What Do You Mean? I'm Not Doing Busy Wrong - DBR 051

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

#Business #Larry Tribble, Ph.D #Larry Tribble #Careers #Podcasting Education #Knowledge Work

28:30

We're trying something different this week: a full post-show breakdown of every episode in the latest season of Black Mirror! Ari Romero is joined by Tudum's Black Mirror expert, Keisha Hatchett, to give you all the nuance, the insider commentary, and the details you might have missed in this incredible new season. Plus commentary from creator & showrunner Charlie Brooker! SPOILER ALERT: We're talking about the new season in detail and revealing key plot points. If you haven't watched yet, and you don't want to know what happens, turn back now! You can watch all seven seasons of Black Mirror now in your personalized virtual theater . Follow Netflix Podcasts and read more about Black Mirror on Tudum.com .…

hace un año 50:27

MP3•Episodio en casa

What do you mean? I don't think I'm doing busy wrong. I don't really get this one directly, but it's a consistent subtext when I talk to folks, and it's not that I misunderstand. For years, I thought I wasn’t swinging a golf club wrong, but I think maybe people take it a little bit too personally, let’s think about why this might be so. The cultural idea: One's ability to use technology in the modern age is really unfortunately connected to efficacy as a human being, and the culture is such that we buy that notion. The thinking here is an outgrowth of the learning experiences that I've had as an adult We’ll talk about three interrelated areas: personal productivity, knowledge work, and work from home The tech (for various reasons) doesn’t support our learning.

Evidence: Software, the industry and the software marketing business
Evidence: usability is hard and the economics don't drive companies there
Financial motivations in the software industry

The whole software business is built around solving a problem that every human being has, and so you're going to be able to sell a billion copies of it. And that makes you rich, right?
if you sell it to two people, you lose – that’s not the business model

Two ways:

Build a piece of software that does everything right, solves a problem so big that everyone needs it. This is very, very hard.
Market to people and make them believe your software does everything, and you don't want to constrain them by telling them how to use your software
Software builders are trying to be everything to everybody.

Somebody has to teach you that's not what hammers are for, that's not what screws are for.
Back to "intuitive"

Marketing has managed to equate intuition with your intelligence. And more likely: intuition is related to your experience.
the new one better look a whole lot like the old in order for my intuition/experience to be employed.

“Intuitive” is a weird word. It moves the responsibility to the user.

There's nothing intuitive about it
"Intuitive" is really kind of a strange word.
It snuck in there and all these implications that are not, not really true.

Software Marketing

Spin it such that, if it wasn't intuitive for you, then it's not our fault, it’s yours.
People simply don't design things for usability – they simply claim that they do
So not only do we start off with bad metaphors, but those metaphors tend to persist.
The email metaphor is terrible
Evidence: The envelope metaphor for email Fascinating: the interfaces haven't changed.

DBR – basically information management

Password management as information management

I asked a cybersecurity class – overwhelming majority don’t use good password management
Do you understand what a password manager does? It's okay to say no, it does not make you stupid. Can you learn about this stuff? Yeah. Do you have time? Probably not.
The “password = key” metaphor is wrong
Imagine if you couldn’t keep a physical copy of your car key but that's a metaphor for passwords Password questions
Do you understand the challenge of managing passwords? Have you been taught?
Well, why not – it’s hard and our metaphors are wrong

Data (electronic information) storage

This is a hard problem that hasn’t been solved

Were you taught how to use email?

It’s complicated and we’ve not really figured it out
Have you been trained in the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Work from home?

We went to offices, because at an office, somebody else took care of many of the services for us,
How's your home ergonomics?
How's your networking? Are if it doesn't work, who has to fix it.
Data integrity in your home office? Have you been taught?
Have you been trained in how to backup software, maintain your data?

Knowledge work

We sort of knew how to do physical. In knowledge work, we really don't know how it's best done.
Do you know how to manage information assets, to collect and organize information in such a way that you can find it again?
If you can't remember being taught, you probably weren't. Are you self-taught?
You know, a lot of people say, Well, I was trained for knowledge work when I was in school. I've already done a podcast on that. No, you weren't.
I talked to college students about this stuff, and they're just flabbergasted that we know something about how to do these things. And they're like, why hasn't anybody ever taught me this before?
But were you trained to solve problems?

Finally

I don't think I'm doing busy, wrong. Well, what's the evidence that you're doing it right?
It is not very easy stuff.
The tech industry is not really helping us, yet we fixate on the latest innovations. “Maybe this will finally solve my problem.”
“It just works for me”. Compared to what and/or who?
Respectfully, I've spent 15 years trying to figure out what knowledge work is and how it's best done.

