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I describe Contraption Company as a digital product studio. Many people ask what that means. "Is it a startup?" (not exactly). "Is it an agency?" (ideally, no). "Do you make apps to spin them out into new companies?" (no).

I envision a digital product studio as a small group of makers who build and maintain high-quality software. They seek growth and economic success like a startup but won't shut down a product that still has customers. They aim to generate revenue as a software business but are open to collaborations with other companies. They may build multiple products, but they intend to operate these apps themselves instead of spinning them out. The studio builds a brand, style, and reputation that compounds over time. I think the principles Cal Newport outlines in his forthcoming book Slow Productivity apply equally to product studios: do fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.

Some companies I consider "digital product studios" include 37Signals, Prehype, and Good Enough. In each of these cases, the head of the company spends most of their time making the products instead of managing people. In my mind, that's the fundamental characteristic of the studio model: its leaders are makers who seek to continue their creative work instead of becoming professional people managers.

In one of my favorite books, Shop Class as Soulcraft, the author explores how knowledge work became abstract, arbitrary, and bureaucratic. He considers physical crafts more intrinsically fulfilling because of their egalitarian nature and tangible outputs. However, I believe the studio model - consisting of a small group of makers - can restore agency and craftsmanship to knowledge work. The infinite scalability of software enables a tiny team to serve millions of users, as companies such as Instagram and WhatsApp have proven.

I draw inspiration by studying manual craftspeople operating at elite levels. There's something magical about watching someone operate at their peak while inventing or building. Unlike technology, manual craftspeople can produce only limited work. That scarcity drives them to choose between quality and quantity - inevitably, staying small is the only way to achieve world-class quality.

I'm currently in Tokyo at the creative residence Almost Perfect. I have been exploring the work culture of Japan, which I've found to have an intense dedication to craft and professionalism. I've been to a 6 AM tuna auction, enjoyed many fantastic coffees, and been mesmerized by pointing train conductors. Last week, I stumbled into the Seiko Museum to learn about the history of a major watch company. There, I discovered I could see the company's top craftspeople making watch movements in the northern city of Morioka. So, I spontaneously booked a Shinkansen to observe what a product studio looks like in the watch industry.

The Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi is a small building where a few dozen craftspeople assemble watch movements by hand. Within the Seiko corporation, Grand Seiko is a small brand intended to compete with luxury Swiss brands such as Rolex and Omega. Grand Seiko brings its unique perspective to the watchmaking process and has developed internal movement designs. The broader Seiko corporation has over ten thousand employees, but many of their ranked senior craftspeople work at the Shizukuishi studio. The studio's head watchmaker Satoshi Hiraga has received multiple awards, including the title of Contemporary Master Craftsman from the Japanese government.

Grand Seiko's Studio Shizukuishi assembles the mechanical movements at the core of many Grand Seiko watches. Mechanical movements are incredibly delicate and complex - using springs, gears, and pinions instead of electricity. Putting together dozens of tiny parts is a precise, manual task. Few companies manufacture mechanical movements today because they are complex, delicate, and expensive. The resulting products must be accurate enough to measure time within a few seconds daily.

Upon entering, the building reminded me of noma - mostly wood, closely integrated with nature, and built around a central maker space. I'm fascinated by physical spaces that blend functionality and aesthetics seamlessly. Making something both functional and beautiful demonstrates a evident pride in the work. For Studio Shizukuishi, Seiko commissioned architect Kengo Kuma, who previously designed Japan's Olympic Stadium. At the core is a clean room where the craftspeople assemble movements.

The clean room's exposed wood, handmade desks, and panoramic views of Mount Iwate obscure the fact that this dust-free manufacturing facility is packed with air filters and advanced equipment. Those assembling movements work under microscopes in silence, using tweezers and small screwdrivers to build timekeeping devices. Then, the movements are tested over weeks at different angles and temperatures to ensure precise timekeeping.

The precision required to assemble these movements wasn’t apparent until I saw the below screen from a microscope. On the left is one of the screws craftspeople use to manually assemble a movement. On the right is a grain of rice.

When I talk about digital product studios, I imagine the software analog of Studio Shizukuishi—a small group of makers with a relentless focus on building high-quality products.

"Craftsmanship means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it, because you want to get it right."

— Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft

In the peak years of Bay Area tech offices, open offices were all the rage. As companies expanded, a physical division emerged between departments. Sales and support teams thrived in a buzzing atmosphere, alive with the sound of calls and collaboration. In contrast, engineering departments cultivated an environment akin to quiet libraries, where focused work prevailed, and meetings were confined to conference rooms. Often, these floors became physically separated - with one looking like a stock trading floor and the other more like a library.

This dichotomy of workspaces catered to the distinct needs of collaboration and concentration. Collaborative roles, such as sales or customer support, benefited from the energy of shared spaces and constant communication. Conversely, roles requiring deep focus, like coding or writing, flourished in the tranquility of isolated environments.

The sudden shift to online work blurred these boundaries. The nuances of physical offices vanished, replaced by a monolithic virtual office space in a chat application, like Slack or Teams. Chat has become the omnipresent digital office - showing who's online, what they're up to, and letting you talk to anybody.

By making chat omnipresent, we’ve begun over-communicating and over-collaborating, which has most affected the concentration-focused roles that thrived in the quiet of the physical office. The result is a digital workspace that's noisy and distracting, making it difficult to focus. We've lost the library's quiet and replaced it with the constant, dull roar everywhere. It's time to rethink how companies communicate online - because digtal knowledge work needs digital quiet.

Integrating concentration-focused workers into an always-on chat culture, symbolized by the omnipresent status indicator 🟢, poses a significant problem. The indicator, showing green when a person is online, subtly pressures employees to be perpetually available. This pressure isn't hypothetical - I once emerged from a deep coding session to find a message from the CEO saying, "It would be nice if the rest of the team saw you online more." We've conflated availability with productivity. But, the best knowledge work happens when a person is offline ⚪️, unavailable, and focusing. Sitting with the green light on all day should not be rewarded more than delivering business impact.

This insistence on constant availability disrupts the essence of focused work. Rather than encouraging employees to tackle complex problems independently, there's a trend, especially among junior staff, to quickly seek help upon encountering any obstacle. The fear is that being "blocked" under-utilizes an expensive team member. However, the nature of knowledge work is solving ambiguous, complicated problems - so the expectation of constant availability can lead to a culture of learned helplessness, which shunts professional development.

Modern companies have started to recognize the need to reduce unnecessary meetings, as seen in Shopify's initiative to delete unproductive meetings. However, many still overlook the importance of streamlining digital communications. Often, there's a misconception that more messages and channels equate to better communication, but this isn't the case. In reality, employees find themselves overwhelmed by an excessive number of messages across various channels. This constant influx of information demands their attention, pulling them away from focused, productive work.

In my experience at a previous company, I was part of over 100 Slack channels, each demanding a different level of engagement. Some channels were crucial for immediate tasks and decisions, while others were purely for informational purposes. The challenge was the expectation to stay constantly connected and responsive to all these channels. This led to a relentless stream of distractions, much like an endless, infinite-scrolling social media feed, where messages kept pouring in faster than they could be processed.

The issue with this setup is that chat platforms often become less about work and more about casual, non-essential conversations. They turn into virtual water coolers, where discussions are dominated by personal opinions and spontaneous thoughts. This environment rarely fosters meaningful decisions or insights. Thus, it's crucial for companies to realize that effective work rarely happens in these cluttered chat spaces, and to adjust their communication strategies accordingly.

By its nature, knowledge work demands deep concentration and an unbroken chain of thought. It involves holding and manipulating complex systems in one's mind, be it a sophisticated software architecture or the intricate details of an essay. Interruptions are not merely minor distractions but significant obstacles that break this chain of thought and require considerable time to re-establish. Flow state research details the psychology of concentrated work and finds it takes about 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption. However, data shows that we're opening chat an average of every six minutes. Interruptions crowd out important, focused work - resulting in decreased productivity. People work late at night or on weekends because it’s the only time they can find quiet to concentrate.

Our current digital workspace has yet to acknowledge or address the substantial costs of context switching. I believe it's a significant contributor to fatigue and burnout in knowledge work. Chat channels can feel like sitting in multiple conference rooms simultaneously, listening into different conversations while trying to follow each one individually. The result is a constant state of mental exhaustion.

