The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You Down - The New York Times

The first principle of slow productivity provides what is ostensibly professional advice. Working on fewer things can paradoxically produce more value in the long term: overload generates an untenable quantity of nonproductive overhead.

The key is to find ways to minimize context shifts and overload while still getting done what needs to get done.

From Foraging to the Invisible Factory; or, Why Knowledge Workers Should Return to a More Natural Pace

Slow productivity is just one response among many to a much bigger problem: The world of cognitive work lacks coherent ideas about how our efforts should be organized and measured.

This reality creates a nasty, productivity-sapping circularity. When you’re overloaded, you’re forced to fall back on the flexibility of the hive mind. This workflow, however, leads to even more fragmentation of your attention, making you even less efficient in getting things done.