Executive Function Theft

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.

1. A lot of shallow work doesn’t need to happen at all. It’s not about offloading it, it’s about stopping altogether, or automating it.

2. When this isn’t possible, structure your workday to preserve uninterrupted blocks of deep work. Do the shallow tasks mindfully in batches, instead of letting them constantly steal your attention throughout the day.

3. Use tools like your calendar to schedule shallow and deep periods of work.

A big part of the book is focused on defining the problems that constant interruptions cause so as to deepen the motivation to actually institute habit changes.

He was also ahead of the curve encouraging people to step away from social media in favor of local interactions.

I personally read the book as a person who is probably the poster child for being a “victim” of “EFT”. I was in a role where my attention was constantly demanded/stolen, and I needed to find strategies to make the best of the situation. At no point was this exploration about offloading things to other people.

It’s a good book, and I highly recommend that people read it. Now more than ever.

It’s also worth noting that his next books were “Digital Minimalism” and “A world without email”. He focuses on the theme of technology and information overload. Issues that I think many people are starting to realize are a real problem in their lives.

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

I remember handing my father in law an article detailing "tasks women do that are invisible to men".

His reply: "It says here that I'm a woman."

I've found that it's less about who is more burdened, but how the burden is dealt with.

Case in point: I prefer assigning responsibilities, my SO having everyone watch over everything - we're not the only household where the divide lies here.

It's hard, because our respective approaches drive the other party up the wall.