Cal Newport's Blog, page 7

Meta Rediscovers the Cubicle

Back in 2016, I reported on a rumor that was circulating about employee dissatisfaction at Meta (then, Facebook). Developers, it seemed, were unhappy with the company’s trendy, but also unbearably noisy and distracting, 8-acre open office floor plan.

“Developers need to concentrate,” explained an amused Joel Spolsky at a conference that year, before going on to add that Facebook was paying a 40 – 50% premium for talent because people didn’t want to work under those conditions. A commentator on my essay pointed to a podcast episode where Facebook insiders claim that the open office was never more than 30% occupied. “Apparently, the majority of people that work there make sure that they are away from their desk when they need to get work done,” he explained.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal last month, it looks like Meta is finally ready to do something about this self-inflicted problem. After hiring a fancy design firm and working through multiple ideas and prototypes they landed on an innovative solution: cubicles.

(To be fair, the company takes pains to argue that their solution is not cubicles, because, well, the walls are curved, and they are made out of fancier, sound-absorbing materials. Sure. Okay…)

I, for one, am pleased by this news. The open office boom is right up there with the spread of Slack as representing the peak of early 21st century distraction culture — a period in which the knowledge sector completely disregarded any realities about how human brains actually go about the difficult task of creating value through cogitation. The fact that Meta is closing the book on its ill-fated open office experiment is perhaps a glimmer of hope that we’re moving toward a deeper future

#####

In other news…

On Monday, Scott Young and I are re-opening our popular online course, Life of Focus, which combines ideas from Deep Work, Digital Minimalism, and Scott’s excellent book, Ultralearning. For those who are interested, registration will be open Monday until Friday at the course site.

A quick word of warning: I am going to send three short emails about the course throughout the week, so be ready for that. (Each such message will also includes a link at the bottom you can click to opt-out of any future communication about the course. )

The post Meta Rediscovers the Cubicle appeared first on Cal Newport.

On Section 230 and the Dream of a More Human Internet

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on a case that has the potential to fundamentally reshape the internet as we know it. As you might expect, this caught my attention.

The focus of the case is a single sentence, found in Section 230(c)(1) of 1996’s Communications Decency Act:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

This so-called Section 230 has since been interpreted through multiple court rulings as providing broad immunity from liability for internet platforms that publish content from third-party users. If I defame you in a Tweet, in other words, you cannot sue Twitter.

The case in question was brought against Google by the family of Nohemi Gonzalez, a college student who was killed in a terrorist attack in 2015. The Gonzalez family claims that the terrorists responsible for their son’s death had been radicalized by videos recommend on YouTube, and therefore Google, which owns YouTube, should be held liable.

At the core of their argument is that Section 230’s protections should not extend to information recommended by algorithms. There’s a difference, the lawyer for the Gonzalez family argued, between passively hosting third-party content, such as on a bulletin board, and actively pushing it toward users, such as what happens on social media services.

The consensus from legal journalists (e.g., this comprehensive take from Adam Liptak) seems to be that the Supreme Court justices sounded unlikely to pursue an aggressive ruling.

“You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” admitted Elena Kagan.

“[A strong ruling against Section 230] would really crash the digital economy with all sorts of effects on workers and consumers, retirement plans and what have you,” worried Brett Kavanaugh.

The Justices instead signaled that such clarifications really should be an issue for the legislative branch to address, not the courts. This is all quite reasonable. But reading the coverage of these arguments, I couldn’t help but indulge in some day dreaming.

Imagine if the Supreme Court threw caution to the wind and radically rolled back Section 230 protections; to the point where it became legally unviable to operate any sort of major platform that harvests attention using algorithmic-curation of user-generated content. In this thought experiment, Facebook disappears, along with Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and even YouTube.

This certainly would devastate the tech sector for a while. It would also hurt the portfolios of those invested in these companies. But what would the impact be on the average internet user? It might not actually be so bad.

You would still have access to all of the traditional news sites and streaming services that are based around old fashioned notions like editors and actually paying people for the content they produce for you. You would also still have access to the recently energized independent media sector, which would continue to thrive through individually-owned podcasts and email newsletters.

What about personal expression? This would shift back to individually-hosted sites that, for a handful of dollars a month, could easily support user posts including text, images and video. Presumably a new generation of RSS-style feed readers would emerge that allow you to browse these sites using attractive phone apps. In the absence of social-network virality, you would discover interesting people and feeds the way we did back in 2005, through a combination of links, serendipity, and word-of-mouth.

