15 ms·

Executive Function Theft

• tpoacher 3y ago
  Aka "Delegators".
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• jacknews 3y ago
  It's not really theft though, since the 'thief' doesn't gain the thing being 'stolen'. It's only the 'deny use' half of 'theft', ie it's more like DoS.
  • ta988 3y ago
    it is denial of service in every way of the term.
  • t-writescode 3y ago
    There’s power in the word “theft” that doesn’t exist in “denial of service”. Theft implies taking something that isn’t yours to take, which appropriately shames the perpetrator of their actions.
    • steve_taylor 3y ago
      Shaming someone is more important than the truth. Why am I not surprised anymore?
      • maxbond 3y ago
        Theft is a reasonable interpretation of denial of service. You may disagree (which is also reasonable), that doesn't make it a lie. This is a disagreement about what label to apply, the existence of this phenomenon hasn't (at time of writing and in this subthread) been disputed.
      • tom_ 3y ago
        That's a question you'll have to answer yourself. Don't ask us to decide for you!
  • msteffen 3y ago
    > the 'thief' doesn't gain the thing being 'stolen'. IIUC, they do—the thief delegates tedious, finicky work to preserve their own executive function for “important stuff”. They don’t have more executive function than before the task existed, but they do have more than before they delegated it, and the delegation is the theft.
    • conradev 3y ago
      Isn't this just a description of hierarchical management? Which most organizations implement, including co-ops The article is just describing a phenomenon where the people with the power to decide who works on what are not the people in the explicit power structure, and thus don't have the same accountability that usually comes with that power?
      • zo1 3y ago
        I get it the other way around. From lazy subordinates (usually juniors but older people too) that don't want to do the work required of them so instead they come "asking questions" because "they don't understand". Like if I wanted to do the work and figure out all the problems in this task, I'd have done it myself instead of delegating it to you. It's almost as if they want to be little assembly line workers that make the same CRUD widget over and over. They're not lazy, they're probably also just as stripped of their EF as the rest of us plebs.
  • rexpop 3y ago
    It's not only denial of use. The perpetrator gains the output of the delegated effort. The sale goes through. The business continues to operate. Paychecks get signed. The home's functionality is maintained. When the "non-promotable work" of a firm, community, or family gets done "the rising tide raises all boats" if that work is necessary for the organization's profitability and/or autopoiesis. I am confused as to how you don't see the profit in delegating. Edit: for example, if I were to borrow your lawn mower with out asking, mow my lawn, and then--crucially--return your lawnmower wouldn't that be theft? Even though you'd only been "denied service" and not lost an entire mower?
    • jacknews 3y ago
      Your example is not what's claimed. In your analogy, it would be more like I'd contacted the housing association to force you to mow your driveway, denying you the time to properly manicure your lawn. I'm not gaining any improvement to my lawn in that case.
      • ehnto 3y ago
        I think you are both on the wrong track. The claim is that, instead of you mowing your lawn, you get someone else to do it. What you gain is time, and reduced cognitive load. It's kind of a childish thing to say about your manager since that is just how the cookie crumbles, but still a real exchange. Managers delegate certain tasks so they have time to focus on other tasks. Some managers delegate almost everything and leave you wondering if they do anything at all. The person in the article feels their partner is also delegating to them and so they feel as though they have no executive function by the end of the day. In regards to work though, that is just how some jobs are structured. You get paid to take certain load off of your 2IC or Manager or whoever.
        • rexpop 3y ago
          What you gain is a lawn, mowed.
          • 3y ago
  • eyelidlessness 3y ago
    Don’t they? This part of the article stood out and rung true to me: > The thief has chosen to prioritize their executive function over another person’s and, having found that this makes their lives easier, repeats this behavior unless it is disrupted. (Emphasis added.) By imposing the executive function-depleting responsibility onto others, they reserve EF capacity of their own which they wouldn’t otherwise specifically by extracting that cost from others.
    • davorak 3y ago
      Pollution is a negative externality and I would understand the gist of it if it was called theft of clean air, but hesitate to endorse the wording. I think of theft is something that you catch someone for and punish and potentially get back what was lost or some of it. Negative externalities I think of as something that needs to regulated legally or through some other feedback mechanism.
  • satisfice 3y ago
    It's not theft or denial of service or anything like that. It's ordinary, reasonable, ethical behavior.
  • thomastjeffery 3y ago
    I have ADHD, which should really be titled something like "Executive Functioning Disorder". That's the main symptom: not having enough executive function ability. So what happens when my executive functioning is stolen? Debt. I am eternally indebted to any task that demanded more executive functioning than I could provide. And society demands I pay up one way or another: that's the ADHD tax. Couldn't finish homework? Gotta stay after school. Couldn't work on the company project before its deadline? Get fired. Couldn't cold-call 2 dozen mental health clinics to find an opening that works with my insurance? No meds or therapy for me. Every social system that interacts with me is designed with a baseline expectation of executive functioning: I experience that as a DDoS attack. I think both terms are correct, and you are welcome to use whichever best fits the context you are using it in.
• adolph 3y ago
  Newport recommends entirely stopping or poorly performing that work; I read this as encouraging readers to commit EFT against others around them. When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When writing a jeremiad, anything becomes weighty evidence.
  • maxbond 3y ago
    That's pretty unfair. They never said it was evidence let alone weighty evidence, they offered examples of where they see this phenomenon in their life and in our culture. This is clearly a subjective interpretation/critique of another text ("I read this as"). That's perfectly reasonable to include in a blog post primarily about personal experience.
    • etrautmann 3y ago
      It’s a subjective interpretation that strikes me as fairly strained. It’s clear that Cal Newport would not advocate that, and I highly doubt would support what the author has written. There’s a difference between work that someone else has to do and work that nobody has to do, and I believe Cal was advocating for dropping BS work that nobody needs to do. This may even include entire committees, etc.
