I was out last week on a camping trip, but I have returned today to talk about email. You might say: boring! Drab! Everyone hates email. But also, everyone uses email…and maybe it's for a reason?
This week, some thoughts on why email is the now-and-future gatekeeper of our workflows.
It is time to care about workflows
We've reached the point in the development of computers and software where most products at most price points satisfy our performance needs. The differentiator between tech goods is shifting from noun to verb: from the what—storage space, memory, resolution—to the how—the means and ease by which things are accomplished. To workflows and usability.
Most of us, for example, will never notice the difference between a 8-core processor and a 10-core processor. I am not benefited by incremental quality improvements on Amazon, like whether they offer 70 or 70,000 options for notebooks. This is a real screenshot:
I only need 1 notebook, and what I do notice is that when I want to buy it, I need to jump between 12 tabs to comparison shop.
Amazon has ample selection but no good selection workflow: a developed what but an underdeveloped how. This is often called the Innovator's Dilemma, and it's a problem you'll notice in software everywhere once you start to look.
Enterprise pain
I use 5-10 software tools per day at work, and my workflows are cluttered and tab-riddled both within and between programs. I keep different software open in different tabs. I fumble through two-factor protocols. I open an email and realize I need to chat with my coworker over Slack; I draft a document in my notes and copy it to a public google doc. This is like trying to run batting practice by yourself—you’re running around to retrieve hit balls in order to keep teeing them up:
This wastes time and energy and erases the compounding gains of focus. That third part is actually the most important, top-of-the-pyramid component. I'm thinking of Peter Kaufman's quote:
"We’re the functional equivalent of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain. You push it up half way, and you go, ‘Aw, I’ll come back and do this another time.’ In geometric terms this is called variance drain. Whenever you interrupt the constant increase above a certain level of threshold you lose compounding."
ISO Workflow Perfection
We should look to consumer apps as the paragon of good workflows: their existence depends on how well they compete for our attention. Think about the genius of infinite scroll, which uses 1 motion (a downward swipe) to predict and deliver content so well that it gets us all into addicted flow states. What if every single thing we did on a computer was that satisfying? What if our work tasks could be queued up and completed that seamlessly?
There are 3 ingredients to Tiktok-esque workflow perfection:
A good workflow is simple: it allows the user to accomplish goals with an minimum number of easy actions.
A good workflow is prescient: it understands, anticipates, and provides the tools for what the user will want to do.
A good workflow is athletic: because the actions are legible and mechanistic, the user can get the user into a flow state.
The magic of email
An inbox can simultaneously hold the complexity and diversity of an enterprise to-do list like no other tool—it's interoperable with every software on earth—but it still presents as a simple sequential list with a clear set of actions.
When well managed, the simplicity and repetitiveness of opening a message, reacting, and moving on (all while you view your progress toward a clean slate) can get you into a flow.
This last component—the potential for athleticism in the midst of chaos—is what sets email apart as the best candidate to live at the center of our work life. Because of this, it has the ability to eat our other, subpar workflows in secondary apps:
A moment for the counterarguments: Zapier has often been hailed as a workflow savior, and while data integrations can make in-app workflows cleaner, they do nothing to clean up multi-software workflow congestion. There has also been much (well-written) ado about Slack and Dropbox competing to be the home base of our enterprise tech stack, but neither of these is a workflow tool: they suggest no clear order of operations. They are nouns—a filing system, a chatroom.
We have enough nouns in the enterprise. Email, however much we hate it, describes a verb: a protocol, a process, a workflow. It just needs some love to rise to the occasion.
Superhuman is upping the prescience, athleticism, and simplicity of email in a system that was designed completely from scratch. When asked why we don’t already have a better experience, CEO Rahul Vora said “I just think that no one ever tried.” They are hiring an analytics lead, an on-boarding specialist, and more.
Front is making group workflows athletic. We forget that good teamwork (low internal transaction costs) is an existential prerequisite of being a company, and while I've focused on the issues with our individual workflows, you can imagine that problems compound when lots of people are trying to use them in coordination. Front is enabling team-wide enterprise processes to occur right from a shared email inbox, which acts as a central triage client and task hub. Front is hiring for customer success, sales, marketing, and more.
Folio is an email triage assistant. Folio is focused on making email more prescient—enabling it to better predict and reflect our real priorities using AI. Look out for positions here.
Plum Mail just exited YC and is working to transform email and messenger clients Look out for roles here.