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

by Cal Newport

To make the brass department more efficient, Pullman’s executive team did something counterintuitive: they made its operation more complicated. If you needed some brass work done, you now had to submit an official form that contained all the relevant information. To prevent employees from circumventing this process and reverting to the more convenient status quo of informally bothering workers, they literally locked the door and screened the windows. You now had no choice but to use the newly enforced “regular channel.” Once a request was submitted through a slot dedicated to this purpose, it was subjected to a rigorous procedure. A clerk would be tasked with figuring out a reasonable plan for accomplishing the work, including what raw source materials would be needed and how many worker hours were required to build the finished product. The details of the plan were then distributed to the proper subdepartments to ensure its timely execution.