A world Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload

Chapter 4: The Attention Capital Principle
1
. Joshua B. Freeman, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern
World (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019), 124.

---

2
. The details of the development of the assembly line, including the specific numbers cited
in this discussion, come from two excellent secondary sources: Freeman, Behemoth,
119–26; and Simon Winchester, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created
the Modern World (New York: Harper, 2018), 159–66.
3
. As Simon Winchester points out in The Perfectionists (see preceding note), at the same
time as the Model T’s rise, Henry Royce’s ultra-luxury vehicles, such as the Rolls-Royce
Silver Ghost, which were hand-built by skilled craftsmen, were marketed as the height
of precision engineering. In reality, however, the pieces of the lowly Model T were
manufactured with considerably more exactitude—the high price of the Rolls-Royce
afforded its manufacturer the labor required to hand-adjust looser parts into a tight fit.
4
. Freeman, Behemoth, 123.
5
. As Simon Winchester points out, American armories had geared up mass production lines
years earlier. By 1913, sewing machine, bicycle, and typewriter manufacturers had also
begun taking advantage of the interchangeable parts revolution to experiment with
fast-moving assembly lines. Ford claims, however, that his main inspiration was
actually the disassembly of animal carcasses that he had witnessed at the nearby
Chicago meatpacking plants, where the knife-wielding meatpackers stood in place
while the animals moved by, hanging from chains.
6
. Cal Newport, “5-Hour Workdays? 4-Day Workweeks? Yes, Please,” New York Times,
November 6, 2019.
7
. Winchester, Perfectionists, 160.
8
. Peter F. Drucker, “Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge,” California
Management Review 41, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 79–94. Italics in the original.
9
. Drucker, “Knowledge-Worker Productivity.”
10
. In industrial economics, the workers were considered more dispensable: a sort of
generic force used to activate your main capital resources into motion. This mindset
was the foundation of worker dehumanization. As I’ll elaborate, one of the benefits of
knowledge work versus the industrial alternatives is that the workers are no longer
dispensable, but are actually now at the core of an organization’s value, enabling the
potential for much more human-centric working environments.
11
. Peter F. Drucker, The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right
Things Done, rev. ed. (New York: Harper Business, 2006), 4.
12
. Freeman, Behemoth, 123.
13
. Peter F. Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New “Post-Modern” World
(New York: Harper Colophon, 1965), 31.
14
. James T. McCay, The Management of Time (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1959),
ix.
15
. Freeman, Behemoth, 126.
16
. Freeman, Behemoth, 127.
17
. These details, and the connection of Modern Times to Ford’s plant, come from David E.
Nye, America’s Assembly Line (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 97.
18
. To explain to the younger reader born after a time when these services were more
common: A telephone answering service played the role of a live voicemail system. If
you needed to reach a doctor after hours, for example, you would call the practice’s
answering service, where a live operator would answer and pass along your information
to the doctor on call. It is much cheaper to have one service implement this for many
clients than to have each of those clients staff their own phone lines twenty-four hours a
day.
19
. Sam Carpenter, Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working
Less, 3rd ed. (Austin, TX: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2011), chapter 2. I had access to

---

only an electronic version of this book on my Kindle, so I am unable to cite specific page
numbers for quotes taken from this source.
20
. Carpenter, Work the System, chapter 3.
21
. Carpenter, Work the System, chapter 4.
22
. The income quote and notes on being number one of 1,500 in some categories come
from the official website for Work the System: Sam Carpenter, “Synopsis—For Your
Business: Breaking Loose,” July 1, 2015, 
www.workthesystem.com/book/synopsis/
.
23
. All quotes in this paragraph are from Carpenter, Work the System, chapter 11.
24
. The specific version of the autoresponder reproduced here comes from this site:
https://tim.blog/autoresponse/
.
25
. See, for example, Adam Grant, “In the Company of Givers and Takers,” Harvard
Business Review, April 2013, 
https://hbr.org/2013/04/in-the-company-of-givers-and-
takers
.