      • maxbond 3y ago
        Maybe so, I'm not familiar with Newport, but very few people would advocate for externalizing your costs on to others. I'll take it as a given that Newport wasn't advocating for that (or rather, that Newport would not himself characterize it that way). But I think the argument is that that is the outcome (rather than the intent), even if the task that gets pushed onto others doesn't need to exist. (And this is a different claim than that the author is essentially jumping at shadows, which is fine, I think it's a reasonable take, but that's what I was originally responding to.)
    • darkerside 3y ago
      Labeling this as EFT, comparing it to illegal action, implies that this act is hostile. That implies that Newport is inciting violence.
• MatthiasPortzel 3y ago
  The definition uses "abdication...to" which I don't think is correct. I think the author means "delegation...to."
  • davorak 3y ago
    Delegation is typically from someone senior to someone more junior. It is also normally knowingly and directly communicated(both transmitted and received). The author's examples that I can bring to mind don't fit my pervious two sentences so I do not think delegation is the correct word.
  • chomp 3y ago
    Well also the author is abusing the term “executive function” here, so not the only odd thing in the article. The reason they’ve never seen the phrase “EFT” is because it’s a nonsense term.
• quickthrower2 3y ago
  The fallacy here is assuming planning something is draining or bad for you. It more has to do with how much you enjoy the thing. I think couples have arguments about the thing neither of them wants to do. But if one enjoys planning the holiday for example they will just do it and it wont feel like EFT. I definitely get bank EFT (pun not intended), I deal with this by having recurring todos with all the links and stuff I need to smash it out quickly. The idea is to offload from CPU (executive/conscious) to GPU (habits/unconscious) When talking about this I thought EFT was going to lead to how Twitter and other dopamine hits stop you from getting important stuff done.
  • t-writescode 3y ago
    > The fallacy here is assuming planning something is draining or bad for you. Executive Function is a term commonly thrown around in the autistic and ADHD spaces. When read in that context, it makes a *lot* more sense. From what I hear, neurotypical people have a much higher tolerance for bullshit work and wasteful process. I wouldn't know what that feels like. Beyond 1 or 2 wasted steps and I get mad that someone has designed a process that's actively hostile to its users.
    • darkerside 3y ago
      Have you seen Avengers? As the Hulk says, "That's the secret... I'm always angry." Learning to control your anger is a life skill, one that different people have different aptitude for, but one that nobody should give up on.
      • xboxnolifes 3y ago
        I prefer the advise that we try not to actively design a society that angers people.
        • darkerside 3y ago
          Sartre, wise like the Hulk, said "Hell is other people".
• birdyrooster 3y ago
  Don't have kids, they are the biggest barons of them all.
• frob 3y ago
  On a side note, the author's example is exactly why I have chosen to not use FSAs. Sure, it saves me 20% or so since it's pre-tax money, but is my stress, time, executive function, and sanity all worth that? Plus if I screw up and don't spend the money or file something wrong, I lose it or pay penalties.
  • philsnow 3y ago
    I am the same way, after having royally screwed up one year (on a similar employer-provided benefit, not a health FSA). I donated several thousand of my pre-tax dollars to the state of California because I missed a deadline and the funds were use-it-or-lose-it. The ADHD tax is real, and this article calls out its mechanism exactly, though not by this name.
    • adolph 3y ago
      Same. I’ve learned to accept that discounts through coupon-clipping are not for me.
  • mountaineer 3y ago
    This hits home as I sit here submitting FSA receipts tonight.
  • 1123581321 3y ago
    FSAs are really annoying if they don't give you a debit card to use or if the administrator is hostile (making you document every debit card swipe, when the provider is obvious, is hostile.) If yours is usable and if you want to get the benefits and struggle with the mental overhead (like me), the way I solved it might help. I projected the expenses we were almost certain to have (took about a minute.) Then I put a range on the expenses we'd probably have. That's where I set the FSA withdrawals. There was realistically a 0% chance I was going to lose money with the FSA. If gambling stresses you out, just do a conservative amount and be content with the savings from that. That was 2022. For 2023, FSA planning was easy because I knew I'd be paying for orthodontics, so I just set it at maximum and spent the whole thing up front in January. I'll probably be back to a lower amount next year. It takes a minute to update the withdrawal in our benefits portal during open enrollment.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• forgetfreeman 3y ago
  I had a pretty strong negative reaction when reading this and had to sit with it a while to figure out why. I kept coming back to the idea that something about this seems childish to me without initially being able to articulate what, exactly, it was that seemed immature. After I'd had some time to thing on it it occurred to me that the underlying idea is that people are somehow responsible for the author's emotional well-being, that they are somehow owed something, or that perhaps they simply deeply misunderstand work relationships.
  • projectileboy 3y ago
    Respectfully, aside from whether or note the tone of the piece is or is not justifiable, I think your comment misses the point, which is that there is injustice in people (or a system) who unfairly shunt work off to you that they should rightly own. The US health industrial complex is indeed a prime example.
    • satisfice 3y ago
      It's NOT injustice. That is entirely made up by the author. What agreement or law has been broken?
      • projectileboy 3y ago
        That’s a fair point. I would say the agreement that has been broken is an implicit social contract (in the sense of Rousseau) that people should share the burdens of society to make society function, and that individuals should do the work that would most appropriately be their responsibility.
        • forgetfreeman 3y ago
          Given that ideal hasn't been successful achieved in any society or time period in recorded human history I question getting this spooled up over yet another example of out species missing its own flex goals.
        • 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• a-dub 3y ago
  i call it "choice-gas" and yes it does run low and is expressly frustrating when it's constantly taxed needlessly. a good example is microsoft outlook. meeting invites would pop a mandatory three way choice of "send the response now, send the response later or edit the response before sending" every time the accept button was pressed. a truly infuriating case of eft.