What would be missing in this shift from an algorithmic to human internet are many of the darker aspects of contemporary online life, such as slack-jawed addictiveness, or the dynamics that push people toward the worst versions of themselves and away from the humanity of their fellow man.

All of this, of course, is bathed in utopian wistful thinking. A trillion dollar industry won’t just disappear because of a reduced liability shield. Such a shift would also generate untold number of unexpected side effects, such as an exponential increase in nuance lawsuits, or the emergence of newer, even more insidious forms of attention extraction.

But I enjoyed this day dream while it unfolded. It reminded me that the internet we stumbled into over the past 25 years isn’t destiny. There are other options for how this grand network of networks might operate. We shouldn’t be so quick to accept the status quo.

#####

In other news…

In the most recent episode of my podcast, Deep Questions, I explore strategies for leveraging remote work arrangements to significantly reduce the time your job requires.A talented filmmaker I know named Sara Robin is looking for participants for a documentary she’s filming about digital minimalism. In her words: “We are currently seeking participants who want to try out digital minimalism. If you are looking to reduce your digital media consumption and are interested to be involved in the film, we would love to hear from you!”  If you’re interested and want to find out more, email Sara directly: saraxrobin@gmail.com

 

The post On Section 230 and the Dream of a More Human Internet first appeared on Cal Newport.

Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion

A reader recently pointed me toward an intriguing letter, reproduced a few weeks ago in the always-impressive Areopagus newsletter, that was originally sent from Pliny the Younger to his friend Minicius Fundanus around 100 AD. Among other topics, the letter touches on the difficulty of completing meaningful work in a distracted world.

As Pliny writes:

“I always realize [that city life is distracting] when I am at Laurentum, reading and writing and finding time to take the exercise which keeps my mind fit for work. There is nothing there for me to say or hear which I would afterwards regret, no one disturbs me with malicious gossip, and I have no one to blame — except myself — when writing doesn’t come easily. Hopes and fears do not worry me, and my time is not wasted in idle talk; I share my thoughts with no one but my books. It is a good life and a genuine one, a seclusion which is happy and honorable, more rewarding than any “business” can ever be. The sea and shore are my private Helicon, an endless source of inspiration.”

Pliny’s advice led me to do some more digging on what exactly he meant when he quipped: “when I am at Laurentum.” It turns out that Pliny maintained a rambling villa on the sea, southwest of Rome. According to an article I found, written by a British architect, Pliny’s property had been specifically configured to support focus:

“Away from the main body of the Villa, but connected to it by means of a covered arcade, is Pliny’s Retreat – a place where he can write in peace away from all distractions…I’ve shown the Retreat as a circular room with arms making the shape of a Greek cross. Pliny could then position himself wherever he liked to catch the light and the view from sunrise to sunset as he wrote.  He valued writing above everything else to him it was the most important part of the Villa.”

We shouldn’t, of course, be too literal in extracting practical advice from the life of Pliny the Younger. As a member of a lower aristocratic order in Classical Antiquity, Pliny’s life, in its details, is far different than, say, the standard middle-class twenty-first century knowledge worker. In other words, me telling you to build an outbuilding modeled after the Greek cross away from the main structures of your seaside villa might not evince appreciation.

But I did find it fascinating that even as far back as two thousand years ago, those who made a living with their mind (Pliny was a magistrate and lawyer) struggled with distraction, and found solace in the pursuit of something deeper.

#####

In other news…

In the most recent episode of my podcast, Deep Questions, I tackle the tension between ambition and burnout, describing a model for pursuing the former while avoiding the latter.

YouTube superstar (and former doctor) Ali Abdaal also released an interview with me in which we discussed the challenges of leaving a well-worn path to pursue something new.

The post Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion first appeared on Cal Newport.

On Email and Horses

Earlier this week, the New York Times Magazine published a conversation between me and the journalist David Marchese.  We touched on a lot of the ideas about digital technology and the workplace that I elaborate in my 2021 book, A World Without Email.