To reshape our digital communication landscape, we need to:

• Elevate the threshold for initiating conversations, discouraging trivial interruptions.
• Promote well-considered, clear communication to reduce the need for follow-up clarifications.
• Understand that not all messages necessitate immediate responses or reactions.
• Use synchronous meetings when back-and-forth communication is required.
• Offer flexibility in monitoring communication channels, with options for summarized updates.
• Ensure vital information is highlighted and not lost in a sea of trivial exchanges.
• For genuinely urgent communications, continue to rely on pagers and phone calls.

It's time to rethink communication best practices for knowledge workers. Communication is core to the job - people have things to share, questions to ask, and updates to give. Most communication should be long-form and asynchronous so people can follow up on their schedule. The expectation should be that knowledge workers batch their communication times, for instance, by scheduling an hour per day on their calendar for admin and collaboration - like they would a meeting. During this planned communication time, they can review and follow up on a queue of communications. Then, they should turn off communications until their next scheduled communication block. Topics that require back-and-forth discussion should result in a meeting. This approach balances collaboration with concentration.

A desire for digital quiet is why I’m booking Booklet. Businesses need an asynchronous way to communicate, and Booklet fulfills that by mixing the best of email and chat products. Booklet's early adopters have been "second communities" like investor networks, clubs, and communities. But, my goal and vision is for Booklet to gain traction in workplaces as knowledge workers push back against low-quality communication. Amazon fought against low-quality communication by banning PowerPoints and mandating memos. It won't be long before a similar forward-thinking enterprise bans chat in favor of long-form, async communication. The chat problem is the worst at the top - modern CEOs are in so many channels that chat is nearly useless for them, and they desire a better way to know what’s happening across their companies.

I championed remote work before the pandemic, and many companies couldn’t believe they would ever be remote. Five years later, the norms have inverted - in-person work is the exception rather than the rule for most tech companies. I firmly believe the next major shift in online work will be toward asynchronous-first communication. Many companies will resist such a shift in working styles, but if Bezos can ban the PowerPoint, then another forward-minded CEO can bury chat. All they need is a better tool to replace it, and I'm hoping Booklet can be that tool. A shift to asynchronous communication will enable globally distributed teams, enhance knowledge worker productivity, reduce burnout, and remove the assumption that everybody must work the same hours.

We may no longer have the quiet engineering floors of the past, but we can and should strive to split our digital lives into practices that support concentration versus collaboration. Remote work offers an opportunity to move closer to a quiet, concentrated way of working and promises to improve the productivity of companies that achieve it. In doing so, we reclaim the essence of productive workspaces, adapting them to the realities of our digital era. Restoring this balance is not just about enhancing productivity; it's about respecting the nature of different types of work and the environments they thrive in.

In my introductory physics class, we replicated calculations by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist after whom our department was named. After returning from the Manhattan Project, this professor became frustrated by a common problem at the university and set about fixing it with physics. His invention worked and is now found ubiquitously on campus - and worldwide. The issue was speeding cars, and his invention was a speed bump. Drivers can ignore a speed limit but can’t miss a speed bump.

I live in NYC, a city that announced a "Vision Zero" initiative in 2014 seeking to end pedestrian deaths from cars. In the almost decade since, the pledge has meant more marketing than results. For instance, the city requires every Uber to "have a Vision Zero Sticker on the windshield to pass inspection." I assumed that "Vision Zero" was a political talking point rather than an achievable reality - until I went to Oslo.

Oslo is somewhat tiny, comparable in population to Denver (9 pedestrian deaths in 2022) or Memphis (83 pedestrian deaths in 2022). Yet, since 2019, Oslo has had zero pedestrian deaths from cars and zero bicycle deaths.

Oslo became a safe city for pedestrians and cyclists by doing more than mandating stickers in Ubers. While there last month, I researched more about how they achieved such a safe city. I found a mental model that applies to more than city planning - "Engineering Over Enforcement."

Enforcement philosophy is rooted in the idea that behavior can be controlled by threatening punishments. Engineering philosophy believes that infrastructure can be designed to incentivize desired behavior. When Oslo sought to reduce pedestrian deaths, it turned to engineers.

Traffic intersections are a typical and illustrative example of how somebody can apply different philosophies.

Traffic lights are an example of enforcement - when a signal is red, nothing physically stops a car from going through the intersection. The only thing enforcing proper behavior is the fear of a crash or a ticket. When rules get broken at traffic lights, the resulting accidents tend to be high-speed T-bone crashes that can easily prove fatal. People used to traffic lights may think that the way they work seems reasonably obvious, but Americans may be surprised to learn that "right turn on red" is illegal in most of Europe (and in NYC). "Red means stops, green means go" may also seem simple, yet it fails for the colorblind - and one in twelve men is red-green colorblind. Traffic lights are not as legible as they may appear.