76 episodios

What Do You Mean? I'm Not Doing Busy Wrong - DBR 051

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

published hace un año

MP3•Episodio en casa

Evidence: Software, the industry and the software marketing business
Evidence: usability is hard and the economics don't drive companies there
Financial motivations in the software industry

The whole software business is built around solving a problem that every human being has, and so you're going to be able to sell a billion copies of it. And that makes you rich, right?
if you sell it to two people, you lose – that’s not the business model

Two ways:

Build a piece of software that does everything right, solves a problem so big that everyone needs it. This is very, very hard.
Market to people and make them believe your software does everything, and you don't want to constrain them by telling them how to use your software
Software builders are trying to be everything to everybody.

Somebody has to teach you that's not what hammers are for, that's not what screws are for.
Back to "intuitive"

Marketing has managed to equate intuition with your intelligence. And more likely: intuition is related to your experience.
the new one better look a whole lot like the old in order for my intuition/experience to be employed.

“Intuitive” is a weird word. It moves the responsibility to the user.

There's nothing intuitive about it
"Intuitive" is really kind of a strange word.
It snuck in there and all these implications that are not, not really true.

Software Marketing

Spin it such that, if it wasn't intuitive for you, then it's not our fault, it’s yours.
People simply don't design things for usability – they simply claim that they do
So not only do we start off with bad metaphors, but those metaphors tend to persist.
The email metaphor is terrible
Evidence: The envelope metaphor for email Fascinating: the interfaces haven't changed.

DBR – basically information management

Password management as information management

I asked a cybersecurity class – overwhelming majority don’t use good password management
Do you understand what a password manager does? It's okay to say no, it does not make you stupid. Can you learn about this stuff? Yeah. Do you have time? Probably not.
The “password = key” metaphor is wrong
Imagine if you couldn’t keep a physical copy of your car key but that's a metaphor for passwords Password questions
Do you understand the challenge of managing passwords? Have you been taught?
Well, why not – it’s hard and our metaphors are wrong

Data (electronic information) storage

This is a hard problem that hasn’t been solved

Were you taught how to use email?

It’s complicated and we’ve not really figured it out
Have you been trained in the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Work from home?

We went to offices, because at an office, somebody else took care of many of the services for us,
How's your home ergonomics?
How's your networking? Are if it doesn't work, who has to fix it.
Data integrity in your home office? Have you been taught?
Have you been trained in how to backup software, maintain your data?

Knowledge work

We sort of knew how to do physical. In knowledge work, we really don't know how it's best done.
Do you know how to manage information assets, to collect and organize information in such a way that you can find it again?
If you can't remember being taught, you probably weren't. Are you self-taught?
You know, a lot of people say, Well, I was trained for knowledge work when I was in school. I've already done a podcast on that. No, you weren't.
I talked to college students about this stuff, and they're just flabbergasted that we know something about how to do these things. And they're like, why hasn't anybody ever taught me this before?
But were you trained to solve problems?

Finally

I don't think I'm doing busy, wrong. Well, what's the evidence that you're doing it right?
It is not very easy stuff.
The tech industry is not really helping us, yet we fixate on the latest innovations. “Maybe this will finally solve my problem.”
“It just works for me”. Compared to what and/or who?
Respectfully, I've spent 15 years trying to figure out what knowledge work is and how it's best done.

76 episodios

#Business #Larry Tribble, Ph.D #Larry Tribble #Careers #Podcasting Education #Knowledge Work

Todos los episodios

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
Yes! You CAN Be Happy At Work - DBR 076 41:43

