Saved by andrea and
Good Cogs and Their Tools
The carefully engineered systems of factories were replaced with the “personal productivity” of offices, in which individuals deploy their own ad hoc and often ill-defined collection of tools and hacks to make sense of their jobs, with no one really knowing how anyone else is managing their work.
Cal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
The idea of augmenting our work with the help of software was well intended. But instead of creativity enhancing superpowers, we got attention-seeking productivity silos. Alerts here, notifications there. We are spending more time with the coordination of our work than with the work we actually want to get done. Our dream machines are more powerful... See more
Linear • Readme
Why your project management app won't save you:
"When we line up the Trellos, Asanas, Wrikes, Airtables, and endless clones of the same inherent project-management misses, their differences matter less than their end results—to paraphrase Anna Karenina's line about families, each project management app promises the same happiness, but each creat... See more
The organization believes that frenzied activity is a sign of healthy productivity.
Steve McMenamin • Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior (Dorset House eBooks)
Software problems tend to evolve over time into philosophy problems, a point that's come up in a few Diff pieces, like the Antithesis writeup and Asana's ontology-as-a-service ($). In this particular category, it's the philosophy of work and vocation: a bond trader, accountant, or social media manager doesn't necessarily have to spend much time nav... See more