7 ms·

Lessons from the Deep History of Work

55 points by mitchbob 4y ago

mitchbob 4y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/dh0HR https://archive.ph/dh0HR
jeffhwang 4y ago
Interesting! The author of the New Yorker article is a CS professor who has been studying work, productivity, tools etc for awhile. I’d recommend the hyperactive hive mind concept from his previous book “A world without email”. Refers to both synchronous and asynch digital comma like email, Slack, MS Teams, etc. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575655/a-world-without-email-by-cal-newport/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575655/a-world-with... Imho, very good diagnosis of problems with the tools and culture around them and good examples of how some small companies have battled against those problems. But unfortunately I don’t think his solutions are super generalizable beyond pretty niche organizations.
borroka 4y ago
I am perplexed by the success Cal Newport has had with ideas that are either trivial or whose application is so context-dependent, such as the theme developed in this verbose article, that making parallels evokes the classic "Oh, interesting" response--without follow-up--from the reader. I read his first books (3 or 4?). "Deep work" - no kidding. Who in their life has ever heard the advice "just get distracted, it will work for you"? No one. The how depends very much on the context. "Be so good that they won't be able to ignore you" - sounds good, especially for a nerdy audience that has a hard time getting exposure, but it is often much better to get good enough and spend the remaining time working hard to get noticed, or "playing the game," since there is always a game going on. In this particular article, the hunter-gatherer remote work/lifestyle parallel is so forced as to be simply puzzling. First, hunter-gatherer groups were small and required very little coordination, whereas modern companies, when they are larger than a few hundred individuals (I am generous, I might say larger than a few dozen) require coordination overhead--being "on the same" page is quite important--which completely changes group dynamics. Of course, one might say, but how inefficient or ineffective are all these meetings, e-mails, notifications on Slack, etc., I just want to code or get my brilliant ideas accepted without further discussion. And we all agree there are better or worse ways to get things done at the organizational level (that's an important point), and some companies work better than others and some stages of company life are more conducive to good work and good results. But the reality of group dynamics is that 30 people in a startup or hunter-gatherer groups to get a result at the organizational level (no one dies in the hg group or a product is shipped to the startup) need to work in ways that are very different from those that need to happen in a large organization. Then leaving aside the caloric issue that inevitably makes the living conditions of a 30-hg group very different from those of thousands of people who depend on agricultural products.
- jaccarmac 4y ago
  I can't speak to most of your comment, as I'm almost totally unfamiliar with Newport's work. And I might be reading too much into the New Yorker piece, though a glance at his Wikipedia page confirms that Newport works on distributed systems... > In this particular article, the hunter-gatherer remote work/lifestyle parallel is so forced as to be simply puzzling. First, hunter-gatherer groups were small and required very little coordination, whereas modern companies, when they are larger than a few hundred individuals (I am generous, I might say larger than a few dozen) require coordination overhead--being "on the same" page is quite important--which completely changes group dynamics. I think that's part of the point. We've moved to a society where large-scale coordination is the norm, but, just like distributed computing, that coordination is a hard problem to solve. Who's to say that the management techniques we tend to implement are the best ones? There are certainly many workers who feel as if work is getting worse, and metrics which point to certain things getting worse or plateauing while capital-P Production rises. I'm suspicious of easy answers about when humanity had it figured out or simple prescriptions, but if we are interested in evaluating the relatively young modern regime, there are worse places to start than anthropology.
  - borroka 4y ago
    I believe that we are on the same page, as I wrote in my comment. "Of course, one might say, but how inefficient or ineffective are all these meetings, e-mails, notifications on Slack, etc., I just want to code or get my brilliant ideas accepted without further discussion. And we all agree there are better or worse ways to get things done at the organizational level (that's an important point), and some companies work better than others and some stages of company life are more conducive to good work and good results" There are better and worse ways of doing things in a company, but what hunter-gatherers bands were doing is no consequence. Where we do not agree if when you say that, in this context, starting with anthropology makes sense. And I think it makes zero sense, since the goals, structure and size of hunter-gatherers bands and large work organizations are not even remotely comparable. Articles of this type are meaningless, they try to be thought-provoking, but they are just trying to impress the gullible. "I never thought about that", yes, because it does not make any sense, not because you are a fool. A sports team, e.g., soccer team, is comparable in size and goals (win/not lose, die/not die, reproduce/not reproduce, it is clear what is good and what is bad) to a hunter-gatherer band, but what kind of lessons should a coach draw from an anthropological study of hunter-gatherer bands? Nothing, zero, other than some feel-good stories about being a team and not just a collection of individuals, supporting the weak and the elderly. I have no clue how the editor thought it was an article worth publishing.
klelatti 4y ago
I'm more interested in 'Lessons from the career of Cal Newport': it seems that quite a lot of his productivity is likely to come from having chosen a topic and then writing a whole series of books / articles / podcasts on very closely related subjects. Not meant as a criticism just a lesson in how focus and persistency can pay off (although I do tend to admire authors who have a wider range more).
- bittercynic 4y ago
  I think his success has more to do with very skillfully promoting his work than with the quality of the work itself.
  - klelatti 4y ago
    Yeah agreed - I was thinking more about his productivity in producing so much stuff. I'm a bit baffled by why he's quite so successful tbh.
- musicale 4y ago
  Thanks to Prof. Newport (and other experts), I have successfully managed to increase the number of books I purchase and read on how to become more productive.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
This reminds me of Packard Jennings' humorous "Ikea Manual": https://packardjennings.com/2020/02/01/somepic2/ https://packardjennings.com/2020/02/01/somepic2/
- itronitron 4y ago
  "Goodnight Zoom"

