The vibration against my thigh was sharp, persistent, and entirely unwelcome. I was balanced on a narrow scaffold, thirty-six feet above the pavement, trying to coax a stubborn sliver of 156-year-old granite back into alignment. My hands were coated in a grey slurry of lime and stone dust, a texture that feels like history itself under your fingernails. When the phone buzzed for the fourth time in six minutes, I reached into my pocket with a clumsy, gloved hand, intending to hit ‘ignore.’ Instead, my thumb slid across the glass in exactly the wrong direction. I heard a faint ‘Hello? Emma?’ from the pocket of my canvas trousers before I panicked and jammed the end call button with a force that nearly sent my trowel over the edge. I just hung up on my boss. He was likely calling to ask about the 26 unread messages he’d fired into my inbox since breakfast, each one a ‘quick check-in’ that required me to put down my tools, wipe my hands, and enter a digital world that feels increasingly like a relic from 1999.

The Swiss Army Knife Fallacy

I think about this a lot while I’m chipping away at the mortar. There’s a rhythm to masonry. You have the rough work, the setting, and the pointing. You don’t use a heavy mallet for the pointing, and you don’t use a delicate needle-nose tool to break a block. Yet, in our digital lives, we use email for everything. It’s the Swiss Army knife of the corporate world, and much like a real Swiss Army knife, the scissors are too small to cut anything substantial, and the blade is never quite sharp enough for a clean slice.

We use it for urgent alerts, which is absurd because an inbox is a passive medium. We use it for long-form discussions, resulting in those nightmarish 16-message threads where the actual decision is buried somewhere between a signature block and a ‘Sent from my iPhone’ disclaimer.

The Mason’s Standard: Compatibility and Precision

In my line of work, precision is everything. If the mortar is too hard, it will crack the stone as the building settles. If it’s too soft, it washes away in the rain. We spend weeks analyzing the original materials of a building to ensure the new work is compatible. This level of care-this insistence on the right tool and the right diagnostic approach-is what separates a restoration from a hack job.

I see this same commitment to precision when I consider where to do the visual field analysis. They don’t just hand you a pair of generic lenses and hope for the best. They use specialized ZEISS instruments and a specific diagnostic process to understand the unique topography of your vision. They understand that a general tool is no substitute for a specialized one. If we applied that same logic to our workflows, our inboxes wouldn’t look like a digital landfill.

The Value of Constraints

I used to think that “process” felt like a constraint. But constraints are what give a building its strength. An arch only stands because the stones are pushing against each other in a very specific, disciplined way.

Demotion and Intentionality

Maybe the solution isn’t to kill email, but to demote it. It should go back to being what it was meant to be: a way to send long-form, non-urgent correspondence. It should be the digital equivalent of a letter, not a replacement for a conversation or a project management suite.

If it’s urgent, call. If it’s a task, put it in a tracker. If it’s a file, put it in a shared drive. Don’t just throw it into the void of the inbox and hope I can find it later.

The Clarity of Cured Stone

The sun is starting to dip now, casting long shadows across the face of the building. The granite is set, the mortar is curing, and the scaffold feels a little more stable than it did this morning. I’ll eventually have to climb down and face the $676 worth of digital ’emergencies’ waiting for me.