What's next for personal productivity
I continue to believe that we don&#x27;t talk enough about the root causes of several productivity issues, instead focus too much on the symptoms.<p>We somehow accept that the average office worker is constantly dealing with information overload and distractions, and never wonder why or make a serious attempt to fix it. We find systems to cope with it, but don&#x27;t address the root cause.<p>Likewise, we stretch people to the point where they are often near a burn-out and then offer meditation as a solution. How about not stretching people out in the first place?<p>I&#x27;d like to offer an interesting contrast by means of my background. I&#x27;m born into the lower working class. My family, the town I live in, it&#x27;s almost all blue collar workers.<p>Strangely, these people never have meetings. Or at most one per week. They may have a few spontaneous 5 minute phone calls per day to calibrate, and that&#x27;s it. They seem to mostly just work, as they know what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.<p>The immediate excuse we might come up with is that the nature of the work is different. More repetitive, less complex, less dependencies. Sometimes, but not always true. But it&#x27;s still not an excuse in any case.<p>We quite simply don&#x27;t have things in order. If for the coming week you don&#x27;t know what the 1-3 things are you should be working on, that&#x27;s a planning&#x2F;priority problem. Which is to be addressed centrally.<p>If you are under siege by 20 other things not part of those 1-3 things, you shouldn&#x27;t &quot;deal with it&quot;, you should aim to eradicate them. Because clearly there&#x27;s a planning&#x2F;responsibility misalignment going on.<p>If your planning&#x2F;priority situation changes by the day or even hour, your team has shit planning. Fix it.<p>If you spend half of each day not working, instead figuring out what to do, stop accepting this reality. Something is fishy upstream.<p>If you are bombarded with status meetings and messages, you have a systems problem.<p>Is there a single silver bullet? No. All I&#x27;m saying is that a huge part of these problems are solvable, and shouldn&#x27;t be accepted as a fact of life for you to cope with. Demand clear tasks and planning. Demand uninterrupted time to do the tasks. It&#x27;s not anti-business, it&#x27;s pro-business. The worker AND the business benefits.<p>Fulfillment has nothing to do with it. Of course work-life balance matters, as well as chasing the luxury of doing work you like. But the lack of fulfillment in office work likely does not come from the tasks itself being dreadful.<p>Example 1. A manager draws a line on a patch of sand and tells me to dig into the ground 2 inches deep along this line. It needs to be ready before tomorrow.<p>Whilst not a fun task, it is clear. It is fulfilling in the sense that you would get paid for it, plus at the end of the day you have a feeling of accomplishment. You may feel tired, but not burned out.<p>Example 2. The dysfunctional office version of the above would be something like this...<p>Yeah so we need you to dig that line, but please check with our design department as they may have some changes in the line&#x27;s design. The Kentucky office said that the line might need to be dug into another location entirely. Please also look plan a meeting with legal as our shovels may not be compliant. By the way, today you also urgently need to paint the fence, renovate the shed and design a new pond but we&#x27;re not really sure when what needs to happen or how much time you have so figure it out. By the way, did you take the mandatory HR and IT security training that is due this week. Sorry, whilst I was typing it turns out the digging needs to be 1 inch deep, not 2 inch, so please put the sand back. But do it after the painting. I think. As per latest policy, please declare your commute expenses en route to the digging site, I&#x27;ve attached a PDF with instructions, required reading. By the way, are you reading your email? 7 people asked about the status of the digging, yet you haven&#x27;t replied? Please reply urgently as to prevent further escalations. Which reminds me, please skip lunch at the site as one of our investors may drop by. Further, as you know, we&#x27;re working on new recruit diggers, can you do an interview with them around 7PM? We need to move quickly as there&#x27;s many digging opportunities.<p>I&#x27;m sure I could go on. The point is that example 2 creates burn-out, a lack of fulfillment, meditation as a requirement, and so on. It has absolutely nothing to do with the actual task of digging. It&#x27;s garbage planning and incompetence. This is why you&#x27;ll never find a blue collar worker in a meditation center, only stressed out white collar workers.