It doesn’t matter how fast you move if it’s in a worthless direction. Picking the right thing to work on is the most important element of productivity and usually almost ignored. So think about it more!

If execution is no longer scarce, the thinking goes, then the only way to stand out is to do more of it. The result is a kind of productivity treadmill: lots of movement, little meaning.

This logic is, of course, flawed and self-defeating. When output becomes frictionless, quantity can become a liability.

The more we produce without purpose, the har... See more