hace 6 días41:43

41:43

The happiness at work episode. Yay. I’m happy to be at work. Last time we talked about pessimism versus optimism. A closely related subject is happiness versus misery. I do think that optimism is critical. I've heard it said that your number one goal as an entrepreneur is to protect your optimism. I think it's that important. If you’re in the knowledge Work World and think you're not an entrepreneur and then you probably need to reconsider the definition of Entrepreneur. An entrepreneur is somebody that makes their own deal, that makes their own job. And you should probably be a lot closer to doing that than maybe you think you should be. Standing around getting told what to do all the time. Is not. Fulfilling satisfying, or really very enriching. You got to bring something to the party. So figure out what your thing is and bring it because we need it. And then protect your optimism that you can make a difference in the world. As I'm recording this, it's Easter week and I'm a Christian, I'm very happy. Today is Thursday of Easter week. Which is Maundy Thursday. For those of you who aren't familiar with Christian tradition, Maundy is m-a-u-n-d-y. Traditionally, it's where we celebrate Jesus serving his disciples at the Last Supper and Loving on them in that way. Tomorrow, of course, will be Good Friday, which you may be even more familiar with. If not, Good Friday is traditionally the day that Jesus was crucified. We say good to make the point. A lot of people are particularly happy at Christmas. I like Christmas too, but Easter is nore theologically sound. So I hope you're happy this week too while we talk about happiness at work. Happiness and optimism go hand in hand. If you're optimistic about an outcome, then generally speaking that's going to correlate with some degree of happiness about where you are in the world. It's a confusing topic to some degree. I don't think it's necessary that we get into the controversy, but let's talk about what we all agree on. I think a lot of people don't like work. I think a lot of people have made up their minds that they're not gonna like work. In the minority of cases we don't like work because we work in some nasty environment, really dangerous, those kinds of things. Of interest, of course, is the fact that many of the people who do that sort of thing are really, really passionate about what they do and their unhappiness about it seems at least to be limited if not totally subsumed. People in the military, people in the medical profession, a lot of these areas. That said, if you're listening to this podcast you probably work in a nice comfy office - comfortable chair, air conditioning, you’ve got the tools that you need. You’re pretty comfortable and well-treated. Maybe there's bits and pieces around the edges that you'd prefer were different, fine. I just think we've got to recognize that as part of this happiness equation. Optimism is more productive - last podcast Happiness and optimism go hand in hand Charley Gilkey: happy = 31% greater productivity Attitude is important, particularly in service businesses – “my pleasure” Challenges to happiness at work Last podcast… the meme that realism is a sophisticated approach Desire and "wanting it." Flow state is NOT hard, grunting work I do think that the desire piece is overstated in the culture. Avoid this part of the hustle culture I don't think it has to be hard to be morally good work. Negativity and pessimism around work have two primary components Ways to be happier at work Human beings have a great capacity to enjoy the things that we do. A definition of discipline(s) Strong relationships require disciplines. We call this discipline and learn as small humans to dislike it. I’m disciplined in some areas and not in others. You're likely the same Work-life balance vs. chore-craft balance - from Cal Newport and Scott Young. Craft – doing “the thing” Chore – peripheral to “the thing” Craft transcends the work life conflict Happiness at work is certainly possible. Believing that is half the battle. How we do our work with happiness. Engage the disciplines Understand the indirect relationships Happiness is a big part of Doing Busy Right. Part of it is stress reduction. Part of it is greater throughput. Part of it is greater confidence. In addition, consider some of these other ways to be happy at work. larry@dobusyright.com www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
Pessimism Cloaked as Realism Considered Harmful - DBR 075 53:32

hace 13 días53:32

53:32

This one's about optimism and pessimism, and what that has to do with productivity. I and the whole thing is a productivity concern for me. We talk about confidence around these parts. That’s because I think confidence ties to productivity. The tie there is imposter syndrome. We struggle to understand what confidence is. But confidence is fundamental to what we're trying to do, particularly as knowledge workers. By the same token, optimism is fundamental to productivity. A lot of this has to do with long term career growth rather than just simple productivity. We'll leave that career growth potential aside, and just talk about productivity now. The problem The problem is that many people are pessimists If you are not confident in your ability to do something, then your ability to do that thing is going to be quite limited The invisible work that we do leads to negative mental gymnastics like writer's block and imposter syndrome. Our feelings about a thing do have a lot to do with our ability to do and thus I think we should cultivate optimism I’ll give you some tools and motivation to embrace optimism, if you’re an optimist and work to become an optimist, if you’re not Realistic positivity - optimism vs “Toxic positivity” Definition of discipline Mental landscape and productivity The science Learned helplessness Growth mindset is pretty close to a good definition of optimism Grit Counter arguments I'm not a pessimist about me. I'm a pessimist about the world. Optimism as naivete, realism is rational Limiting disappointment by managing expectations Engineering mindset Definition of work Problem solving Tenacity Recap I hope I've convinced you that optimism is the most productive, practical mindset. You should now have some tools to help you cultivate optimism in your life and work. Remember, you've solved many problems and (to date) have survived the worst news you've received. You can do it. larry@dobusyright.com www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
How We Got Here and Where We're Going - History of Knowledge Work Productivity - DBR 074 50:36

