The End of Productivity

most productivity tools are built for convergence, the part of creativity that involves narrowing down and refining ideas. They aren’t built for divergence, which involves opening ourselves up to new ideas and possibilities.

"Haz más, más rápido". Sin embargo, a medida que la IA mercantiliza la velocidad y la producción, esta búsqueda perderá su valor.

In a world where we can outsource productivity to technology, the people who reap the biggest rewards aren’t those who work the fastest.

They’re the people who make things that are wonderful, original, weird, emotionally resonant, and authentic. As our feeds become flooded with instant, AI-generated content, the most dangerous thing you can do is pl... See more

the creative process typically involves three steps:

1. Collecting: Gathering interesting ideas


2. Connecting: Drawing connections and organizing materials


3. Creating: Producing something new

“When we gear our society around efficiency, we produce more and more of the measurable, while the immeasurable, the qualitative, and the things we don’t think to measure drain away. Bedazzled by quantitative abundance, we might not be able to see what is lost, but we can definitely feel its absence.”

I believe there are two plausible scenarios for the future of knowledge work. There’s one in which as machines become more human-like in their capabilities, we paradoxically become more machine-like in our pursuit of productivity, focused on efficiency and keeping busy above all else. But there’s another where we lean into ways of working that are ... See more

Productivity tools shape our thinking in ways that favor standardization, efficiency, and predictability. They demand structure before inspiration has a chance to strike. They ask for timelines when the problem itself is still hazy. But creativity is not linear. Often, it involves struggling down several blind alleys before finding the right path.

Information that is worth saving usually falls into two buckets:

• Administrative information: The daily minutiae of our lives (e.g., grocery lists, meeting notes, to-do lists)


• Creative information: Information that fuels our projects and ideas (e.g., that perfect quote for a presentation, the scientific study that inspires your next big essay, the

... See more

“When we gear our society around efficiency, we produce more and more of the measurable, while the immeasurable, the qualitative, and the things we don’t think to measure drain away. Bedazzled by quantitative abundance, we might not be able to see what is lost, but we can definitely feel its absence.”