Brain Food: Signal Without Static

implement the method described in Andreas Klinger’s blog post “Don’t Drown in Email! How to Use Gmail More Efficiently.”

In this technique, data is broadly called “inputs,” i.e., any stimulus from the environment: meetings, emails, phone calls, social media, TV, other people, and so on.

process, I started taking a different approach to my phone. Instead of considering every DM, every email as the most important thing in my life, I started looking at things as energy. Is this email empowering or is this email taking power out? I realized most of the time the answer was taking power out. Remember most people are asleep and forgettin

The sheer volume of the scheduling required to set up those meetings becomes a major driver of hyperactive inbox checking, and therefore induces a major cognitive cost. When you have to continually return to your inbox to nudge along one of many different meeting-scheduling conversations, your ability to perform valuable cognitive work significantl

there’s a large cognitive cost to switching your attention from one target to another. Any workflow that requires you to constantly tend conversations unfolding in an inbox or chat channel is going to diminish the quality of your brain’s output.