking at articles in other technology magazines,

00:11:29.640 | trying to document, look at the documents

00:11:32.240 | of how people were talking about email

00:11:34.160 | when it first spread in the 90s.

00:11:36.000 | The reason why email spread is not because they said,

00:11:38.480 | we will have this utopia where we can communicate

00:11:40.480 | with each other all the time.

00:11:42.360 | It was because it was replacing three existing tools,

00:11:47.120 | fax machines, voicemails, and interoffice memos.

00:11:50.860 | It was a better version of those three tools,

00:11:54.540 | which were very popularly used in the decades

00:11:57.760 | leading up to the arrival of email

00:12:00.040 | and email was unquestionably a better way

00:12:03.280 | of implementing that communication.

00:12:05.280 | Attaching a file is much better than faxing,

00:12:08.000 | sending an email is almost always much better

00:12:09.760 | than leaving a voicemail that requires someone

00:12:11.400 | to type in a code and listen to you actually talking.

00:12:14.560 | Sending a CC message about the new parking policy

00:12:17.720 | to the whole office is clearly much more efficient

00:12:21.800 | than having to print that out

00:12:23.040 | and put it in everyone's mailboxes.

00:12:25.560 | So it was solving a real problem,

00:12:26.800 | which was there was asynchronous communication

00:12:28.440 | that existed, those three tools implemented it,

00:12:31.000 | email was cheaper, had more features and was faster.

00:12:33.880 | That's why it spread.

00:12:34.920 | Once it was in people's offices though,

00:12:38.520 | once people had those addresses,

00:12:40.200 | once the friction was removed

00:12:41.720 | for any interpersonal communication,

00:12:44.200 | the hyperactive Hivemind workflow emerged naturally,

00:12:48.740 | not by choice, but naturally.

00:12:50.600 | And why did it emerge?

00:12:51.680 | Well, this gets complicated,

00:12:52.760 | but here's just a summary of it.

00:12:53.960 | It emerged because we had an ethic of autonomy.

00:12:58.400 | In the context of knowledge work,

00:13:00.280 | we had an ethic that in knowledge work,

00:13:01.960 | it's up to individuals to figure out

00:13:04.080 | how to organize their work.

00:13:05.480 | Productivity is personal, we said.

00:13:09.000 | How you keep track of things,

00:13:10.440 | how you choose what you say yes to, no to,

00:13:12.560 | how you manage your time during the day,

00:13:14.280 | how you manage your tasks,

00:13:16.040 | that's up to you as the individual.

00:13:17.900 | Buy a Cal Newport book, buy a Stephen Covey book,

00:13:21.840 | buy a David Allen book, that's none of our business.

00:13:23.580 | We give you objectives and we motivate you,

00:13:26.920 | but you figure out how to do your work.

00:13:28.300 | That is the dominant ethic in knowledge work

00:13:30.160 | for various reasons.

00:13:31.000 | In that context where we leave the organization

00:13:34.440 | and execution of work up to the individuals,

00:13:37.500 | it is not surprising that when this new tool emerged,

00:13:41.000 | we began to use it in the most flexible,

00:13:43.280 | easiest way possible.

00:13:45.400 | The hyperactive Hivemind was convenient and flexible,

00:13:49.000 | so we all sort of fell into it

00:13:50.520 | because there was no one looking down

00:13:52.140 | at the organization as a whole

00:13:53.300 | and saying, "What's the best way to do this work?"

00:13:54.800 | When we make our own decisions,

00:13:55.880 | we end up with whatever is easiest in the moment.

00:13:59.860 | And so we stumble backwards in this swamp of autonomy

00:14:03.980 | towards a world in which the hyperactive Hivemind

00:14:05.900 | was dominant, and we look up,

00:14:07.700 | and by the early 2000s found ourselves context shifting

00:14:10.180 | every five to six minutes,

00:14:11.560 | miserable, barely able to get any real work done.

00:14:15.380 | So that brings us to the final point,

00:14:17.980 | which is what should we do about this situation?

00:14:20.400 | Well, now that we know that it's largely accidental

00:14:22.300 | that we arrived here,

00:14:23.500 | now that we know that there's more damage

00:14:24.980 | that we may have expected occurring

00:14:27.080 | because of all these context shifts,

00:14:28.460 | this should embolden us to seek solutions.

00:14:31.600 | And in seeking these solutions,

00:14:33.780 | I think the first point we have to make

00:14:35.500 | is that this is not a game

00:14:37.540 | that is going to be one with individual habits.

00:14:40.880 | This has been, up until most recently,

00:14:45.840 | the most common way we've tried to deal

00:14:48.580 | with the email problem, which is say,

00:14:49.860 | well, people are just using email wrong.