hace 20 días50:36

50:36

I want to talk about the history of knowledge work productivity. And it's going to involve a lot of different names. It's going to involve the triumvirate, well, the quadrumvirate (that’s the real word), the Mount Rushmore. Only through understanding what they were thinking about can we extend that thinking. Then we can work on knowledge work productivity. We'll go all the way back to the start of the 20th century. We have Frederick Taylor studying “Scientific Management”, which is a study of work, not ‘management’ per se. Then we've got Peter Drucker, and he's important because he was doing all the thinking around knowledge work and how that came about. Stephen Covey taught us that we have to get our mindset right in order to be effective people. David Allen taught us how to use tools and stop using our brains for task and attention management. I might bring in Cal Newport and Thomas Davenport and these different kinds of names, just because of the curiosity factor there. But anyway, Drucker, Covey, Taylor, David Allen, This episode is about: What problem do businesspeople and managers (in particular) have to deal with Why is it an important problem What ways have we tried to deal with this previously What tools are at our disposal to try to solve it now Who is currently presenting solutions and what are they The issue is that our economy, particularly our economic productivity, is changing. We have yet to fully understand how to react to that change. Some history to give us perspective and hints on what to do. 20th century productivity growth Organizational structures - sociology (business structures were not theorized/engineered) Original organizational structures (government/church/military) were monarchy/hierarchy The notion of trade, business, and getting wealthy (via the “business” way) Apprentice -> employee -> growing organization -> modern business problems (management) Used to be everybody worked for the king, who distributed wealth and work It needed to scale and be ‘optimized’, but was never engineered We don't know exactly how it works You got three blacksmiths. All of a sudden it's a managerial problem Most things cultural or sociological there isn't hard science - like business Atom bomb derived from theory and we ‘engineered’ a way to construct one. Same thing with NASA and the space program. Business really was not that way Railroad/telegraph as a management problem (distributed locations). If you need to tell somebody the train's coming, there's no faster way for that information to travel than the train itself. The history of information really correlates to the history of business and culture We can’t communicate quickly enough between different locations for ‘real-time’ management These business/communication structures grew organically, business is perhaps more Darwinian than Darwin Well, all of this was command and control. So what about leadership/governance/control of the organization Now, we have to explain leadership, and this notion of who gets to tell who what to do The ‘great man’ theory Mid 20th century, there was a cult of personality Huge corporations, like General Motors, and they're selling stock, and nobody really understands how that works Government: we've got to understand how this business thing works and explain it to people and regulate it How we began to understand and explain Frederick Taylor "scientific management" and notions of the efficiency of individual workers Peter Drucker In "The Concept of the Corporation" is trying to explain the notion of governance structures, some way to get people to work together We've got big organizations and factories. Got to produce a lot, and so we need to break this down, because nobody, no one person, can produce it all Drucker developed technique for management and the ideas of knowledge work Stephen Covey comes along. He's exploring this idea of technique for ‘effectiveness’. Covey talks effective people in terms of psychological, psychosocial properties of behavior and modes of thought. This is different from previous thought. Now, Knowledge Work improvement (and management) Drucker’s hypothesis: improve the productivity of knowledge work. How do we manage versus how do we strategize? Now, we’ve moved to KW (and management) So, how do we manage ourselves and others The goal of such management is to improve the productivity of knowledge work. David Allen started to use Taylorist thinking in improving knowledge work. My offering on how to manage Knowledge Work is the Attention Compass - a successor to Allen's methodology. Focus: What are the components of knowledge work and how can we improve them? What is the system that needs to be put in place? Our community is working on this and needs your insights and voice. Get in touch. larry@dobusyright.com or find me on LinkedIn.…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
Fable: Productivity Rain Dances - Watch Out - DBR 073 47:37

