(This issue is so important to Stephenson that he went on to explore its implications — positive and negative — in his 2008 science fiction epic, Ana… - Cal Newport

Marshall was more effective at his job because of his ability to focus on important issues — giving each full attention before moving on to the next. If he had instead accepted the status quo of the War Department operation, with sixty officers pulling him into their decision making and hundreds of commands looking for his approval on routine activity, he would have fallen into the frantic and predictably busy whirlwind familiar to most managers, and this almost certainly would have harmed his performance. Indeed, if something like a hyperactive hive mind workflow had persisted in the 1940s War Department, we might have even lost the war.

If you slacked off your attention for even a moment, you could stall the entire line — forcing workers into an unnatural combination of boredom and constant attentiveness.

We didn’t sign up for the digital lives we now lead. They were instead, to a large extent, crafted in boardrooms to serve the interests of a select group of technology investors.