March 03, 2021

A World Without Email with Cal Newport

50 minutes

This episode is brought to you by Your Clockwise Week—a personalized weekly structure built around your actual life, not an ideal one. If your week feels full but not fitting, you can learn more at mikevardy.com/yourclockwiseweek.

Cal Newport is back on the show to uncover his magnum opus on why we work the way we work today, and why we need to change our relationship with email.

Email simply doesn’t scale – its back and forth nature is what drove Cal Newport down the rabbit hole of finding a better way to work. This includes all methods of communication, be it Slack, WhatsApp, or Facebook DMs and so on. These tools should just be used as shorthand, and not become your work. In his latest book, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, I had to unpick my good friend’s insights.

Join us today as we uncover why we need to change our relationship with email. In this brave new world, we touch on how email came about accidentally, finding solutions as a team, context switching, and the fascinating research path that led Cal to writing the book.

Talking Points

The main elements of email that we need to move away from

Why email has taken over our work

On Merlin Mann and Inbox Zero

The Attention Capital Principle

Changing our view on email in all parts of the business, from managerial to admin and customer support

How you can stop relying on email today

Quote

“Don’t explain to people what you’re doing, just do it.”

Helpful Links

‘A World Without Email’ by Cal Newport

Episode 73 with Cal Newport

Episode 229: Exploring Digital Minimalism with Cal Newport

‘Digital Minimalism’ by Cal Newport

‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport

The New Yorker articles by Cal Newport

The New Yorker: The Rise and Fall of Getting Things Done by Cal Newport

Episode 203: The Evolution of Getting Things Done with David Allen

Woven

Deep Questions Podcast

CalNewport.com

Want to discover some of the books mentioned on the podcast? Check out Scribd, my reading app of choice.

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If this episode resonated, I’m exploring ideas like these more deeply in my upcoming book, Productiveness. You can follow along as it takes shape at mikevardy.com/productiveness.

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By Mike Vardy

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