  • ehnto 3y ago
    I like that. I think the term being used in literature is Decision Fatigue, if anyone wants to google it.
    • Zarathustra30 3y ago
      Slightley different. Decision Fatigue is what happens when you run low on Choice-Gas.
  • mhb 3y ago
    > i call it "choice-gas" OK, but it's already called decision fatigue. And it doesn't seem as if the essay is identifying a novel pathology either.
  • tome 3y ago
    I’m confused. Do you mean that the choice between those three buttons is difficult? I always just chose “send response now” and didn’t concern myself any more about it. Is there some reason that doesn’t work for people who are short on choice-gas?
    • maxbond 3y ago
      I take the impression that it's not so much that it itself takes up much "choice gas," in absolute terms, but that's it's emblematic of a larger set of things that are wearing on them, and takes up more than it ought to.
    • a-dub 3y ago
      it is completely unnecessary and emblematic of a culture that does not respect the idea of finite prefrontal cortex energy and willy-nilly will choose to disrespectfully waste it on a frequent basis. it's like when you have to deal with a smarmy individual. any given instance of smarminess is fine on its face, but the cumulative sum can be unbearable.
• writeslowly 3y ago
  The author is proposing that these “Workplace EFT” examples need some sort of fix, but I think it’s actual preferable to make the same decision as your coworkers and neglect them until they become a larger problem, since the alternative is taking them on by oneself and growing increasingly resentful that your coworkers don’t prioritize meeting notes or get well cards to the same extent you do. Otherwise, you’re really just inflicting you’re own personal expectations on everyone else instead of acknowledging that they have different standards than you do.
  • AceJohnny2 3y ago
    > neglect them until they become a larger problem, since the alternative is taking them on by oneself and growing increasingly resentful that your coworkers don’t prioritize [stuff] Tangentially, this is a common problem in relationships. "You never do the dishes", "you never do the laundry"... My headcanon for these mismatches is that people have different thresholds of activation. In a relationship, it's useful to state these explicitly ("Oh I only do laundry when I'm close to running out of underwear") before resentment sets in.
    • jancsika 3y ago
      Translation here may help: > "You never do the dishes" means: You ignore how much more difficult it is to get rid of those little pantry flies, roaches, and/or ants once they find a food/crumb source vs. consistently blocking the impetus for that class of problem to manifest itself. (Or, depending on your locale, perhaps just minimizing that problem as much as possible.) Moreover, your philosophy of free agency doesn't take into account the resulting increase in your stress level from clutter and lack of clean utensils, and how that increased stress-- probably paired with a reluctance to acknowledge and deal with common stressors generally-- ends up confining your choices in ways that become frustratingly predictable over time. That's not to mention your attempts to hide your disgust when you pick up a dirty plate to reveal mold or wiggling pantry fly eggs, as if denial of an emotion negates the existence of that emotion. And finally, there's the effect that disgust has on your general mood, and even subtle though detectable changes to your opinions given we feeble humans process both physical and conceptual disgust in the same part of our brains. > "you never do the laundry"... means: Pleasant odors and shared work tend to have positive affects on a woman's libido.
• canvascritic 3y ago
  Oof, this hits close to home. during my tenure as a principal engineer at a certain startup, well known and loved in these parts. Anyway I was new to engineering leadership and this big initiative came down from above to migrate to k8s. team was excited to be done with the myriad adhoc scripts and duct tape infra. But it turned out the team was very junior, and I was green as a leader and manager. every day brought a quagmire of smaller, seemingly inconsequential tasks. i'd be midway through configuring a helm chart and someone would drop by, asking for a pairing session or help with something or another or my input on something unrelated or to sign off on some administrative document. To make matters much worse, one week, an elm / functional programming purist in the team started making a lot of noise. they believed in sticking strictly to the core principles of elm and basically avoiding 3p dependencies like the plague. while they were generally respectful and i respected their dedication, it became another thing to juggle. trying to mediate between that guy and those more pragmatic about our deadlines was taxing. I realized that amidst all this, my primary role of mentoring others and solving higher level engineering challenges was getting overshadowed by these micro-decisions and tasks. it was like being in the middle of a sea, trying to stay afloat, while holding onto a bundle of papers. EFT, as described here, is a term that captures this perfectly. it's so essential to be aware of it, especially in the tech world where the lines often blur between roles and responsibilities, and especially in engineering leadership. Love having a word for this now that I'm in a position to mentor people who are new to engineering leadership
  • yu3zhou4 3y ago
    Would be great to read a longer piece about your experience. Do you have a blog? If not, maybe you consider one?
    • tleilaxu 3y ago
      I concur! This describes my situation - and I suspect that of many others here. It’d be great to have some insight into how you navigated all this.
  • quickthrower2 3y ago
    Oof! Too down k8s initiative :-(. Definitely should be grass roots at startup based on actual problems and evaluation of the tech and alternatives.
• m463 3y ago
  I would say the best example of this is the "modern" privacy policy.
• RecycledEle 3y ago
  Accounts Payable implements as much friction as they can to avoid paying money. They think this is their job. I see many companies treating their customers like criminals or slaves; many more than used to pull that stuff. It's only going to get worse.
  • zo1 3y ago
    It's because of commodity-ification of debt. Like a conversion-funnel, they turned it from a human function into an assembly line that eventually leads to your non-payment being sold to a debt collection agency. They assume you won't pay. So many times I've looked at a reminder email, put it aside because it pisses me off. Yes I have the money to pay, yes its like 2mins to do in my banking app, yes I will settle it, but No I won't do it now that you effing emailed me about it. I'll do it on my own time...and then I forget till the next annoying reminder email that pisses me off even more. Some days I wonder if some of this stuff is normal or if it's just me. I'd love to just have an assistant to offload this mental drain to either way.
