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The relevant trend that covid has accelerated is giving workers more autonomy. I don't think humans are good at figuring out how to resist the perils that come

The relevant trend that covid has accelerated is giving workers more autonomy. I don't think humans are good at figuring out how to resist the perils that come with it. Absent willpower, or a job that's inherently aligned with one's natural interests, human nature inevitably drifts toward distraction. I think that's partly because so many people yearn for more human connection, which in covid times is often expressed as unnecessary Slack conversations. Also, because humans are naturally wired to be drawn toward whatever is most recent; until a few hundred years ago, if an event happened nearby you, that was always the most important thing to which attention should be directed. Finally, I don't think that "avoiding distraction" is even a goal for many people, especially if they're meh about their job or they feel watching current social trends are more important/interesting than their job. I doubt there is a generalizable solution for these "perils of autonomy." But if eventually we move away from the synchronous messaging that pervades modern office culture, that would be a step in the right direction. Slack needs a mode that debounces messages so they're delivered en masse once per hour unless a box is checked that the message is urgent. In the future, when more people work as independent contractors, that ought to help too. This isn't a problem that a manager will step in and fix by imposing a new policy, as the story seems to imply.

dcolkitt 6y ago
> Absent willpower, or a job that's inherently aligned with one's natural interests, human nature inevitably drifts toward distraction. I think the biggest testament to this is the 50%+ dropout rates common in PhD programs. You're starting with some of the most intelligent, diligent, bright-eyed young people on the planet and letting them work independently in a field that they presumably have a deep passion for. All we ask them to do is write 100 pages or so on a topic of their choosing. They're given four or five years, which comes out to less than a page a week. Yet more than half will fail to complete the task due to attrition. (Yeah, I know this is over-simplified...) And I think the obvious answer is that humans, in general, are horrendous at being self-directed on long-running, large-scale, multi-step tasks. Almost anybody who consistently produces anything of real value works on a team, where at least there's some semblance of regular accountability to other humans. The rare example of truly productive people who can work in isolation are almost all (rightly so) lauded as atypical geniuses.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BeetleB 6y ago
  > All we ask them to do is write 100 pages or so on a topic of their choosing. They're given four or five years, which comes out to less than a page a week. Yet more than half will fail to complete the task due to attrition. (Yeah, I know this is over-simplified...) This is extremely simplified. In my PhD program (engineering), you had to take more credits than a MS student does (and if you did not come in with an MS, you had to take those as well). A total of about 54 credits of just coursework - not research. Then you have advisors who will not let you graduate unless you have published N papers (and N varies widely) in their preferred journals. And then you write it all for your 100 page thesis. I know all students slow down a lot when they have to write that thesis, but for many students, writing the thesis is the easiest part, and only at the end.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    This might be USA vs Europe – where the extreme situation would be no mandatory coursework and publishing no papers at all - the final hundreds of pages work not being a typical 'paper'. Though the PhD itself might be 'only' 3 years long.
- dceddia 6y ago
  I think a big part of being "horrendous at being self-directed on long-running, large-scale, multi-step tasks" comes from not being trained on that set of skills. I'm not so sure it's an inherent human trait. The traditional school system, at least in the US, is almost entirely focused on training obedience and completion of relatively short-term tasks. Homework, tests, maybe the odd paper that's "due in 3 weeks" but really can be done in a mad dash the night before. Until someone tries to go for a PhD, they may never have needed to plan and execute a large-scale, long-running, poorly-defined task on their own before. School didn't train for that. And they're expected to undo 20+ years of that step-by-step spoon-fed approach, throw that all out the window... and learn a new way of working, mostly on their own, and tackle this huge project. No wonder the failure rate is so high.
cgs 6y ago
> Slack needs a mode that debounces messages so they're delivered en masse once per hour unless a box is checked that the message is urgent. This isn't Slack's fault or a software issue, it's the cultural expectation that once you receive a message you must reply immediately. Just don't do this. Same as if someone texts you - it's up to you when to reply. Set the expectation that you'll reply when you get around to it.
- jamesliudotcc 6y ago
  It's not Slack's fault, but still having that mode would help things. It creates a Schelling point for expectations setting, and thus people will actually set that expectation. Otherwise, the only available Schelling point is immediate response.
llarsson 6y ago
About Slack: Just don't leave it running in a place where you see it and only check it every hour or so. A virtual desktop far away. Turn off notifications. Mute all channels, except ones that really matter to your work. Feel culturally pressured to respond quickly? Set your status to "in a meeting". That will by default clear after an hour, mind you. Until your company culturally agrees that "I did not meet my expected output because I was too busy on Slack" is acceptable, you are responsible to do what is needed to get your job done.

