The more you try to force it, I learned, the less likely you are to succeed. True missions, it turns out, require two things. First you need career c… - Cal Newport

Also as in natural settings, in workplaces without well-defined processes, energy minimization becomes prioritized. This is fundamental human nature: if there’s no structure surrounding how hard efforts are coordinated, we default to our instinct to not expend any more energy than is necessary. Most of us are guilty of acting on this instinct when given a chance. An email arrives that informally represents a new responsibility for you to manage; because there’s no formal process in place to assign the work or track its progress, you seek instead the easiest way to get the responsibility off your plate — even if just temporarily — so you send a quick reply asking for an ambiguous clarification. Thus unfolds a game of obligation hot potato, as messages bounce around, each temporarily shifting responsibility from one inbox to another, until a deadline or irate boss finally stops the music, leading to a last-minute scramble to churn out a barely acceptable result. This, too, is obviously a terribly inefficient way to get work done.

Face-to-face conversation is the most human — and humanizing — thing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It's where we develop the capacity for empathy. It's where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood.

In this second part, I introduce a framework I call attention capital theory that argues for creating workflows built around processes specifically designed to help us get the most out of our human brains while minimizing unnecessary miseries.