This article details how knowledge work can’t be reduced into a series of motions and actions to
Factories can become more competitive through two main strategies: increase productivity in order to produce more with less, or innovate. At the advent of the 20th century, knowledge work started to play a more important role in businesses. Knowledge work was deemed too abstract and creative to optimize with the same framework as factory work.
Companies and managers dictated objectives but allowed the implementation to be left to the knowledge workers. This, however, left a guidance gap: proper prioritization and management of those goals wasn’t as widely emphasized, putting additional stress on knowledge workers.
Merlin Mann came up with a process to start optimizing his productivity. Without getting too much into the details, it became a rabbit hole of optimization, becoming its own ecosystem.
It seems there’s a balance to be struck between total freedom, which leads to total chaos, and total structure, which hampers creativity.
The article emphasizes organizing tasks explicitly instead of treating an inbox or unread messages as an unofficial to-do list, in order to better visualize what’s going on and if overload is happening.