Includes index.

Introduction : The hyperactive hive mind -- The case against email. Email reduces productivity -- Email makes us miserable -- Email has a mind of its own -- Principles for a world without email -- The attention capital principle -- The process principle -- The protocol principle -- The specialization principle -- Conclusion : The twenty-first-century moonshot.

This book offers recommendations for business leaders on how to maximize a working team's professional productivity by improving administrative support and streamlining digital traffic. Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations-a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work. Humans are simply not wired for constant digital communication. We have become so used to an inbox-driven workday that it's hard to imagine alternatives. But they do exist. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, the author, a computer science professor, makes the case that the existing approach to work is broken, then lays out a series of principles and concrete instructions for fixing it.