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Concept

Process-Centric Email

Process-centric email is Cal Newport's way of replying to messages: instead of the quickest possible answer, you work out the process that will bring the underlying project to completion and describe it in your reply, so the exchange closes in as few messages as possible.

Newport offers it in Deep Work among his tactics for becoming hard to reach. Most email is answered as fast as possible with as little thought as possible, which feels efficient but generates more email. A message like "It would be great to meet and discuss this" invites a vague reply, and the vague reply starts a chain of back-and-forth about times and places, each message pulling you out of whatever you were doing. The process-centric reply spends a few extra minutes up front. Identify the project the message represents, decide the most efficient process for finishing it, and write that process into the reply: what you have decided, what happens next and what happens if the other person agrees. For a meeting request, that means proposing specific times and a place and saying that if one works, you will treat it as confirmed. The loop closes in one or two messages instead of six. Newport pairs this with a second permission: you do not have to answer every message. If a message is ambiguous, does not interest you, or nothing much good happens if you reply and nothing much bad happens if you do not, it is acceptable to let it go.

A real-life example

Okan, an event coordinator in Antalya, got a message from a hotel: "Let's meet next week to talk about the conference." His old reply would have been "Sure, when suits you?" This time he wrote: "I can do Tuesday at 10:00 or Thursday at 14:00 in your lobby. If either works, just reply with the day and consider it confirmed. I'll bring the room plan and the catering numbers." The hotel replied once, and the meeting was set.

How to use it

  1. 1Before replying to an email that needs action, ask which project it belongs to and what the shortest path to finishing it is.
  2. 2Write that path into the reply: the decision you have made, the specific next step and what happens if the other person agrees.
  3. 3For messages that are vague, uninteresting or harmless to ignore, give yourself permission not to reply.