The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
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The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
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Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#2Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made.
If any.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#3Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but this article reads like one of those corporate jargon text generators to me.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#4Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
I'm pretty lost too. It reads like the second half of an article with no context.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#5Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
Sometimes I worry that I present my thoughts as incoherently as the author. This article needs to be streamlined and stripped of the confusing snark halfway though.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#6Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
"Tasks which require thought are exhausting and qualitatively different from routine tasks. Is there a better way to coordinate the work environment of "knowledge workers" to make their lives easier?"
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#7Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
What I'm getting out of it is that idealized notions of "knowledge sharing" and "task management" are unrealistic compared to how people actually work on things in the real world, and that software meant to help people work on long-running tasks should take that into consideration.
As a concrete example: I frequently find myself needing to figure out how to implement some software task I've never done before myself, involving concepts that I barely know anything about. This usually results in dozens of opened tabs in multiple subtrees - Google searches, Github repos, and so on. This might overflow my main "browsing" Firefox window, so I end up opening a second FF window just to hold those tabs. Per the article, maybe there's a better way to capture the notion of "I'm trying to research this topic over the course of a week - how do I better organize what I'm working on, and perhaps share that info with others?".
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#8Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
So to me it made some sense. Putting it in my own terms, he argues knowledge workers are _by default_ overloaded and they use distractions as a necessary form of relief from the pressure - the distractions aren't the problem, they're a symptom. Right now we're too focused on tools and strategies to make us "more efficient", block distractions and promote collaboration. Instead we should focus on reducing the mental drain of knowledge work (e.g. the need for endless multi-tasking and alt-tabbing), find ways for positive mental relaxation (here I guess implied is NOT drugs or alcohol) and support getting "back on track" e.g. if you finish the day half way through fixing a bug, when you start next day, it's not just your IDE but also say your browser with all the Stack Overflow tabs and such you had open, related to the bug, all together in a "session" that makes it as easy as possible to pick up where you left off.
So in summary I guess he's saying in the search for solutions to burnt out knowledge workers we're focused too much on symptoms like distractions.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#9>So how might we approach idea generation around knowledge work without idealizing the knowledge worker?
Editing tip: you can delete sentences like this without loosing much. The following text should do a good enough job of making a point without an introduction helping it along. The trick to editing is to backspace as many words as you can.
Re: The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker
#10Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and I still can't work out the point being made. If any.
Same reaction, there’s a point buried extremely deep in all of the stream of consciousness