When enforcement doesn't achieve its desired outcome, the only option is more enforcement. New York City began automating red light enforcement with cameras in 1994 to try to curb the problem of drivers ignoring the rules of intersections. Yet, in 2022 - the city cameras issued 618,000 red light violation tickets - showing that enforcement often fails to eliminate the problem.

Roundabouts serve the same function as traffic lights but follow an engineering philosophy in their design. Roundabouts can be confusing to first-time drivers, but that's a benefit. People slow down, maintain awareness, and can understand the basic rules intuitively. It's simple – "slow down because your path is blocked, and merge when there's space." This engineering means that accidents tend to happen less often in roundabouts, and the ones that do occur tend to be low-speed fender-benders. Plus, roundabouts work without electricity, are faster for drivers, and don't rely on ticket-sending robots.

Intersections are one small example where philosophies can diverge. But, as I learned in Oslo, engineers have a whole toolkit of methods to make cities safer. Bumping out a curb slows down turning speeds and protects pedestrians. Bike lanes can be safer by being raised above the street instead of relying on a painted barrier. Limiting how far cars can see ahead of them slows them down. Behavior can be designed rather than just enforced, and in aggregate these small changes can make a city safer.

I found that as a pedestrian, Oslo felt pleasant. I didn't need to look for as many signs to avoid getting hit by a car. Crosswalks were easier to navigate. But, at the same time, the city didn’t feel rule-heavy – there were areas where the city chose an enforcement philosophy over an engineering one. For instance, the NYC subway uses fare gates (engineering!) to ensure riders pay. But, in Oslo, the metro had no gate - I could board the train unencumbered, and occasional fare inspectors enforced tickets. I think enforcement works best when most people follow the rules, and you don’t want to impede everybody to correct a few outliers needlessly.

My takeaway from the "Engineering Over Enforcement" philosophy is that rules must be obvious. Whether you’re building a road or an application, assume that most people will not read or pay attention to the terms. People are distracted by push notifications, chat messages, emails, phone calls, music, and more - so you probably don't have their full attention while they are using your product. (And, unfortunately, the same is true while people are driving).

Looking back, it turns out that I learned the benefits of engineering over enforcement many times while building Moonlight, an engineering marketplace. We originally made our money by charging a success fee upon hiring somebody through the website. But, people would often claim ignorance of the fee after making a hire. We even tried including an e-sign contract for companies in their signup process to make it evident that we were entering a legal relationship - and people would still later claim not to know the rules. I wrote in the past that "suing customers isn't a viable growth strategy," and we followed this at Moonlight by switching from enforcing a success fee to engineering an upfront subscription before accessing candidates. Users found this approach more legible, and changing to a subscription led to a 300% increase in revenue.

The next time you cross a speed bump, slow down and appreciate that it's an elegant engineering approach to control speeds. It doesn’t take police, laws, signs, or robotic camera machines to control speed. It's universal of design standards and unit of measurement. And, it makes for a fun homework assignment in physics class.

On a recent Arvid Kahl podcast, Channing Allen described Indiehackers.com as a "community-powered media company." It's been weeks since I listened to the episode, but that idea of a community-powered media company has stuck with me because it clearly describes a shift I've also observed. Community-powered media companies represent a fragmentation of social networks into smaller, focused communities where any member can contribute.

The Creator Model

The classic creator model involves one person creating content and a community of readers who consume it. A great example of this model is Substack, where authors broadcast posts to their audience. The passive follower model has long been successful but requires ongoing content creation to maintain audience engagement. These businesses tend to lack network effects because the creator's content doesn't improve as the number of readers increases.

The Community Model

Indiehackers started as a creator-led model, but they allowed others to post over time. Now, the site is predominantly community-created content. Community members share on Indiehackers because they can engage like-minded people without building a personal audience. Nobody likes shouting into the void. For Indiehackers, this approach creates more content from more perspectives and shifts the burden of content creation from the site owners to the community. Plus, discussions create nested engagement opportunities on posts, so interested readers can converse instead of just reading.