    • rm445 3y ago
      Bad debts sell for pennies on the dollar, no-one is incentivised to get you not to pay. On the psychological side, I know what you mean but you do seem to be taking things a bit personally. Yes, businesses are big and impersonal and automated, because society is big and impersonal and we have access to a huge range of services, we can't change much based on how pissed off we are. AI assistants to make life easier for us must only be a year or two away.
• vonnik 3y ago
  TLDR: some people and organizations make us to tedious work. Personal opinion, when that person is your boss, just do your job. When that organization is supposed to serve you but makes you do work, look for an alternative.
  • brightlancer 3y ago
    But you didn't include the parts about sexism, racism, classism, elitism, ableism, etc. The author is a victim of a _system_.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• haswell 3y ago
  > I will admit to never having been able to read Cal Newport’s Deep Work all the way through — I got too irritated — but I would point to his dismissive naming of the idea of “shallow work”, which he defines as logistical and often repetitive tasks, such as writing short emails. Newport recommends entirely stopping or poorly performing that work; I read this as encouraging readers to commit EFT against others around them. It’s pretty weird to me that this is what the author took from Deep Work. Then again, they admitted that they didn’t read it fully. The message of the book is not to dump your shallow work onto other people. It is to eliminate the “shallow” work entirely when possible, and to be mindful of the pitfalls of context switching when such work can’t be avoided. Nor is the word “shallow” used to describe anything other than the difference between something that requires deep focus to accomplish vs. something that does not. It’s not used in a dismissive or demeaning way. The author is looking for things in that book that do not exist, and worse, using it as a reference to prove the point of the post. I agree that dark patterns exist, and the hellish process of dealing with insurance is evidence of that. But I think the post suffers from applying the “EFT” label a bit too broadly, and for circumstances that are far more nuanced than “theft”.
  • KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
    But getting rid of shallow work is the entire reason why people get executive assistants.
    • xyzzy123 3y ago
      I don't either Cal or the author would have a problem with exec assistants - they're being paid for that. Where it can be a problem is when there are "attentive" people on a team and "inattentive" people who are ostensibly equals. Team members with higher conscientiousness tend to get lumped with an outsized share of undesirable, low impact busywork because others won't do it. This dynamic can cause problems in all sorts of groups and also at home.
      • stevezsa8 3y ago
        I can relate to this. I'm one of those people who usually had a little too much work to do, but still felt bad when no one else volunteers for a task. Often I'll offer to take it. I'd end up enjoying work less & less and got a bit disgruntled until I was back to my base-line of work. I definitely see it as a weakness in me, but also in my manager who let it happen. As I got older, I started to work at around 90% capacity and grab a tea or chat with a colleague or do some admin for the remainder. This enabled me to jump on to urgent requests and even make extra efforts like physically walking over to discuss the matter. This also enabled me to look out for junior colleagues who seemed a bit stressed.
• halfinvested 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • saagarjha 3y ago
    Insulting the author is not appropriate.
  • halfinvested 3y ago
    [flagged]
• jimmaswell 3y ago
  My parents did this to me the whole time I lived with them whenever they had to do something involving the computer. It was exhausting and infuriating. "It's so easy for you and so hard for me" - it wouldn't be hard if you'd start trying and stop making yourself helpless.
  • Aeglaecia 3y ago
    personally love it when family asks me for help with computers as its piss easy work that does them a huge favor, you and the author share a perspective that i dont
    • jimmaswell 3y ago
      You liked being called out of your room ten times a day for some bullshit you've already explained a million times? Being asked to type something because you type faster? Thief is the perfect word. Instead of using their own brains they stole mine. I don't know how someone does this and isn't ashamed of themselves. I'm so glad I don't have to live the life of a helper monkey for the terminally lazy anymore. Magically they managed to survive on their own once I moved out. Go figure.
      • veave 3y ago
        This is way too common with some people as they get older. They refuse to learn how to use a computer, a phone, or they even refuse to read utility bills or bank statements and ask others to summarise them for them. On the other hand they don't have a problem learning what all the buttons do in their new fancy car. I say fuck that.
    • maxbond 3y ago
      In the same way that your family has a different capacity for using the computer, other people have a different capacity to field interruptions or to spare their attention. Something that may be pleasant for you might be really taxing for someone else. That doesn't invalidate either experience. In disability advocacy this is sometimes called spoon theory. This is somewhat offtopic but one of my favorite sci-fi short stories is about this concept. https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/carnival-nine/ https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/carnival-nin... "Carnival Nine," Caroline Yoachim. (It seems like if you press the button with arrows pointing in cardinal directions, it gets a lot easier to read.)
• satisfice 3y ago
  What the author calls theft is neither theft, nor any other for of unethical behavior, as far as I can tell from her description. I could just as easily say that she has committed theft of my attention span because I had to read her ill-considered opinion in order to fairly criticize it. But I won't say that, because it was my choice to do so and I am not a victim. She seems to be trying to criminalize the ordinary back and forth of social life. We have roles and make use of those roles. We have power and make use of it. For instance, her description of the healthcare situation is all covered, directly or indirectly, in her contract with the healthcare insurance provider; or else it is simply a matter of saying no. Don't do any of that work. Suffer the consequences. It's not theft-- it's the marketplace at work. How long before someone calls EFT a "microaggression?" Yet another front in the culture wars will open up between people who can't be bothered to assert themselves (and apparently, according to her, women don't assert themselves very much) and those who put the energy in to be assertive.
  • fnimick 3y ago
    So when an employee shunts a task off onto a coworker abusing their agreeableness, you're saying that other coworker deserves it and that the first employee is morally justified because they haven't "put in the energy" to be assertive in a hostile working relationship?
    • blablablerg 3y ago
      Almost any request can be framed as abuse in this manner. "Some stranger asked me to stand still on the street the whole day, he abused my agreeableness". Imo it is not abuse if there isn't any threat and you simply can say no. If you keep saying yes to everything you coworkers ask from you, what do you expect is going to happen? It is your own responsibility to not be a doormat, that is abusing yourself.
