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The article opens with an anecdote from IBM in the 1980s. To estimate the server capacity required for their first email system, they used the current traffic of paper memos and other internal communications as a baseline. But they completely overwhelmed the server capacity within the first week of operation! Email made communication so easy and fast, people started communicating a lot more!
This reminds me of Mark's persistent warnings -- when you are overwhelmed, and then adopt a new time management system and suddenly become more efficient and productive, the tendency is to quickly get back to overwhelm by adding more and more to the new system till you exceed its capacity! So you end up in a state of overwhelm again, rather than using the new-found capacity to be more effective in your existing commitments.
The article provides lots of food for thought. Examples:
- Email introduced hugely inefficient "unstructured workflows" - which is why the author proposes replacing email with a system structured for more effective knowledge work
- He suggests replacing email with "office hours". I don't think this solution is fully baked, but it's still interesting to think about it (and springboard to other ideas).