If you want the asymmetrical upside of the internet, you have to embrace asynchronous communication.

As Cal Newport says in 'Deep Work':

"The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy"

@SahilBloom did a great thread recently on how focus is a competitive advantage: https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1378460268796243973?s=20

I particularly like the 'Sprint Then Rest' part. @naval suggests something very similar.

The problem is that this way of working just doesn't fit into the traditional 9-5 model.

You can't do Deep Work in a 9-5 when your day is littered w/ meetings.

There's too big a cost in task-switching and attention residue.

Traditional, industrial notions of productivity also hurt knowledge workers.

Bad metrics lead to bad optimizations.

Knowledge workers are insecure about showing their worth to their employers.

So they work late nights/weekends. Send late emails. Try to show how hard they're working.

But busyness is a bad proxy for productivity in knowledge work.

40 hr work weeks are a relic of the industrial age.

The quality of work is what matters. And ppl create their best work on their own time.

If you own a knowledge-work business, stop forcing your schedule onto employees.

Have some overlap for synced comms, yes. But mostly async.