Cal Newport on an industrial revolution for office work

Doesn't this tie into a lot what's going on currently such as the work from home controversy?

At my previous employer, the definition of a successful employee was someone who did anything anyone asked of him enthusiastically. This included but was not limited to, massive overtime, answering e-mails, texts and phone calls day or night. Being available on weekends and Holidays. Agreeing to arbitrary deadlines, always being on slack. etc.

Once, the VP sent me an email at 4:30am. at 7:30am he called my direct boss to ask why I hadn't answered him. My bosses response, "I assume he is sleeping, like I was."

I also once managed a team in India, it was awful. I would wake up to an inbox full of questions, so I'd start answering their questions, head into work, and do any legwork needed, write them extensive instructions, then start my own work for the day. Just about the time I'd get home, they'd be waking up and stumbling into the office asking for clarification on my first e-mails. I actually physically became sick due to the lack of sleep, stress, etc. Meetings with them were either in the middle of the night for them or myself.

It's only the engineers sometimes myopic viewpoint which assumes everyone is seeking efficiency. I want the efficiency which is most meaningful to me-- to spend the least amount of time at work and produce the most, so I can have a predictable life and spend time doing things that are more meaningful to me.

I think the real answer is that managers in many environments don't actually care about efficiency. I think they view it almost in the opposite way. The more they put on you, the more you may accomplish, the better "value" they're getting from you.

You know 17 years ago I used to work at a company that only delivered email at 5 minutes before the hour (9:55, 10:55, etc) and then didn’t deliver email at all between 9pm and sometime in the morning like 4am or 5am. It was amazing. Email from customers were delivered immediately as were internal emails if you marked it high importance (with the “!”).

There are a large number of process management tools out there, not just Atlassian. If your office is more creative, they could adopt one of the BPMN-based or similarly generic tools and build out their own processes properly instead of trying to shoehorn everything into whatever Atlassian is pushing.

He talks about two benefits: One for the companies (profit and real improvements in productivity), one for the employees (better focus means less unpaid OT answering after hours emails and texts, or even paid OT that still leads to burnout). The reason to focus on that former one is that it's pretty much the best way to convince the people who care most about profits (that is, people at the top of the hierarchy) to care about something. Not that they don't care about employee wellbeing at all (though some may be truly uncaring), but it's too remote from their present position or too low a priority compared to keeping the company operating.

That's why he talks about how in this case he thinks incentives (in particular between management, shareholders, and employees) are actually aligned to potentially produce a win-win.

Disagree with the host that the net effect of 10x increase on productivity on climate change would be a wash. If production capacity increases that much faster than social consciousness and direction of capital, the result will be catastrophic for climate change. Boosting productivity should be explicitly done in tandem with using that increase in a way that's beneficial to humanity and not just profitable.

Why do people hate email so much? (Because they haven't mastered it yet, Grasshopper, but anyway...) The thing is, it's communication. Are we shocked that a big chunk of our work burden is the burden of communication?

"He spent 1/3 of his time at work answering emails!" Outrageous!

vs.

"He spent 1/3 of his time at work communicating with the other workers." Yeah sounds about right, if not a little low.

The other thing nagging at me is that this feels like Cal Newport woke up one day, got annoyed at his inbox and wrote a whole book about it. I'm all for re-thinking and re-designing, but I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of people who hate email or whatever, and want to re-make the world in that image. It's like the people who get all pissy when it's raining out. Tony Soprano would say, ay it's fuckin' raining, but whaddyagonnadoo.

Interruptions, yes, those are harmful. But that's why there's email. I guarantee an email is easier to delay than someone calling, instant-messaging or physically approaching you. It's got "mail" right there in the name; far as I'm concerned that means you have free license to delay for a day or multiple days, just like the postal service. Check it once or twice a day, during times when you're not trying to concentrate, and then close out of it. Anything useful, copy it to where it belongs (task list, calendar, etc.). If it needs action at some point, mark it "Pending." After that, archive that shit and forget it. If you get too much, tell people to stop sending it. Or just take so long replying that they stop. I dunno.