    • satisfice 3y ago
      One answer: You are responsible for your agreeableness. Your agreeableness is an OFFER to the people around you. Stop making offers that you resent honoring. Another equally valid answer: If I care about you, and to the degree I care about you, I willingly modify my behavior to help you live better and more happily, regardless of the how you may deserve or not deserve it. My wife is one of those people who will work themselves to the point of collapse without complaining. I have to be careful what I ask for because she will assign herself secret tasks to provide it. I don’t lecture her on how she deserves her misery, I remind her that I am the only person around here who swore an oath to help her, and she should ask me for what she wants and expect me to provide it. Then I try to volunteer when I see her working at something I can do. And I try to make myself easy to approach. After 32 years we have a pretty good understanding— but her endurance is worsening over time and so there are new challenges.
• praptak 3y ago
  Stealing others' processing power to ones benefit also happens in the silicone space. It's called cryptojacking in this case.
• tome 3y ago
  I would love to see a follow-up article entitled "Why I can't 'just say "no"'". That's what I'd do (albeit in more diplomatic language) so I am extremely curious why others don't or can't. The author does touch on this briefly, mentioning that in The No Club > the authors found that when they turned something down, another woman — usually one with less power — was asked So perhaps partly it comes from a desire to help those weaker than oneself. But there must be more to it than that!
  • csydas 3y ago
    I think the author found the reason pretty clearly; this is the issue I run into all the time when a shit-task is thrown at my team. There are simply too many people bringing tasks that need to be done, but not necessarily by our team. I am comfortable telling people "no, this is not our team's responsibility, we don't have the time right now with our current bandwidth", but many people on my team are not. Worse, when I say "no", it's not uncommon that the task will still be presented to someone on my team without my knowledge, and my team will _gladly_ accept because they're not comfortable saying "no" to these persons (power dynamic, a lot of "fights" have happened trying to resist such requests). I do tell the team just to ignore those requests and report them to me, yet the people making the bad requests just get more aggressive with their requests, either exaggerating the importance, exaggerating the requestor's "right" to assign the task to my team, etc. The end result is that we end up closing the means to talk to my team or I am brought in more often to deny the requests, which means I'm spending more time explaining why we aren't doing stupid and wasteful things like giving some sales teams' client free work for a year (can easily cost 6 or 7 figures USD) without getting proper approvals from all the teams required to provide that work. Examples _like_ this happen way too often and it can be weeks worth of emotional meetings explaining why the original requestor needs to deal with the mess they made themselves. My team is a bunch of IT professionals, and they should be doing IT work, not spending weeks convincing other teams to clean up the messes they made or preventing months of commitments for projects that should never have been approved, and it does _NOT_ feel good or right at all to make them constantly do something that is objectively not their job, and the end result is I end up burning out badly intercepting all of these requests. The article was very relatable for me and EFT is a term I am going to be using moving forward.
• danjc 3y ago
  Just like irreducible complexity, "shallow work" or more generally "admin" cannot be eliminated. It can only be moved elsewhere.
  • ResearchCode 3y ago
    It can be reduced, like by cancelling most meetings that could have been an e-mail.
    • duderific 3y ago
      In some cases, sure. But how many times have you had to attend to an email chain that went on way too long? Maybe a meeting is better if a decision can be reached more succinctly via a directed discussion.
• IdAugmentation 3y ago
  Two things: The main assumption in this article is that "ego depletion" is real. It may not be, see Wikipedia [1]. Psychology is in a big replication crisis, and the ego depletion stuff is all tangled up in it. There's a real possibility that this "theft" only exists by virtue of you believing in it. I'm aware there's a lot of hedging to be done here (experiences of people with ADHD, etc.). I don't like calling this kind of experience "theft". I much prefer the framing around community service work: boring tasks that are essential for the community's well-being. If someone is not doing their part, they are being an asshole and should be made to (or get kicked out of the community). Emphasizing the communal aspect means you stand up for everybody, not just yourself. It promotes fairness for everybody, not just for yourself. It empowers everybody in the group because you are collectively taking care of this work. And it'll be more effective in practice because the "offender" is getting shamed by everybody, instead of you just whining about your own injustice. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion
  • mock-possum 3y ago
    > Ego depletion is the controversial idea that self-control or willpower draws upon a limited pool of mental resources that can be used up Whoa really? I mean it certainly doesn’t work that way for me, but then again I am a stubborn sonovabitch.
  • Asooka 3y ago
    I am seeing a variation of this play out slowly at work, which I definitely would call theft. For context, we have a bonus structure in place that awards bonuses for performance. The actual measurement of work done is actually pretty alright, as it's left to human judgement and not just numbers. However, it creates a severe moral hazard - I am incentivised to spend as little time as possible on each task, so that I can finish more tasks and appear more productive at the end of the quarter. I often run into code where it seems the author left a lot of tech debt for the sake of fixing the one task they were given. We have processes in place that are meant to prevent bad code from getting into master, and they do work - you can't just sneak absolute garbage past code review, but still everyone involved is incentivised to only let through the minimum acceptable version of the code that will hold together until bonuses are calculated next quarter. The part where this becomes theft is when next quarter your mess impedes my progress, my velocity goes down, which means my bonus goes down, which means you have literally stolen money from me. I often think about this when interacting with commercial software that has bugs and rough edges. Am I in pain right now because somebody maximised their performance bonus three years ago? Are these issues the results not of incompetence, but of simple min-maxing? At the end, we all reap what we sow, and I can but hope that my mortgage gets paid before the reaper comes to harvest.
• neonsunset 3y ago
  While I dislike the content of the article, the term is brilliant. This happens so often when I’m teaching someone an advanced programming topic and the person just starts to completely overwhelm you with small decisions they have to make and ignore the direct feedback you give them to do so.