At one point during the interview, however, I came up with a new metaphor on the fly, which now, looking back, I recognize as potentially adding a useful new wrinkle to my thinking on these topics. Here’s the exchange:

Marchese:  But hasn’t the cultural-technological ship sailed when it comes to this stuff? Or, to mix metaphors, part of me is wondering if what you’re suggesting is a little like saying that getting from place to place by horse is a lot more cognitively rewarding and humane than driving everywhere — which may be true, but no one’s going back to horses. What company is going to tell its employees to cut back on email and Slack?

Me: The right metaphor here is not “Let’s stick with horses, even though automobiles are around,” because automobiles were clearly a more energy and monetarily efficient way of moving things from A to B, just like email is clearly a more efficient way for me to deliver a memo to you than a fax machine. The metaphor is that it took a while before we figured out traffic rules and understood that it can’t just be cars going wild through the street. Eventually we figured out we need stoplights and lanes and traffic enforcement.

Almost by definition, if a technology rapidly spreads it’s because it’s doing something notably better than what came before it — be it delivering business information or drool-bucket distraction. Given this reality, nostalgia is often counter-productive: returning to an older generation of tools, in most cases, would be returning to less effective tools.

What trips us up, however, is when we leap from this solid observation to the shaky conclusion that new technologies should therefore be left alone to infiltrate our culture without checks or guidance. Email is clearly better than intra-office mail and fax machines, but does this mean work should require us to check an inbox once every six minutes? An iPhone is clearly a superior device to a Nokia Razr, but does this mean 12-year-olds should be using them? Cars are clearly more efficient than horses, but should I be allowed to drive 60 mph down a quiet residential street?

The right question is not, is this useful? But instead, how do we want to use it?

#####

In other news…

In the most recent episode of my podcast, Deep Questions, I discuss recent research that shows lumberjacks are significantly more happy than lawyers, and then attempt to extract lessons from this data about how best to craft a meaningful professional life.

In my recent appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast, Making Sense, I gave Sam my argument why I though he should leave Twitter. A few days later: he did! I can’t actually take credit for Sam’s decision (he had been pondering it for a while), but it was a fun conversation nonetheless.

The post On Email and Horses first appeared on Cal Newport.

Guillermo del Toro’s Inspiration Machine

When the Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro was a boy growing up in Guadalajara, his mother bought him a Victorian-style writing desk. “I kept my comic books in the drawers, my books and horror action figures on the shelves, and my writing and drawing stuff on the desk,” Del Toro recalled in a 2016 profile. “I guess that was the first, smallest version of my collection.”

As the director began to find success as an adult with his beautifully imagined, macabre fantasies, like Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth and Nightmare Alley, he was able to indulge his collecting instinct more seriously, amassing “a vast physical collection of strange and wonderful memorabilia.” Eventually, Del Toro’s objects became too much to manage.

As he explained in an NPR interview:

“We were living in a three-bedroom house and I magically had occupied four spaces. So it came to a point where the collection was much bigger than the family life. I was hanging up a picture, a really creepy painting by Richard Corben. My wife says, ‘That’s too close to the kitchen, the kids are gonna be freaked out.'”

So Del Toro took the natural next step: he bought a second house in the same neighborhood. His plan was to use the new residence to organize and store his growing collection and provide a quiet place for him to work. As an homage to Charles Dickens, he called it Bleak House.

By 2016, Bleak House contained over 10,000 items, including artwork, sculptures, artifacts and movies. It also featured thirteen different reference libraries. Housed in a room dedicated to a haunted mansion theme, for example, are Del Toro’s books on mythology, folklore, and fairy tales. The screening room boasts over 7,000 DVDs. One space includes a simulated rain storm that pours outside a fake window. This latter location is one of Del Toro’s favorite places to write.

What interests me about this story is less its eccentricity than its pragmatism.  As Del Toro explained in a video tour of the house, he was inspired by the original research library built at Disney Studios, and in particular, its philosophy that “when you create a group of extraordinary artists, you should definitely feed their imagination with all sorts of images.”

Del Toro designed Bleak House to fuel the creativity on which his career depends. “It’s here to try to provoke a sort of a shock to the system,” he said, “and aid in circulation of the lifeblood of imagination, which is curiosity.”

Truly deep work — the type that redefines genres — is truly hard. In such efforts, our brain needs all the help it can get.

#####

In other news: in the most recent episode of my podcast, Deep Questions, I tackled thirteen questions in a row, including one on developing discipline and another on planning projects with unpredictable time demands. Are you listening to Deep Questions yet? If not, you should be!