00:14:51.860 | Don't check it so much.

00:14:54.100 | You're addicted to it.

00:14:55.300 | We introduced that terminology of addiction.

00:14:57.720 | Remember when the hyperactive hive mind

00:15:00.220 | first began to emerge,

00:15:01.460 | and we first noticed it when people

00:15:03.100 | were using early generation blackberries all the time

00:15:06.060 | to keep up with the hyperactive hive mind,

00:15:08.160 | we introduced the term crackberries

00:15:11.120 | and tried to make it seem like these people

00:15:12.860 | had some sort of weird addiction to this thing.

00:15:15.780 | They need to get rid of that addiction.

00:15:17.040 | It's orthogonal to their actual work, but it wasn't.

00:15:19.700 | They're checking the blackberries all the time

00:15:21.220 | because there was more work being worked through

00:15:23.560 | with ad hoc unscheduled messages,

00:15:25.020 | and they had to respond to those messages

00:15:27.220 | for work to unfold.

00:15:28.820 | It was required, not a flaw.

00:15:31.600 | So we're not gonna solve this problem

00:15:33.220 | by saying just check your email less often,

00:15:35.520 | or write better subject lines,

00:15:37.380 | or have better filters,

00:15:38.680 | or if you move from Gmail to superhuman,

00:15:41.580 | or from superhuman to hey,

00:15:43.020 | that if you just have enough automatic filters and features,

00:15:46.140 | you can tame this problem.

00:15:47.620 | You're just not handling email well.

00:15:49.620 | But when we recognize that the problem

00:15:51.040 | is actually the hyperactive hive mind,

00:15:52.900 | we know none of these individual habit fixes will be enough.

00:15:56.180 | The reason why we have to keep checking our email,

00:15:58.180 | we have to keep checking Slack,

00:15:59.500 | is not because we have bad habits or bad setups,

00:16:02.380 | but because we have 10 different things

00:16:04.940 | that are being organized with unscheduled messages,

00:16:07.780 | and we can't ignore those messages.

00:16:10.140 | Each of these things has 10 messages

00:16:11.660 | that has to get sent back and forth today

00:16:13.620 | because we need to finish this by the end of the day.

00:16:15.700 | So I have to keep checking,

00:16:17.860 | 'cause if I wait four hours

00:16:19.120 | before I answer message number two,

00:16:20.500 | we're not gonna get the message number 10

00:16:21.900 | before the day is done,

00:16:22.740 | and it's a problem.

00:16:23.580 | We check email all the time

00:16:24.660 | because the hyperactive hive mind demands it.

00:16:26.700 | If that is the way we coordinate our work,

00:16:28.780 | there is no alternative

00:16:30.740 | to constantly checking in on these channels

00:16:33.060 | and keeping these messages bouncing back and forth.

00:16:36.340 | Can't solve it by checking email less often,

00:16:38.180 | we can't solve it with better inboxes,

00:16:40.340 | we can't solve it by changing norms,

00:16:42.300 | we can't solve it with response time expectations changing.

00:16:46.260 | You can say what you want about response time expectations.

00:16:48.380 | We have 10 messages that have to get back and forth

00:16:50.300 | to schedule this visit tomorrow.

00:16:52.820 | That has to happen.

00:16:54.380 | Don't tell me our norm is

00:16:55.420 | don't expect an answer within 24 hours.

00:16:57.180 | These 10 messages have to finish today

00:16:58.780 | because that person's coming tomorrow

00:17:00.100 | and we have to tell them what time their meeting is.

00:17:02.340 | So how do we solve this problem?

00:17:05.640 | You replace the hyperactive hive mind.

00:17:07.860 | We need alternative ways of collaborating

00:17:12.260 | that do not depend on unscheduled messages

00:17:14.660 | that require a response relatively quickly

00:17:19.660 | after they arrive in your inbox.

00:17:21.600 | That is the only way to solve this problem.

00:17:25.220 | And that is gonna require hard work.

00:17:27.500 | It means we're gonna have to identify

00:17:29.100 | what are the different things we do again and again

00:17:31.540 | in my job in our office.

00:17:33.260 | And for each of those things actually work out together

00:17:35.960 | alternative systems for collaboration

00:17:39.660 | that don't require unscheduled messages.

00:17:42.220 | And each different type of thing you do

00:17:43.900 | might require a different system.

00:17:46.180 | And each system might require polishing

00:17:47.700 | and optimization over time to get right.

00:17:50.380 | And it's all a pain, but we have to do it.

00:17:53.960 | Because the hyperactive hive mind,

00:17:55.440 | though flexible, though convenient, though cheap,

00:17:58.520 | is not scaling and it's killing us

00:18:01.000 | from a cognitive perspective.