• l0b0 3y ago
  Bad communication is EFT on steroids. Bad spelling and grammar, using jargon not already widely understood, taking things for granted, expecting everybody else to fill in the (huge) gaps, not making it clear who you expect to do what, making assertions related to critical decisions without backing them with a reference, and so on.
• nullc 3y ago
  Are there any studies confirming that 'executive function' is a limit resource which can be used up through use, vs these things just being _time_ theft? (To be clear: sure you can be tired and have less 'executive function' left, but that doesn't itself imply that being asked to use 'executive function' uses it up)
• LostLetterbox2 3y ago
  I find it funny that the author suggests that husbands have more time for hobbies and friends; I don't know about hobbies but male friendship has been in decline for a long time now... The EFT framing is a good model but the gendered arguments need much more nuance than is offered in this piece. I also wonder how much the higher standards plays a part in this kind of thing. If person A believes tasks like vacuuming need to occur weekly, and person B believes they need to occur bi-weekly then person B will either suffer an emotional tax for not having their expectations met or an EFT managing their preferred outcome with some form of nagging. Lastly, can we just ditch things like get well soon cards, someone getting sick doesn't have to be met with a $5 donation to hallmark with some platitudes. If you really cared you'd improve minimum pay and sick leave entitlements so people didn't have to turn up to work sick.
  • at_a_remove 3y ago
    If I really cared I would somehow be able to wave my magic wand and implement sick leave entitlements and other demands? No. Reality doesn't work like that. A card is far more in the realm of possible things I can do. Caring does not confer capability.
    • colordrops 3y ago
      If I don't subscribe to the whole get well soon culture with cards and balloons, I'm not thieving someone else's executive function because I never organize the events.
    • rcbdev 3y ago
      Time to fight for human rights in your country ig?
  • adaml_623 3y ago
    The full quote I think you should reference is. "he can devote this time to hobbies, relaxation, exercise, hanging out with friends, sleep, work and/or continued education." You've addressed one item out of seven indicating that you're not aware of the context or nuance involved in gender inequality in the home.
• mock-possum 3y ago
  This is real difficult for me to empathize with - I think I get what the issue is, and it’s just not an issue for me. How is it an issue for others??
  • csydas 3y ago
    I can appreciate that, but let me share my experience at a position I had as I've dealt with this a lot and the work became untenable. The team I lead is pretty good, not perfect of course, but we tend to get the desired results and even more for the most important clients/issues, and we do pretty well with clients on the soft-skills side, so clients typically like the team I work with. While this seems like we'd be a fairly carefully protected resource, over time, just everything started being thrown at us, including stuff that had absolutely nothing to do with our team. It's a big international company with different managers on other teams coming and going, so it's never clear who in the company knows about our team yet. - early on, it was just a few people making requests directly to me, and a small portion of my day was turning down these requests - as time went on, the team grew, we succeeded more, and more and more irrelevant requests started coming. We turned them down, but the amount of requests and the irrelevance and importance of the requests were all increasing, the latter two often linked very closely together - at some point, we started getting exceptional push-back when we turned down requests. the first few times were rough; manageable, but I had to dedicate a few meetings/days to getting rid of this request and the requestors were very upset when I turned them down - eventually it got to the point where a good 40-50% of my week was dealing with irrelevant requests and increasingly aggressive resistance when I turned it down - the requestors around this time began just trying to circumvent me; find the people on the team I was leading who were not as good at saying "no", and getting the tasks in that way. I had to eventually put a full stop on requests that didn't come via a specific channel; this in turn resulted in a lot of drama from other teams complaining we were being prima donnas, and arguing with higher management if we should have the _right_ to insist on requests coming via a specific channel (something basically every team does...), which eats up more of my time as I'm having to explain to execs that have absolutely no idea about this aspect of the company, but believe the requestors when they say "yes, this team must solve this", keeping in mind that the task has absolutely nothing to do with our team, they just want us to deal with it - a corollary to the above point, keep in mind the requests are still coming in while this debate is happening since the debate is whether or not we can restrict the channels for making requests, so my teammates are still being harassed every day by these requestors - finally we get "approved" for the right to a dedicated single channel for the requests, and the requestors just ignore it anyways; there is no reprimand for the persons not following the approved process, and the entire debate was a pointless exercise - I'm spending 80% of my time now arguing with these requestors and telling why we're rejecting their requests. Most of these requestors are repeat visitors, so it's not like they don't know these reasons and rules, they just don't care, they don't want to deal with the shitty task they made - eventually, the requestors realize they don't need to request it to me, they just need to request it to an exec who has _some_ oversight over our department, give those execs enough worry to convince them we need the best, and the requests are routed to my teams. so I end up accommodating and adding meetings with these execs on the regular in hopes that they at least ask me if this really needs my team or not (spoiler: most never ask, they just lay down their decree and expect it to be done). My week is now about 95% just telling people to knock this shit off, but the tasks keep coming - my team is burnt out, we're absolutely fed up with all the work, and even worse, we're having troubles sorting when we really do need to be on a task as there are just so many, so actual projects we _should and could have helped with_ are now in trouble as they got deprioritized. these are indeed important projects that need us, and by the time we get to them, they're in such bad shape due to mismanagement and awful decisions that it's a ton of work to get the project off life-support, and that is typically as far as we can take it before we have to shift the focus to another dying project There's a lot here, but remember, my team is filled with IT specialists and we're supposed to be helping on specific difficult projects that align with our specialties and nothing more. Yet now more than 90% of my job is just solving arguments or problems that other teams created, doing work that has 0 to do with our team's original focus, struggling to keep the projects that are our focus just barely treading water, and constantly having to explain to extremely aggressive and emotional people that their personal unwillingness to have tough conversations with clients or their unwillingness to fix their own mistake is their problem to solve, not ours. I absolutely can empathize with the article as it's basically all I do at my work anymore, and it's really awful to wake up and wonder "who's bullshit am I going to have to deal with today?" when I should just be setting up a few environments and writing a bit of code while mentoring the team I'm a part of. The fact that everyone participating in this EFT has been told in no ambiguous terms many times why their requests are bad and not for our team, but I guess the company decided at some point we're just going to waste everyone's time arguing on such things instead of doing IT work at some point. Guess I missed that meeting in favor of explaining to some exec why the project their team proposed is basically giving away thousands of work hours for free just because some sales team didn't have the courage to tell a small and awful client "nah we aren't doing that"
• neotrope 3y ago
  > ... the deliberate abdication of decision-making However unpopular, I strongly disagree with this take. Looking at the world like this is not productive. Assuming others are acting maliciously obfuscates what's actually going on (decades of misaligned incentives in the case of FSA) and it removes personal agency.
