Future of Knowledge Work

Information work increasingly asks employees to handle more complexity—but we should not have to self-manage our own productivity in imperfect systems laid atop programmer thinking to simply do our work.

Now I accept that this is going to happen, and when it does, I acknowledge it and then look for something else to get absorbed in, something new to learn. I seek out my support network and try to let it all go.

Because there is no one way to organize projects and workloads, no software can be everything for modern workers. You may find yourself really loving one of these programs—and that’s great! But the utility of software like Jira lies with actual programmers. Smaller, more job-specific software, like Clio for lawyers, is more likely to address the pr... See more

A huge part of your job today may be simply resolving and reconfiguring the natural entropy in your office, but poorly communicated deadlines will remain so whether they’re written on an index card, sent in an email, or appended to a “task” in Asana. If you put something on a digital kanban board without enough information, it is no more useful tha... See more