00:18:02.640 | And so that is the main argument I make

00:18:04.200 | in the end of that book, A World Without Email.

00:18:06.560 | We have to start building from the ground up

00:18:09.520 | bespoke, clearly specified systems of collaboration

00:18:14.720 | to talk about when and how we communicate

00:18:17.320 | to get things done.

00:18:19.260 | Unscheduled messages have to play a decreasing role

00:18:24.120 | in coordinating work.

00:18:26.140 | So when I talk about A World Without Email,

00:18:27.560 | I mean a world in which the hyperactive hive mind

00:18:29.640 | is rarely used.

00:18:31.020 | Regularly occurring work has clear systems

00:18:32.780 | for how we collaborate that don't depend

00:18:34.240 | on unscheduled messages.

00:18:35.480 | I could care less, by the way, about other uses for email.

00:18:39.080 | Your broadcasting information, great.

00:18:42.000 | I don't want you to mail it to me, that's fine.

00:18:44.320 | You have a non-urgent request or question

00:18:47.160 | I can answer in a sentence or two,

00:18:48.480 | yeah, email that to me and let me get to it

00:18:50.120 | when I wanna get to it.

00:18:50.960 | That's a great use of email.

00:18:52.760 | I'm happy with all of that.

00:18:54.540 | The thing that's gonna kill us is we're going back

00:18:57.680 | and forth about something.

00:18:59.160 | We gotta get that out of email.

00:19:00.560 | We gotta get that out of Slack.

00:19:01.760 | We gotta get that out of WhatsApp.

00:19:02.960 | And we have to put in place bespoke systems

00:19:04.960 | that say here's when and how we communicate.

00:19:07.320 | Now we're not context shifting.

00:19:09.280 | Now we're not exhausted.

00:19:10.820 | Now we're not reducing our cognitive capacity.

00:19:12.600 | Now we can actually produce work without burning out

00:19:14.760 | and be proud of what we produce.

00:19:16.080 | So when I'm making my case against email,

00:19:18.280 | I'm making my case against the hyperactive hive mind.

00:19:20.920 | And when we know that's the villain, we know the solution.

00:19:23.080 | We have to vanquish that particular enemy.

00:19:26.600 | And yes, it's a pain because we have to replace him

00:19:31.080 | with alternative ways of getting things done.

00:19:32.600 | But work is not supposed to be about friction reduction.

00:19:35.360 | Work is not supposed to be about what's easiest.

00:19:37.200 | It's about what works.

00:19:38.280 | By definition, work is resistance against objects at rest.

00:19:43.000 | It's supposed to be hard.

00:19:44.600 | So yeah, it's a pain to figure out.

00:19:47.000 | For this client memo we produce every month,

00:19:49.080 | instead of just rock and rolling on email,

00:19:50.480 | let's have a system where drafts go

00:19:52.640 | to these shared folders at these times.

00:19:54.760 | And we use the comments and the designer knows

00:19:57.240 | that at this point he can grab what's

00:19:58.800 | in the shared document and design it.

00:20:00.560 | And I'll sign off on it virtually.

00:20:02.080 | And I have office hours every day.

00:20:03.680 | And if you have questions, you come to my office hours.

00:20:05.440 | That's when we discuss it.

00:20:06.280 | You have to do stuff like that.

00:20:07.880 | More overhead, more annoying, more delays.

00:20:10.720 | But it gets rid of the need to have to check an inbox

00:20:13.680 | or check a chat channel,

00:20:14.520 | look for an unscheduled message and reply.

00:20:16.380 | That is the key.

00:20:17.520 | That is the world we need.

00:20:18.820 | We have to get past this world where we just rock

00:20:21.400 | and roll with communication tools.

00:20:22.600 | We have to get more bespoke and more structured.

00:20:24.260 | But if we do, we're all gonna be much happier

00:20:26.740 | and we're gonna get a lot more done.

00:20:28.600 | All right, so that is my core idea.

00:20:32.600 | The last core idea from my original list

00:20:34.640 | of ideas I wanted to tackle.

00:20:36.780 | There's other core ideas I'll do

00:20:38.120 | and feel free to send them suggestions to me.

00:20:40.920 | You can send that in the interesting@calnewport.com.

00:20:43.120 | Other things you've heard me talk about,

00:20:44.520 | you think we should do a core ideas video on,

00:20:45.880 | I'm happy to hear it.

00:20:46.720 | But that was the original list.

00:20:48.520 | So our playlist will soon be completely up to date.

00:20:51.120 | (upbeat music)

00:20:53.700 | (upbeat music)

CORE IDEA: The Case Against Email

Chapters