• Mindey 3y ago
  So, CEOs are thieves of the letter "E" from employees, if they delegate so much that the employees cannot meaningfully participate in the higher strategic decisions together? Task delegation can be cooperative or abusive, as the article points out. It might be called theft if there is something owed and taken away from, but for that, it has to be that participation in executive decision was a right of employee or contractor to begin with (for that, they have to investigate under what agreement they work, what type of organization and expectations were set). Some contractors are happy to deliver a part or component to specifications, get paid and not participate in strategic decision making, others want to be part of the mission, and decide higher level goals together. It depends on the type of social contracts we enter into! Btw., the "Executive Function Theft" as defined in the article, is an important social issue in the area of abuse of power, but reading plainly, it can be confused with good illegal leadership takeover without abuse of power, and with positive social outcomes.
• jtc331 3y ago
  > The goal, in the name of the company bottom dollar, is to make it as inconvenient as possible for me to use an employer offered benefit. A truly mundane and recurrent example, unfortunately, as I try to navigate U.S. health insurance. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence [and misaligned incentives]. Designing a good experience and flow for a piece of software is hard. You have to work for it not to be bad rather than work to make it bad.
  • jkhdigital 3y ago
    Bingo. The corporate buyers of FSA plans are not the consumers. Misaligned incentives.
• ZephyrBlu 3y ago
  I understand the idea, but I'm somewhat confused by the way it's framed. Negotiating what you spend your executive function on is part of navigating reality. People can exercise agency here. You can say "no" to most of these tasks and there will be zero effect. Most of the time people don't actually care that much about these tasks getting done, they're just nice-to-haves. I also disagree with the framing of it in the workplace and relationships. "EFT" is literally the purpose of a job. You take on the burden of your role so someone else doesn't have to. If a couple is happy with the division of labour, why does it matter who does more "EFT" tasks? Gendered or other differences in "EFT" tasks seem like a completely different problem. That is related to your personal negotiation of the tasks rather than an inherent problem with them. Personally I try to ruthlessly eliminate these tasks because I have poor executive function and don't want more things to deal with, but most people don't seem to be interested in doing that.
  • literalbatshit 3y ago
    This article to a large extent exemplifies the popularization of a culture in which I am expected to understand and make accommodation for your needs and desires at all times, instead of you exercising your own agency and dealing with your own shit. This culture then dresses up this mindset in loaded terms like “emotional labor” and “executive function theft” to make it more reasonable (and to make those that disagree look more unreasonable) but it’s all bullshit. If you don’t want to send emails, find another job, or change your own job. If you don’t want to do the dishes, find another partner, or demand they change (and be prepared for them to leave instead). But rather than this, the proponents of this culture demonize all those who disagree with them. Their arguments and approaches are intentionally not rational, and are instead emotional, precisely because they require everyone else to not engage with life and their own happiness rationally.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I suspect, when the hype subsides, we'll figure out that AI is pretty good at the minutiae kind of thing. In the aggregate, technology tends to empower higher-functioning work, by taking over the lower-functioning work. I started off by programming Machine Code. Languages, compilers, and engineering discipline have allowed me to do a whole world more, than if I was still writing out hex codes, on a pad of paper. But, when it all boils down, Machine Code is the atomic level (or maybe FET junctions).
• wwilim 3y ago
  The eye-opener here is that it's not "the way things are", it's other people doing that to you
• FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  There is a lot of evidence that "Decision Making" is a finite resource in the brain. It takes energy and it runs out. This seems like it should be well known. This article makes it seem like a new insight, but it is real and has been known about. For Corporations: Is it theft? It is what you are paid for. Think of the "Executive Function" as a resource, and the corporation is paying you for it, and yes, in human organizations, it trickles down. The Higher in the Hierarchy you go, they also get tired. Then down the Hierarchy, the decisions trickle down, and the next layer also makes decisions and gets tired, and so on, down to the lowest person deciding how to write one line of code. Sure -> In every human organization there will be people that are 'passing the buck'. Or here 'not not taking responsibility at their level and passing the decision down to their underlings'. For ADHD: Everyone has a finite amount of "executive function". And People with ADHD have to be more judicious with guarding it. Gender: And yes, in home life, with bills, and getting kids to school on time, it wears everyone down. And yes, in some (maybe most) relationships, the woman is beset upon with more of the daily chores. That un-fairness is also well documented. But that doesn't mean this is a gender phenomena.
• taneq 3y ago
  There's a couple of related forms of interaction, more common in close interpersonal relationships, that I'd term 'Executive Function Sabotage'. The first form is where one party routinely interrupts the other party any time they choose to do something. Whether it's requesting they work on something else, or just demanding their attention by talking to them repeatedly, the common factor is that it's reliably triggered by the second party initiating some kind of focused activity unrelated to the first party. The second form is where one party requests that the other party perform a task, then inevitably finds fault with the outcome no matter how accurately or effectively the task is done. Both of these can lead over time to a form of learned helplessness where any initiative is suppressed because any self-originated action is treated as wrong. Eventually the victim gives up and becomes incapable of any real volition.
