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

Research & Notes. The cards in this stack each contain
background information relevant to the marketing campaign.
One of the cards, for example, has notes from a recent client
call, while another contains some thoughts on ways to grow
the client’s email list.
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Backlog. The cards in this stack each describe a project step
that needs to be completed at some point but is not actively
being worked on by anyone at the moment. One of these cards,
for example, details a step in which new client testimonials
need to be added to the client’s website.
☐
Designing and Implementing. The cards in these final two
stacks describe project steps that are currently being executed.
The designing stack contains, naturally, design-related steps,
and the implementing stack focuses on the other steps
relevant to carrying out the marketing campaign. Different
people work on these two elements, so it makes sense to keep
them separate. Crucially, each of these cards, when clicked on,
reveals not only a description of the step, but both its current
status and a vibrant comments section where people can ask
and answer questions and delegate responsibility for
accomplishing key tasks related to the card. Some of these

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cards even have checklists of sub-tasks, while others have
deadlines that show up in bright colors under the card’s title.
Many have relevant files directly attached.
As Devesh explained to me, his company’s efforts now revolve
around Trello. If you’re assigned to a project, all of your work,
including discussion, delegation, and relevant files, is coordinated on
its corresponding board—not in email messages, not in Slack chats.
When you decide to work on a project, you navigate to its board and
work with the cards. As project steps are completed, cards can be
moved from backlog to the active columns. As new ideas come up or
clients send extra requests, they can be added to the research &
notes column. When questions arise or work needs to be delegated,
these notes are appended to the discussion on the back of the
relevant card, where everyone involved in the project can see them.
Before these changes, each employee’s workday was driven by
their inbox. They would open it up when they started work in the
morning, then answer messages until quitting time. In the new
Trello-based workflow, each employee’s effort is now driven by
project boards, which they rotate through during the day. Though
email is still used for non-urgent administrative issues and private
one-on-one conversations, its importance is greatly diminished.
Inboxes are something you might now check once or twice daily,
similar to a physical mailbox.
This new workflow encourages single-tasking. When one of
Devesh’s employees decides to work on a given project, the only
information or discussion they see on its board relates to the project.
This allows them to remain focused on one thing until they’re ready
to move on. When using a general-purpose inbox, by contrast, they
were constantly switching back and forth between many different
projects, sometimes even within the same message—a cognitive state
that’s both unproductive and misery-inducing.
Another advantage of this workflow is that it clearly structures
all the relevant information about a given project. When Devesh’s
firm used to rely on the hyperactive hive mind, this information was
spread out haphazardly in email messages buried in many different
employees’ inboxes. To have it instead neatly arranged in named
columns, with the relevant files and discussion attached to clearly

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marked cards, is a much more efficient way to keep track of this work
and effectively plan what needs to be done next.
When I saw Devesh’s Trello boards, my reaction was likely
similar to that of rival automakers who first encountered a fully
functioning assembly line at Henry Ford’s Highland Park factory: a
gut realization that this was simply a better way to organize work.
Devesh agrees. His employees seem much happier now that they’re
freed from email as the main driver of their efforts, and there have
been no major complaints or drops in productivity. More telling,
Devesh has no interest in changing back to the old way of working.
To emphasize how much things have changed in his professional life,
he sent me a screenshot of his business email inbox. In the entire
preceding month, he had participated in only eight email threads,
sending and receiving a grand total of forty-four messages. This
averages out to slightly more than two messages per workday. “It’s a
godsend,” he summarized.
This type of radical workflow makeover is easy to describe but
often tricky to successfully implement. There are many obstacles,
from figuring out where to focus your experimental energies, to
shifting how you think about issues like inconvenience or extra
overhead, to getting everyone on your team on the same page. The
rest of the chapter will explore some best practices for overcoming
these obstacles when you attempt to apply the attention capital
principle in your own organization or professional life.