The post Guillermo del Toro’s Inspiration Machine first appeared on Cal Newport.

On Quiet Quitting

In my latest essay for The New Yorker, published earlier this week, I tackled the topic of “quiet quitting.” This idea careened into mainstream discourse last summer, powered by a viral TikTok video posted by a twentysomething engineer named Zaid Khan.

Here’s the transcript:

“I recently heard about this idea of quiet quitting where, you’re not quitting your job, but quitting the idea of going above and beyond at work.

You’re still performing your duties, but you’re not subscribing to the hustle culture mentality that your work is your life.

The reality is that it’s not. And your worth as a person is not defined by your labor.”

Khan’s earnest declarations earned him acclaim on TikTok, where numerous other videos took up the theme; some outraged in tone, others satiric.  As word of the trend spread beyond social media, mainstream commentators weren’t so nice. In a CNBC appearance, Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary described quiet quitting as “worse than COVID.”

It was exactly this confused reaction to this trend that caught my interest. As I note in my article, when it comes to quiet quitting, “we’re simultaneously baffled and enthusiastic.” I set out to understand why.

I don’t want to spoil all of my conclusions, but here’s a high-level summary of my thesis: quiet quitting represents Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012) taking their turn at a reckoning with work that older generations have already gone through.

It’s easy, in other words, for us Millennials to be smug about the college seminar sincerity of this movement  — your worth as a person is not defined by your labor! — but it wasn’t that long ago that we were convinced that running remote businesses in Tulum was the right response to economic disruptions of the post-9/11 world.

Every generation reaches a point where they begin to think more critically about what role, exactly, work should play in their life. This process often starts with wild ideas, but eventually settles down into something more nuanced. “Quiet quitting is the messy starting gun of a new generation embarking on this challenge,” I conclude. We shouldn’t be anything other than happy that Gen Z is now joining this race, even if this might require us to ignore the specifics of what they’re saying at the moment.

#####

In the latest episode of my Deep Questions podcast (#228), I tackle the possibility of a “world without busyness,” and answer audience questions on a variety of topics, from the role of social media in marketing, to dealing with demands for after-hours work.

The post On Quiet Quitting first appeared on Cal Newport.

On Teenage Luddites

Back in 2019, when I was on tour for my book, Digital Minimalism, I chatted with more than a few parents. I was surprised by how many told me a similar story: their teenage children had become fed up with the shallowness of online life and decided, all on their own, to deactivate their social media accounts, and in some cases, abandon their smartphones altogether.

Ever since then, when an interviewer asks me about youth and technology addiction, I tend to adopt an optimistic tone.  “We’re approaching a moment in which not using these apps will be seen as the authentic, counter-cultural move,” I’ll explain. “We don’t need to convince teenagers to stop using their phones, we just need them to discover on their own just how uncool these online media conglomerates, with their creepy geek overlords, really are.”

According to a recent New York Times article that many of my readers sent me, we might finally be seeing evidence that this shift is beginning to pick up speed. The piece, written by Alex Vadukul, and titled “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes,” chronicles a group of Brooklyn high school students who formed what they call the Luddite Club, an informal organization dedicated to promoting “a lifestyle of self-literation from social media and technology.”

The article opens on a meeting of the Luddite Club being held on a dirt mound in a tucked-away corner of Prospect Park. According to Vadukul, some of the members drew in sketchpads or worked on watercolor painting. Books were common, with one particularly precocious teen reading “The Consolation of Philosophy,” while another was — honest-to-God — whittling a stick. Kurt Vonnegut is popular in the club. As is Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.

The group’s founder, a 17-year-old named Logan Lane, said she had a hard time recruiting members. But the word seems to be spreading. The crew gathering in Prospect Park had heard of three different nearby high schools that were rumored to be starting their own chapters.  Lane showed up to her interview with Vadukul wearing quilted jeans she had sewed herself. She explained that once she was freed from her phone, she had started learning what life as a teenager in the city used to be like. She took to borrowing books from the library to read in the park. For a while, she fell in with a crew that taught her how to graffiti subway cars. Her parents were upset they didn’t always know where she was at night.

Here’s my carefully considered response to all of this: Yes. Very much, yes.