At the core of the community model, a group of community members talks to each other, and the rest of the community follows those discussions. However, these communities can harness network effects because as the community grows, it has more content, making it more compelling to join. More content creates a data opportunity to find and broadcast only the best information to each member, which can further increase engagement and retention.

1% Rule and Minimum Viable Community

The key to community-led media is making it easy to follow the content. While making Moonlight, I spent a lot of time coding buttons and app interfaces. But one day, I looked at the data and realized that our newsletter had ten times as many weekly active users as our entire website. It turned out that the newsletter was the product for most people, and only a highly engaged minority logged into the website.

This engagement distribution is typical – the 1% rule states that, in most internet communities, 1% of users create content, 9% engage with content, and 90% consume content silently. Lack of engagement is a problem many people encounter with community building – but the core issue is that most people prefer to consume passively.

To bootstrap a new community, the creator needs to embrace being an active creator of content, and as a rule of thumb, you need a thousand members to have about ten active creators. So, the community media company starts as a creator-led model; then, over time, it can shift to a community-led model.

This distribution between creators and readers explains why chat-based communities tend to decrease in engagement over time. Chat makes posting easy, but following a chat-based community engenders constant context shifts. Opening and reading hundreds of messages in dozens of channels is tedious, not enjoyable. And, as a community grows, most people want to glean only the highlights of discussions.

Infrequent Contributors

One of my favorite parts of community media is the infrequent contributors. With creator-led media, the creator has to make content, even if they don't have anything to share. In community media, the contributors can change day-to-day. The FRCTNL community is a good example, where a member may have a job post to share every 3-6 months. That's not enough to build their own Substack around. But, by joining a community, they can stay engaged as a reader and then, every few months, become a contributor by posting a job in the group. Even though their posting may be infrequent, it adds value to the community. And, across all readers, the occasional contributors add up to valuable content, which tends to be organic and high-quality.

Hybrid Approaches

Many creator-led businesses have explored adding a community to keep readers engaged, especially the most active members who want to contribute. For instance, Lenny's Newsletter runs a Slack community for subscribers. For years, he's used the community to craft an additional "Community Wisdom" email every Friday, separate from his core essays.

This approach of adding a community to existing creator-led businesses will become more common. The hybrid content strategy keeps more readers engaged and active while recognizing community members for their contributions. And, it can reduce stress on the creator by providing feedback and ideas on their work.

Lenny’s Newsletter does community media correctly by summarizing activity in an email instead of relying on chat as the primary consumption method. By curating a short weekly email, all readers can follow the community without reading every message. But, it’s a lot of work to curate this community summary – manually monitoring chat, curating content, and writing posts. Lenny seems to have a separate person focus on the community media emails, but that’s not an accessible solution for most creators.

For most readers, "community" is a read-only channel, not an app they want to log into. This dissonance explains why apps such as Discord and Circle have struggled to gain traction in the creator-led space - they focus so much on getting members into their apps that they alienate the people who want just casually to follow.

Booklet

I've recently launched Booklet as a community software platform. I began building it as an asynchronous alternative to Slack by focusing on threaded discussions instead of chat and a daily email summary instead of constant push notifications.

As I've run Booklet communities and helped others run theirs, I've realized that the "Community-powered media" model works well with Booklet. Some people talk, but everybody can follow discussions through the email summary. The threaded posts keep discussions organized for easy browsing, and Booklet's use of OpenAI means that summary emails stay brief and high-quality, even as the number of posts scales.

Many community managers may hesitate to consider themselves “media companies.” But, as I’ve talked to Booklet users, I’ve realized that many people find a sense of belonging by following the conversations in a community. They feel an identity alignment with the group and don’t want to engage frequently. However, the periodic email summary helps them decide when to jump in and contribute.

Conclusion

As Facebook slowly dies and as Twitter X continues to be a dumpster fire, people are seeking more niche communities where they can participate. While synchronous chat communities worked during the pandemic, as people emerged from lockdowns, they lost interest in sitting in front of a chat app all day. Creators have already figured out that asynchronous content engages their audiences, and more will realize that they can turn their audience into a community.

If you have an audience or community and are looking for a way to engage them, send me an email. I’m working on some Booklet features to automate some steps for adding a community to an existing business, such as automatically syncing subscribers from Substack and Stripe. I hope these Booklet features help more people build communities that keep people engaged without making them feel overwhelmed.