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It’s Time to Get Rid of Email and Slack for Good.
How moving from Cal Newport’s idea of the hyperactive hive mind to workflows and systems will increase productivity.
You log onto your computer at 9am and are immediately bombarded with emails, Slack messages, and meetings. Every time you try to write a piece of code or focus on a project, someone messages you asking for something. Before you know it, the day is over and you never completed the code you intended to write or the project you needed to wrap up. Now you are working into the night just to get your tasks finished.
Does this sound all too familiar? If you are a knowledge worker then this is probably what your life looks like now. It’s an endless cycle of being pulled back and forth only to not finish the work you really needed to do. This work culture is what Cal Newport coins the hyperactive hive mind.
Hyperactive hive mind refers to the work environment where everyone is just a message away. There is constant contact through email and applications like Slack, making everyone super easy to reach. It’s the dependence on one another responding instantly in order to get your own work done. The “let’s just figure it out as it comes” mentality.