This is exactly what teenagers in Brooklyn should be doing: Reading books they don’t understand, getting into trouble, trying on intellectual identities without worrying about widespread scrutiny, sewing their own jeans, and yes, if they want, whittling sticks. How long did we really think young people would be willing to give up all of this wonderful mess in exchange for monotonously boosting the value of Meta stock?

There was, however, one passage in particular that gave me the most hope that a shift in teenagers’ relationships with their phones might actually be imminent. “My parents are so addicted,” said Lane. “My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart. But I guess I also like [being offline], because I get to feel a little superior to them.”

Zuckerberg is screwed.

The post On Teenage Luddites appeared first on Cal Newport.

On Teenage Luddites

Back in 2019, when I was on tour for my book, Digital Minimalism, I chatted with more than a few parents. I was surprised by how many told me a similar story: their teenage children had become fed up with the shallowness of online life and decided, all on their own, to deactivate their social media accounts, and in some cases, abandon their smartphones altogether.

Ever since then, when an interviewer asks me about youth and technology addiction, I tend to adopt an optimistic tone.  “We’re approaching a moment in which not using these apps will be seen as the authentic, counter-cultural move,” I’ll explain. “We don’t need to convince teenagers to stop using their phones, we just need them to discover on their own just how uncool these online media conglomerates, with their creepy geek overlords, really are.”

According to a recent New York Times article that many of my readers sent me, we might finally be seeing evidence that this shift is beginning to pick up speed. The piece, written by Alex Vadukul, and titled “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes,” chronicles a group of Brooklyn high school students who formed what they call the Luddite Club, an informal organization dedicated to promoting “a lifestyle of self-literation from social media and technology.”

The article opens on a meeting of the Luddite Club being held on a dirt mound in a tucked-away corner of Prospect Park. According to Vadukul, some of the members drew in sketchpads or worked on watercolor painting. Books were common, with one particularly precocious teen reading “The Consolation of Philosophy,” while another was — honest-to-God — whittling a stick. Kurt Vonnegut is popular in the club. As is Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.

The group’s founder, a 17-year-old named Logan Lane, said she had a hard time recruiting members. But the word seems to be spreading. The crew gathering in Prospect Park had heard of three different nearby high schools that were rumored to be starting their own chapters.  Lane showed up to her interview with Vadukul wearing quilted jeans she had sewed herself. She explained that once she was freed from her phone, she had started learning what life as a teenager in the city used to be like. She took to borrowing books from the library to read in the park. For a while, she fell in with a crew that taught her how to graffiti subway cars. Her parents were upset they didn’t always know where she was at night.

Here’s my carefully considered response to all of this: Yes. Very much, yes.

This is exactly what teenagers in Brooklyn should be doing: Reading books they don’t understand, getting into trouble, trying on intellectual identities without worrying about widespread scrutiny, sewing their own jeans, and yes, if they want, whittling sticks. How long did we really think young people would be willing to give up all of this wonderful mess in exchange for monotonously boosting the value of Meta stock?

There was, however, one passage in particular that gave me the most hope that a shift in teenagers’ relationships with their phones might actually be imminent. “My parents are so addicted,” said Lane. “My mom got on Twitter, and I’ve seen it tear her apart. But I guess I also like [being offline], because I get to feel a little superior to them.”

Zuckerberg is screwed.

The post On Teenage Luddites first appeared on Cal Newport.

Ann Patchett on Scheduling Creativity

In a recent interview for the BBC podcast Spark & Fire, the novelist Ann Patchett discusses some of the difficulties that come along with finding success as a writer.

“It used to be a novel lived very nicely in my head as a constant companion,” she explains. “As time goes on and I now have this other thing which is my career, and all the things that people want me to do, that is very distracting to day dreaming and working in your head.”

As a result, Patchett finds herself needing to specifically put aside time just to think. As she elaborates:

“Sometimes I sit down in my office on my mediation cushion. Not to meditate, but just to sit as if meditating. I start the timer, I light a candle, I sit down on my little green poof and I say to myself: ‘Now you have twenty minutes to think about your novel. Namaste.'”

She goes on to say that she finds it “pathetic” that she has to “block out time for thinking.” Patchett is not alone in this dismay:  many authors share a similar despair. (I remember my friend Ryan Holiday once putting it this way in an interview: “The better you become at writing, the more the world conspires to prevent you from writing.”)