55 points by mitchbob 4y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/dh0HR https://archive.ph/dh0HR

Interesting! The author of the New Yorker article is a CS professor who has been studying work, productivity, tools etc for awhile. I’d recommend the hyperactive hive mind concept from his previous book “A world without email”. Refers to both synchronous and asynch digital comma like email, Slack, MS Teams, etc. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575655/a-world-without-email-by-cal-newport/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575655/a-world-with... Imho, very good diagnosis of problems with the tools and culture around them and good examples of how some small companies have battled against those problems. But unfortunately I don’t think his solutions are super generalizable beyond pretty niche organizations.

borroka 4y ago

I am perplexed by the success Cal Newport has had with ideas that are either trivial or whose application is so context-dependent, such as the theme developed in this verbose article, that making parallels evokes the classic "Oh, interesting" response--without follow-up--from the reader. I read his first books (3 or 4?). "Deep work" - no kidding. Who in their life has ever heard the advice "just get distracted, it will work for you"? No one. The how depends very much on the context. "Be so good that they won't be able to ignore you" - sounds good, especially for a nerdy audience that has a hard time getting exposure, but it is often much better to get good enough and spend the remaining time working hard to get noticed, or "playing the game," since there is always a game going on. In this particular article, the hunter-gatherer remote work/lifestyle parallel is so forced as to be simply puzzling. First, hunter-gatherer groups were small and required very little coordination, whereas modern companies, when they are larger than a few hundred individuals (I am generous, I might say larger than a few dozen) require coordination overhead--being "on the same" page is quite important--which completely changes group dynamics. Of course, one might say, but how inefficient or ineffective are all these meetings, e-mails, notifications on Slack, etc., I just want to code or get my brilliant ideas accepted without further discussion. And we all agree there are better or worse ways to get things done at the organizational level (that's an important point), and some companies work better than others and some stages of company life are more conducive to good work and good results. But the reality of group dynamics is that 30 people in a startup or hunter-gatherer groups to get a result at the organizational level (no one dies in the hg group or a product is shipped to the startup) need to work in ways that are very different from those that need to happen in a large organization. Then leaving aside the caloric issue that inevitably makes the living conditions of a 30-hg group very different from those of thousands of people who depend on agricultural products.

jaccarmac 4y ago
I can't speak to most of your comment, as I'm almost totally unfamiliar with Newport's work. And I might be reading too much into the New Yorker piece, though a glance at his Wikipedia page confirms that Newport works on distributed systems... > In this particular article, the hunter-gatherer remote work/lifestyle parallel is so forced as to be simply puzzling. First, hunter-gatherer groups were small and required very little coordination, whereas modern companies, when they are larger than a few hundred individuals (I am generous, I might say larger than a few dozen) require coordination overhead--being "on the same" page is quite important--which completely changes group dynamics. I think that's part of the point. We've moved to a society where large-scale coordination is the norm, but, just like distributed computing, that coordination is a hard problem to solve. Who's to say that the management techniques we tend to implement are the best ones? There are certainly many workers who feel as if work is getting worse, and metrics which point to certain things getting worse or plateauing while capital-P Production rises. I'm suspicious of easy answers about when humanity had it figured out or simple prescriptions, but if we are interested in evaluating the relatively young modern regime, there are worse places to start than anthropology.
- borroka 4y ago
  I believe that we are on the same page, as I wrote in my comment. "Of course, one might say, but how inefficient or ineffective are all these meetings, e-mails, notifications on Slack, etc., I just want to code or get my brilliant ideas accepted without further discussion. And we all agree there are better or worse ways to get things done at the organizational level (that's an important point), and some companies work better than others and some stages of company life are more conducive to good work and good results" There are better and worse ways of doing things in a company, but what hunter-gatherers bands were doing is no consequence. Where we do not agree if when you say that, in this context, starting with anthropology makes sense. And I think it makes zero sense, since the goals, structure and size of hunter-gatherers bands and large work organizations are not even remotely comparable. Articles of this type are meaningless, they try to be thought-provoking, but they are just trying to impress the gullible. "I never thought about that", yes, because it does not make any sense, not because you are a fool. A sports team, e.g., soccer team, is comparable in size and goals (win/not lose, die/not die, reproduce/not reproduce, it is clear what is good and what is bad) to a hunter-gatherer band, but what kind of lessons should a coach draw from an anthropological study of hunter-gatherer bands? Nothing, zero, other than some feel-good stories about being a team and not just a collection of individuals, supporting the weak and the elderly. I have no clue how the editor thought it was an article worth publishing.

klelatti 4y ago

I'm more interested in 'Lessons from the career of Cal Newport': it seems that quite a lot of his productivity is likely to come from having chosen a topic and then writing a whole series of books / articles / podcasts on very closely related subjects. Not meant as a criticism just a lesson in how focus and persistency can pay off (although I do tend to admire authors who have a wider range more).

bittercynic 4y ago
I think his success has more to do with very skillfully promoting his work than with the quality of the work itself.
- klelatti 4y ago
  Yeah agreed - I was thinking more about his productivity in producing so much stuff. I'm a bit baffled by why he's quite so successful tbh.
musicale 4y ago
Thanks to Prof. Newport (and other experts), I have successfully managed to increase the number of books I purchase and read on how to become more productive.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

This reminds me of Packard Jennings' humorous "Ikea Manual": https://packardjennings.com/2020/02/01/somepic2/ https://packardjennings.com/2020/02/01/somepic2/

itronitron 4y ago
"Goodnight Zoom"