Taming the workplace hive mind
Six ways to boost the signal and mute the noise in your team communications
The Hyperactive Hive Mind: A workflow centered around ongoing conversation fueled by unstructured and unscheduled messages delivered through digital communication tools like email and instant messenger services.
—Cal Newport, from A World Without Email (2021)
The modern digital workplace (arts and otherwise) can feel like discussion/decision whack-a-mole. You reply to one email, text message, or Slack post only to get three more in response. You continually check multiple channels – throughout the day, in the evening, over weekends, on vacation – to track and advance these threads. You shift in and out of focus on deep and important work with each new “ping” from your many devices.
The flood and the flow of this digital discourse can feel impossible to escape, even when we notice its full cost – overwhelm, distraction, burnout, and days spent on chatter rather than positive change. But some basic rules and process discipline can calm the tide.
Cal Newport explores the clutter and consequence of digital communications across multiple books (and podcasts and in The New Yorker). His key and recurring recommendations focus on the difference between (and interplay of) two categories of effort: work execution and workflow.1
“Work execution” involves actually producing the valuable activities and outcomes of the enterprise – the production, exhibit, creative offering, communications, audience engagement, resource development, and so on. These require generous periods of uninterrupted attention or extended blocks of immersive and real-time collaboration.
“Workflow” involves identifying, assigning, coordinating, and reviewing these activities and outcomes. Workflow answers questions like “who’s doing what,” “what’s the status,” “where are the bottlenecks,” and “why do I feel so tired?” This requires current and transparent information about shared priorities and individual commitments.
Low-to-no-friction digital communications can disrupt both of these categories. Work execution is continually interrupted by unscheduled and unstructured inquiries. Workflow is confused and cluttered through multiple streams of assignments and status requests.
So how do you fight this whack-a-mole game? Newport offers many practical and tactical places to begin (2021, 2025). Here are six:
The one-message rule
Any email or message you send should be answerable in a single-message reply. Don’t start a back-and-forth conversation on asynchronous communication platforms.The docket
When issues require more than a single reply, add them to a docket for real-time conversation. Often, a short face-to-face (or phone-to-phone) can shortcut through what woulde have been a multi-day, back-and-forth email exchange.Process-centric emails
When you absolutely need to initiate a complex task by e-mail, take extra time in the message to detail the process that will follow: How the work will unfold, what’s needed from whom and when, where shared documents will be posted. Extra effort at the start can avoid a slew of follow-up replies.Office hours
Set aside a consistent block of time each day or each week when you’re available for non-scheduled discussions (phone, in-person, Zoom). When you receive an e-mail or text requiring more than a single response, invite the sender to “drop in” during office hours to talk it through.Transparent task management
If you find yourself writing or receiving a lot of these process-centric emails, it may be time to rethink your shared task management systems. Something as simple as a “my current work queue” file in a shared document can make individual work more visible and additional work expectations more humane.No-meeting, slow-reply time blocks
For a breath or a break from the hyperactive hive mind, you can build a shared culture of not scheduling morning meetings or not expecting immediate replies during specific parts of the week.
To be fair, if you’re in a workplace or a job function that demands continual and quick responses to digital communications (customer service, day-of-show operations), the continual chatter may be hard to avoid. Even then, distinguishing response-critical from response-flexible roles can help you and your team thrive (and survive) in the hive.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: People Operations
People Operations involves designing and driving systems and practices that attract, engage, retain, and develop people within the enterprise (also called human resources).
Framework of the Week: Planning Organizing Leading Controlling (POLC)
Traditional management theory describes four core functions of management in any industry: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
Sources
Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash
Newport, Cal. 2021. A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload. Portfolio.
Newport, Cal. 2025. “Ep. 379: The Flexibility Myth.” Deep Questions with
Cal Newport (podcast). November 17, 2025. 26:54.
Before you object, these aren’t clean and mutually exclusive categories.