It occurred to me, however, as I listened to this interview, that Patchett’s concerns provide a warning that applies well beyond the rarified world of professional authors. Creative insight of any type — be it business strategy, an ad campaign, or computer code — requires cognitive space to emerge. It doesn’t take much daily activity before original thought is starved of the neuronal nutriments required to grow.

Modern knowledge work, if anything, is a shallow distraction generation machine. A professional schedule riven with email, Slack, and calendar invites is one that cannot also support whatever form of inspired thought moves the needle in your particular field.

And yet, how many of us are serious about blocking off and protecting significant amounts of time to do nothing but think? To act, in other words, like Ann Patchett on her green meditation poof? It is perhaps pathetic that we’ve come to a point where something as natural as creativity requires artificial support, but it is where we are. We should start acknowledging this reality.

#####

Speaking of podcasts, it was brought to my attention recently that I should provide more updates here about what I’m up to on my own podcast, Deep Questions with Cal Newport. On Monday’s episode (#225), I talked about my recent appearance on Sam Harris’s podcast, and then chat with a New York Times bestselling thriller writer about the reality of her profession.

Author photo credit: Heidi Ross

The post Ann Patchett on Scheduling Creativity first appeared on Cal Newport.

What Happened When Zapier Cancelled Meetings for a Week? (Hint: Not Much)

Several readers pointed me toward a recent NPR Marketplace segement about a fully-remote tech company called Zapier that tried an interesting experiment last summer: they cancelled all meetings for a week.

“When I heard from leadership that we were going to experiment with a week with no Zoom meetings, all I felt was excited anticipation,” explained Ellie Huizenga, a content strategiest at Zapier.

“Did that mean that you could just go into your Outlook or your Google Calendar or whatever you use and just zap all your meetings?,” asked Kai Ryssdal, the host of Marketplace, with thinly-veiled jealously.

“Kind of, Yeah,” replied Huizenga, before elaborating:

“Our leadership team sent a Slack message giving details about how the week was going to look for the entire company. Once that announcement came from leadership, Caitlin, my manager, reached out and let me know that she was canceling our one-on-one, canceling our team meeting for that week, and then she also encouraged me to look at the other meetings that were on my Google Calendar and confirm if we could do them [asynchronously] instead of on Zoom.”

Zapier was concerned about the rising volume of appointments filling their employees’ schedules. Huizenga, in her content strategy role, spent up to ten hours a week on Zoom. Managers at the company had it much worse, with many reporting that they spent more than half of their work week participating in video conferences. Zapier wanted to find out how critical these real-time, pre-scheduled collaboration sessions really were. It was in this context that what became known as Getting Stuff Done (GSD) week was conceived.

Here’s Huizenga, in a blog post about the experiment published on the Zapier website, summarizing some of the ways she compensated for a lack of meetings during GSD week:

“Instead of my weekly 1:1, I consolidated questions for my manager and sent them to her in a direct message on Slack.

Instead of a project check-in, all team members shared their updates in the relevant Asana tasks.

Instead of a one-off strategy call, stakeholders shared their thoughts (and comments) in a Coda doc.

Instead of a project kickoff call, our project manager sent a Slack message that shared the project charter, timeline, and next steps.”

According to a post-experiment survey conducted by Zapier’s “People Ops” team, these types of alternatives ended up working well. As they reported:

80% of respondents would want to do another GSD week in the future.

80% of respondents achieved their goal(s) for the week.

89% of respondents found communication to be about as effective during GSD week as during a typical week.

This last data point is the most important. One of the most consistent things I’ve learned studying the impact of digital communication technology on the workplace is that it’s easy for convenient habits — “I’ll shoot you a meeting invite” — to become ubiquitous. Just because certain behaviors are common, however, doesn’t mean that they are, to borrow a phrase from the Zapier experiment, the best way to get stuff done.

#####

A Humble Request: a reporter from the Financial Times is interested in hearing stories from people who have attempted the types of techniques I discuss in Deep Work and A World Without Email in their own teams or companies. If you have a case study to share about your experiences combatting the hyperactive hive mind, you can send her an email directly at  courtney.weaver@ft.com (If you do send her a message, however, please consider cc’ing me at author@calnewport.com as well: I love to hear these tales! I always learn a lot.)

The post What Happened When Zapier Cancelled Meetings for a Week? (Hint: Not Much) first appeared on Cal Newport.