As a 2018 article from the MIT Sloan Management Review explains: “The ‘keep everybody busy’ theory remains alive and well . . . in knowledge work.”39… - Cal Newport

In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital. To

Professorial E-mail Sorting: Do not reply to an e-mail message if any of the following applies: It’s ambiguous or otherwise makes it hard for you to generate a reasonable response. It’s not a question or proposal that interests you. Nothing really good would happen if you did respond and nothing really bad would happen if you didn’t.

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.