Ever feel a little out of control of your inbox? If you’re like most people, you probably spend a significant part of your day responding to emails that are of relatively little significance to the work you actually need to do in order to be productive. There’s a dynamic I’ve often written about called the Ping, which is the perpetual pinprick in your gut that says “something out there might be more important than what’s in front of you”. It has us living with divided attention.

How do we deal with the expectations of the inbox and still produce great work? Cal Newport has an answer for us. He is the author of the new book A World Without Email, in which he argues that there is a better way to work. On this episode we discuss his theory about why email is so destructive to workflow, and practical ways that we can improve our approach to creative work in a world that’s obsessed with immediate responses.

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