• giantg2 3y ago
  "Is their decision-making ability wholly captured in those tasks while the other person is getting to relax or to plan a project?" It sounds like they think projects are fun or something. Just one more thing in a long list of other chores and projects that have to get done. Of course a large project is composed of many smaller decisions. This plus the rampant gender stereotyping and bias (no mention of stereotypical men's work) makes me highly suspect of the statements they are making, or at least the way they are making them. Sure, people get burnt out with all the invisible work, but isn't that everyone? Also, the author is hardcore cherry picking data. "Excluded from these “core” housework hours were tasks like gardening, home repairs, or washing the car." That's from the Michigan study. So no shit if you exclude maintenence duties that were stereotypical men's work they do less "work around the house". The whole point of the book they mention (if you cut through its BS and bias) is that there's a total bucket of work, that would should be equally divided, and that it shouldn't just default based on gender but be decided on an individual basis. Seems like a straightforward argument. Perhaps if we stop promoting the emotional and biased presentation of these arguments it would be better recieved. Nobody wants the hear that they've been victimizing their wife based on a generalized stereotype (I'm talking about how the studies are being applied/argued).
  • MichaelZuo 3y ago
    It does seem a bit odd. 'home repairs' could easily be more then half of all real work done in a household per annum, if they don't hire contractors, depending on the age and size of the home.
    • pclmulqdq 3y ago
      I think the exclusion of car/home maintenance is based on the sexist belief that the people doing these tasks must enjoy them, and thus they are "hobbies" and not chores. I ran into this mentality with cooking and a previous partner: I like to cook as a hobby, so naturally the time I spend doing it because food needs to be produced must not count as a chore.
      • giantg2 3y ago
• steveBK123 3y ago
  In the workplace Slack is basically the application designed for EFT. Senior engineers deal with EFT a lot in mid/junior and even some seemingly seniors who just absolutely abdicate responsibility for anything that is not interesting. A common example - asking for help debugging by basically just saying "it doesn't work", requiring you to interrogate them with 10 questions before you get to the what/where/why/when/how of "it" and "doesn't work" to actually begin helping them. Helping them causes you more work than necessary because they can't be bothered to write up a decent 2 sentence explanation up front. Another example - always doing half (at best) of the task, arguably leaving things in a worse state. In a data engineering context, things like making a change in some mappings in your data loader, but only fixing it on new data, leaving old data in a broken state. So now downstream users of the dataset need to be aware of the old bad mapping, the new good mapping, and either the date of cutover/handle both cases. They saved themselves some work, but caused everyone else more work. The last class I would mention would be coworkers who are basically "prototype devs". Guys, (its always guys) who are fairly creative and fast moving, delivering interesting IDEAS that they are incapable of productionising. These guys are incredibly dangerous to the team if not managed well, as they get ahead of their skis offering products to management that they can't get past the toy stage. The rest of the team is left to write the other 90% of the code, or usually do a full rewrite. As it turns out the toy always takes 1/10th the time of the real solution, and so they have plenty of time to run off and build more toys. I'd also describe EFT as leaving you feeling like you've lost agency and control of your day.
• iamthepieman 3y ago
  There's something not mentioned in the article in either the household or healthcare examples that I kept hoping the author would mention and use to wrap up. In my head I call it high impedance relationship/work it's jumbled together in my head just like impedance is reactive and resistive. Your circuit can work just fine but a high impedance is more sensitive to external factors (external stress) than a low impedance device. Even just the act of monitoring it with an oscilloscope can affect the signal or voltage. You fix this, not by driving more power (mental energy, more chores whatever) but by balancing the inputs and outputs (grossly oversimplifying here) If you want to do work a certain way and your partner or coworker can only accept work that looks like theirs then that's a related but separate problem. You decide your partner is overworked at home so suggest hiring a house cleaner, they protest that it would cost too much and "we can do it ourselves if you would just chip in" or let's get rid of our picture books because we have no room on our bookshelves and our kids are all teenagers but "I want to save them for the grandchildren" or I'll cook breakfast every morning but "then we have to wake up early and eat at 7:00 a.m. instead of wolfing down something 3 minutes before leaving." When the other person will only accept work that looks like theirs it's really a mismatch in growth vs fixed mindset. That said, a temporary dedication to matching their work can give them space to see the other solutions and come out of the fixed mindset. Like all hard problems, a flexible approach is better than hard and fast rules.
• throwaway98797 3y ago
  in any situation where i can have others make decisions for me, i encourage / ask them to do so i focus on what i’m good at it so happens to be things i like doing and it also so happens to be things that the market finds valuable with roommates i find solutions like hiring cleaning staff, for some though it’s the principal of who does the work and you can’t swap the work out those differences are the things that tear people apart but that’s just part of life sometimes someone has to change or accept something if neither can then pain ensues
• abecedarius 3y ago
  Article discusses some real problems, but my takeaway is: let's coin a new term "semantic theft" for the common real problem of people stretching useful words to cover their enemies with the strongest negative connotations they hope they can get away with.
• dpkirchner 3y ago
  This reminds me of a recent thing that was forced upon me. My brokerage was acquired by another brokerage and as a result I had to fill out some annoying paperwork. That acquisition did not benefit me in any way but a few people certainly made a ton of money because of it. I resent that, even though in the grand scheme I was not really that inconvenienced. In retrospect I should have just spent the same amount of time transferring the contents of that account somewhere else (somewhere that is already set up). At the time I didn't realize how little work is required for such a change.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• brindlejim 3y ago
  The author of this piece is a great example of the sort of professional victim that liberal America applauds, seeking yet another revolution of society and bureaucracy. She may labor against a *system*, but the hellscape of re-education and the constant surveillance of micro-aggressions based on another fun acronym seems infinitely worse than that system. The underlying reality she seems to ignore is that the people who master and decide the details actually run the shop in very real ways. There is power there, if she is not too offended to see it.