dcolkitt 6y ago

> Absent willpower, or a job that's inherently aligned with one's natural interests, human nature inevitably drifts toward distraction. I think the biggest testament to this is the 50%+ dropout rates common in PhD programs. You're starting with some of the most intelligent, diligent, bright-eyed young people on the planet and letting them work independently in a field that they presumably have a deep passion for. All we ask them to do is write 100 pages or so on a topic of their choosing. They're given four or five years, which comes out to less than a page a week. Yet more than half will fail to complete the task due to attrition. (Yeah, I know this is over-simplified...) And I think the obvious answer is that humans, in general, are horrendous at being self-directed on long-running, large-scale, multi-step tasks. Almost anybody who consistently produces anything of real value works on a team, where at least there's some semblance of regular accountability to other humans. The rare example of truly productive people who can work in isolation are almost all (rightly so) lauded as atypical geniuses.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BeetleB 6y ago
> All we ask them to do is write 100 pages or so on a topic of their choosing. They're given four or five years, which comes out to less than a page a week. Yet more than half will fail to complete the task due to attrition. (Yeah, I know this is over-simplified...) This is extremely simplified. In my PhD program (engineering), you had to take more credits than a MS student does (and if you did not come in with an MS, you had to take those as well). A total of about 54 credits of just coursework - not research. Then you have advisors who will not let you graduate unless you have published N papers (and N varies widely) in their preferred journals. And then you write it all for your 100 page thesis. I know all students slow down a lot when they have to write that thesis, but for many students, writing the thesis is the easiest part, and only at the end.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  This might be USA vs Europe – where the extreme situation would be no mandatory coursework and publishing no papers at all - the final hundreds of pages work not being a typical 'paper'. Though the PhD itself might be 'only' 3 years long.
dceddia 6y ago
I think a big part of being "horrendous at being self-directed on long-running, large-scale, multi-step tasks" comes from not being trained on that set of skills. I'm not so sure it's an inherent human trait. The traditional school system, at least in the US, is almost entirely focused on training obedience and completion of relatively short-term tasks. Homework, tests, maybe the odd paper that's "due in 3 weeks" but really can be done in a mad dash the night before. Until someone tries to go for a PhD, they may never have needed to plan and execute a large-scale, long-running, poorly-defined task on their own before. School didn't train for that. And they're expected to undo 20+ years of that step-by-step spoon-fed approach, throw that all out the window... and learn a new way of working, mostly on their own, and tackle this huge project. No wonder the failure rate is so high.

cgs 6y ago

> Slack needs a mode that debounces messages so they're delivered en masse once per hour unless a box is checked that the message is urgent. This isn't Slack's fault or a software issue, it's the cultural expectation that once you receive a message you must reply immediately. Just don't do this. Same as if someone texts you - it's up to you when to reply. Set the expectation that you'll reply when you get around to it.

jamesliudotcc 6y ago
It's not Slack's fault, but still having that mode would help things. It creates a Schelling point for expectations setting, and thus people will actually set that expectation. Otherwise, the only available Schelling point is immediate response.

llarsson 6y ago

About Slack: Just don't leave it running in a place where you see it and only check it every hour or so. A virtual desktop far away. Turn off notifications. Mute all channels, except ones that really matter to your work. Feel culturally pressured to respond quickly? Set your status to "in a meeting". That will by default clear after an hour, mind you. Until your company culturally agrees that "I did not meet my expected output because I was too busy on Slack" is acceptable, you are responsible to do what is needed to get your job done.