The problem is that when you make productivity personal, you put the pressure on individuals to figure out the tension between different roles in their life. You’re telling them: You figure out how you organize the work, how you execute it. The more you do, the better. Now you have this tension of: If I spend less time with my family, I could do m

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My dad, I tell him, is of the view that the more gadgets we have, the less we can think, and Higgs smiles and agrees: "I have a bit of that, too." His son gave him a mobile phone two months ago, but he is yet to make a call, and no one outside his family knows the number. "I resent being disturbed in this way. Why should people be able to interrupt... See more

know a guy in France that will take 2 months off and delete his whole inbox when he gets back

"if it's urgent, someone's already handled it

if it's important, they'll just send it again

if it's neither, then I don't care"

The hyperactive hive mind workflow wants email to be a neutral carrier that supports flexible, unstructured, ongoing conversations of all types. The short-email movement pushes back on this commitment. It specifies email as something useful for short questions, short answers, and short updates, but demands that anything more complicated be handled

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