Quote, Unquote

In modern office life, our efforts rarely generate an immediate reward. When we answer an e-mail or attend a meeting, we’re typically advancing, in fits and starts, long-term projects that may be weeks or months away from completion. The modern knowledge worker also tends to juggle many different objectives at the same time, moving rapidly back and forth between them throughout the day.
~ Cal Newport via The New Yorker

:::

Quote, Unquote

The problem with overstuffed to-do lists isn’t just the total time required to execute their contents, but the fact that each new commitment generates its own ongoing administrative demands—emails, chats, check-in calls, “quick” meetings. That’s the overhead tax. Before long, knowledge workers find themselves spending the bulk of their time talking about work instead of actually doing it.
~ Cal Newport via The Atlantic

:::

Quote, Unquote

The bottom line is that the abrupt rise in digital interaction following the arrival of the pandemic made knowledge work more tedious and exhausting, helping to fuel the waves of disruption that have followed. If we accept this interpretation of events, however, we must also accept the necessity of continuing to seek change. So long as these new and excessive levels of digital communication persist, more haphazard upheavals will inevitably follow.
~ Cal Newport via The New Yorker

:::

Quote, Unquote

To be sure, knowledge work does often require high levels of education and skill, but in recent years we’ve increasingly drowned the application of such talents in a deluge of distraction. We can blame this, in part, on the rise of low-friction digital communication tools like e-mail and chat. Office collaboration now takes place largely through a frenzy of back-and-forth, ad-hoc messaging, punctuated by meetings.The satisfactions of skilled labor are unavoidably diluted when you can only dedicate partial attention to your efforts.
~ Cal Newport via The New Yorker

:::

Quote, Unquote

It’s hardly surprising that the rapid transition to widespread remote work led to a greater quantity of digital communication. Especially in the early weeks of the pandemic, Zoom and Slack offered a lifeline of sorts for newly isolated members of the cubicle diaspora. But it’s striking that, even as work returned to a more stable rhythm, with more time spent back in physical offices, the amount of digital communication has remained high.
~ Cal Newport via The New Yorker

:::