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

Chapter 7: The Specialization Principle
1
. Edward Tenner, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended
Consequences (New York: Vintage, 1997), 238–39.
2
. Tenner, Why Things Bite Back, 240.
3
. Peter G. Sassone, “Survey Finds Low Office Productivity Linked to Staffing Imbalances,”
National Productivity Review 11, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 147–58. This study was also
cited and summarized by Edward Tenner in Why Things Bite Back (cited in the
preceding two notes), which is how I first came across it.
4
. Cal Newport, “Is Email Making Professors Stupid?,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
February 12, 2019, 
www.chronicle.com/interactives/is-email-making-professors-
stupid
.
5
. Greg McKeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (New York: Crown
Business, 2014), 1–3.
6
. Readers of my book Deep Work might identify this phenomenon as what I called the
whiteboard effect. Generally speaking, using a common screen or board to work
collaboratively with a small group on a hard problem will intensify the depth of
concentration you achieve compared with working alone. Cal Newport, Deep Work:
Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (New York: Grand Central Publishing,
2016).

---

7
. Anne Lamott, “Time Lost and Found,” Sunset, April 5, 2010,
www.sunset.com/travel/anne-lamott-how-to-find-time
.
8
. Pat Flynn, “SPI 115: 9000 Unread Emails to Inbox Zero: My Executive Assistant Shares
How We Did It (and How You Can Too!),” June 28, 2014, in Smart Passive Income
Podcast with Pat Flynn, 35:22, 
www.smartpassiveincome.com/podcasts/email-
management/
.
9
. Laura Vanderkam, “Can You Really Spend Just 20 Hours a Week on Core Production?,”
LauraVanderkam.com, October 15, 2015, 
https://lauravanderkam.com/2015/10/can-
you-really-spend-just-20-hours-a-week-on-core-production/
.
10
. For more on Scrum sprints and the timing of this methodology’s formation, see Ken
Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, The Scrum Guide: The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The
Rules of the Game, November 2017,
www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf
.
11
. The timeline and details of Google Ventures cited come from its website: 
www.gv.com/
.
12
. My summary of the sprint methodology comes from Jake Knapp, with John Zeratsky
and Braden Kowitz, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just
Five Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).
13
. Bruce Janz, “Is Email Making Professors Stupid? That’s Not the Issue,” Department of
Philosophy, University of Central Florida, February 12, 2019,
https://faculty.cah.ucf.edu/bbjanz/is-email-making-professors-stupid-thats-not-the-
issue/
.
14
. Laura Vanderkam recommends that individual knowledge workers start by figuring out
how much time to invest in different activities, and then work backward to hit these
targets, implementing a self-imposed activity budget: Laura Vanderkam, “How to Craft
a Perfect, Productive 40-Hour Workweek,” Fast Company, October 13, 2015,
www.fastcompany.com/3052051/how-to-craft-a-perfect-productive-40-hour-work-
week
.
15
. Linda Babcock, Maria P. Recalde, and Lise Vesterlund, “Why Women Volunteer for
Tasks That Don’t Lead to Promotions,” Harvard Business Review, July 16, 2018,
https://hbr.org/2018/07/why-women-volunteer-for-tasks-that-dont-lead-to-
promotions
.
16
. Around the time I was writing this chapter, Georgetown began putting into place an
impressive, invisible UI–style service to help professors work on academic research
more effectively. The university is appointing “research coordinators” for each of the
major research areas. If a professor has any questions about the administrative
infrastructure surrounding their work (e.g., grant issues), they can just ask the
coordinator, who will then find the right support units to get the needed information or
resolve the issue.