Right Tool for the Wrong Job

I’m a big fan of Cal Newport’s writings on workplace productivity, and here’s a lesson we can also apply to the world of software:

• Email is a much better communication tool than fax, voice memos, or handwritten notes.

• Email is, however, terrible for having project-related back-and-forth conversations, with their long subject lines (RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:that thing we talked about), people hitting REPLY ALL in the worst situations imaginable and important points getting lost because two people replied to the same email thread simultaneously.

Messaging tools such as Slack and Teams are arguably much better here. We have channels, threads, and a DMS. People can join and leave channels as needed, and the chronological order is easily followed.

But Cal argues that ideally, work wouldn’t unfold in unstructured back-and-forth communication in the first place. It’s great for quick pings, but not good for driving a discussion to a quick and decisive conclusion, and definitely poison for our attention spans: If work can only proceed if I chime in on dozens of Slack or Teams threads, I have to constantly monitor them. Good luck getting deep work done that way.

Better Ways of Working

When we feel dissatisfied with a tool we’re using, be it a frontend framework, a database, a machine learning system or a large language model, the initial instinct is to look for a better tool. Sometimes that’s true, as with email versus fax, and sometimes it’s a distraction.

In these situations, we must take the proverbial step back and reassess things at a higher level. Instead of asking how we could improve the tool, we should ask how we could improve the overall workflow.