A recent article in The New Yorker, "Was Email a Mistake?," triggered a conversation around the veracity of email in the Digital Age. The author, computer science professor Cal Newport, discussed this on a recent interview on NPR. This is our response to the question, was email a mistake?
(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/063 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)
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If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).
In this Cast | Was Email a Mistake? A Response
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | Was Email a Mistake? A Response
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
Was Email a Mistake?
Write Email With Maximum Efficiency Using This Military System
Scrum
Microsoft Outlook
Spike
Feedly
Stoop Inbox
“Bursty” Communication Can Help Remote Teams Thrive
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:24I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:25 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:26
And today we are going to be discussing email. And this is a topic that is perennial, but more importantly, Cal Newport, Professor Newport. he's a he's a professor of mathematics Computer Science at Georgetown University. And he recently wrote an article in which he discusses his topic was email a mistake. And he brings up several different angles at which he attacks email. And I wanted for us to have a discussion around really what he's talking about, and whether or not that's real, was email truly a mistake. And to start us off, I want us to kind of just take a litmus test just go around. And what was your initial impressions about the article? And where do you stand on your usage of email? are you stopping use of your email? Are you mediating email with other modalities in order to be productive? How are you using email today? Do you believe email was a mistake?
Augusto Pinaud 1:34
I don't think email is a mistake, we may argue that the way we are using email and how it went out of control is a mistake. But it's not the email that will be equivalent to say, well, the fax was a mistake. It wasn't it was just a matter of what happened with email. I think email came in a moment where we were trying, we were in the verge of going global. And it broke, it brought a vehicle that allows to communicate with anybody, regardless where they are on a semi effective way. And dad in combination with other technologies that came at a time as a Blackberry, and people begin saying, Oh, I can really be more quote unquote, effective if I adopt these tools. The problem was, there was not really a solid execution plan, and we just got on the horse and let it run and hopefully turn into a monster, to be honest with you.
Art Gelwicks 2:32
Email is a natural evolution of this back and forth method ...
Most don't think about it, but aside from finding the best productivity planner for ourselves, the very paper planner (a/k/a agenda, diary, journal, scheduler, notebook) didn't even exist until roughly 90 years. What did humankind do for the prior millennia upon millennia?! It wasn't until Gustav Grossmann came around with his own 200-page manifesto and leatherbound planning notebook in the 1930s, that the modern organizer was born.
Today, we who pay attention to our productive lives take it for granted at the plethora of options for planners on the market, as well as learning how to use them effectively. In this week's episode, the ProductivityCast team discusses the factors that make the best productivity planner the right one for you.
(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/062 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)
Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!
If you'd like to continue discussing managing digital notebooks from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).
In this Cast | The Best Productivity Planner
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | The Best Productivity Planner
Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.
History of Day Planner
Levenger Circa system
FranklinPlanner
Staples Arc system
Day Runner
Apple Reminders
Remember the Milk
OmniFocus
The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll
Casts referencing BuJo:
035 What Is the Bullet Journal? How Does It Work? – ProductivityCast051 Managing Digital Notebooks047 Reflections on Getting Things Done (GTD): What I Wish I Knew When I Started GTD, Part Two – ProductivityCast024 Can Productivity Be Fun? – ProductivityCast022 Productivity Pet Peeves – ProductivityCast016 The Power of Reflection – ProductivityCast013 Getting Unstuck! – ProductivityCast
Time Design (Time/System)
FranklinPlanner
Panda Planner
Freedom Journal
Productivity Journal
Five-Minute Journal
Volt Planner
NeuroPlanner
The High Performance Planner (Brendon Burchard)
Commit 30 Planner
Revo Journal (caveat: site was not loading, or loading very slowly, when we were trying to visit it: http://revojournal.com/)
Travelers notebook
Raw Text Transcript
Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).
Read More
Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Francis Wade 0:20I'm Francis Wade.
Augusto Pinaud 0:23 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Art Gelwicks 0:24 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:25 Welcome, gentlemen to this episode of productivitycast. And today we are going to be talking about something that a lot of people use every day. But they probably don't give very much attention to it. And so the people who are listening to this podcast you listening to this podcast, are you probably more aware of the concept than not. But I thought what we would do today is we would talk about the productivity planner, the what we would call a personal organizer, or a day planner,