hace 27 días47:37

47:37

I started out talking about the lies of productivity, but I’m going to change to fables because it's just things we collectively believe without much evidence. Plus, I don't think anybody's intentionally trying to mislead us. We just move without much actual data. A couple of those fables collided with a post by Cal Newport with the evocative title of “productivity rain dances”, which is a pretty humorous mental picture. Apparently, rain dances are those habits of work that we believe make us productive but actually don’t. We don’t develop evidence, so we are engaging in superstition. So, fables and rain dances probably have some overlap. Let’s explore Cal’s post and investigate some of our own practices to make sure we’re not wasting our time and energy doing things that don’t improve our productivity. What is the discussion? Cal’s post about Chris Williamson’s podcast It’s not that nothing is useful in productivity, it’s just that the field is not scientifically organized. Experiment means think, gather data, analyze situations. It does not mean “I feel like…”. Technique is a real thing and it exists – there is a better way to manage your tasks and attention. Is a new tool really that helpful? Or is AI another ‘rain dance’ Cal’s post: https://calnewport.com/productivity-rain-dances/ Examples of rain dances (or Fables) Williamson gave a few examples: Why do I sit at my desk when I'm not working? Why do I thrash around about emails? Why do I take phone calls that have no goal? My fables are more habits of thought around specific tasks “I'd better do it before I forget about it” Usually means “… forget about it again” Sometimes we do it just because its late I feel guilty because I'm not any better at my stuff In order to resolve that guilt, we pop up and go do it now Overlap with “not finished” syndrome Avoiding the knee jerk reaction Our systems don't dictate our priority; they reflect our priority. If we often say, "I better do it before I forget about it", then your system is broken. Instead, say to yourself, I'd better capture it before I forget about it. We create tasks that implicitly have the Title of "Make progress on X" “Thrashing is a rain dance.” Rapid task switching, multitasking is a rain dance When we measure time, we switch from measuring outputs to measuring inputs Faster, in and of itself, is not more efficient. Efficiency is a property of a system and only makes sense when the goal is clear. Don't maximize inputs to try to maximize outputs. Only time saved at the bottleneck step of your process improves your productivity. every process has a bottleneck, and the bottleneck governs the overall throughput of the system, Some commentary on the comments Inbox zero: rain dance, or not? Inbox Zero is not efficient behavior in and of itself “Tweaking” your system is a rain dance We spend a lot of time and a lot of stress buying tools to speed up parts of the process that are not the bottleneck, and then we don't get better productivity because of it. You don't need a system to help you handle email faster. You need a system to reduce the amount of email you have to deal with. It's an input. Increasing the inputs for the same number of outputs is the opposite of productivity - the opposite of efficiency, Where have we gotten today? Define your outputs; identify them very cleanly, and then focus on those and work backwards Identifying a bottleneck is not a trivial challenge Faster is not more productive. Faster is simply faster. Many of these things are signs that your system is broken or incomplete We do our rain dance and it doesn't rain so the process is broken Understanding which part of a process is broken is not trivial or simple. Don't deal with a system in a piecemeal fashion (See the previous episode about optimizing sub processes is not a reliable way to optimize the overall process.) larry@dobusyright.com; www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
The Modern Productivity Paradox, What Should Knowledge Workers Do? - DBR 072 49:53

hace 5 weeks49:53

49:53

Most everybody involved in knowledge work is involved with technology. It's what we do. We deal in information, so we deal with information technology. We believe that it makes us more productive – “better” at our jobs. But what is the evidence that information technology is helping us be more productive? After all, that is its purpose in the modern workplace. I’d suggest that many people believe that the tech companies are dealing with that on our behalf. And the software companies would agree. They want to tell you that, yes, they're improving your productivity. But there's a ton of contrary evidence to that. Also, both solopreneurs and companies are just hurling themselves into AI. The argument is, as the argument has always been with IT, that AI will make us more efficient, more productive. There are good reasons to doubt that. We’ll get into them. What is the productivity paradox? The mismatch between the belief that IT spend on improved productivity and flat economic productivity The Y2K Bug and the aftermath of the Dot Com Bust The productivity paradox is making a return You need to know as you plan your own IT spending, for yourself or your team look for two problems: 1) you’re wasting money, and 2) you may not have another plan for improving productivity What is the ‘modern’ productivity paradox? process “accretion” We struggle to learn from each other Vendors are a little unreliable on this point, for obvious reasons an accumulation of point solutions doesn't make a system Challenges of managing technology 2003 Nicholas Carr , "IT Doesn't Matter" Carr’s point: technology wants to be a commodity Carr’s conclusion: you can’t gain a strategic advantage with a commodity resource Systems theory efficiency is in automating processes, not in automating tasks. the difference between automating tasks and automating processes optimize a sub process then you sub optimize the whole process Systems engineering example – The Goal, Eli Goldratt Modern productivity paradox What to do? Be aware that there is an ongoing argument about how to do this. It’s not trivial. Think about optimizing and automating Processes rather than Tasks Measure at the process level and experiment Recap I guess the primary takeaway is a reminder to not let the IT hype be a distraction from what you're trying to do. Some tools will help you and others won't. Just understand that convenience and 'time-savings' are actually pretty low on the list of useful targets for IT interventions. Stay focused on what you produce that creates the value you deliver to the world. Things that help you produce more are productive, everything else is not really. www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble larry@dobusyright.com…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
"Attention Crisis"? What is the Argument and the Evidence - DBR 071 45:36

hace 6 weeks45:36

45:36

There's an article in The New Yorker "What If The Attention Crisis Is All A Distraction" by Daniel Immerwahr. I think the attention problem (if there is one) is important for us to understand and resolve and, frankly, to have a debate about. I thought I'd report out on this article, and the state of play. Where are we? What's the evidence? How do we form an opinion on what's going on with society on this front? My foundation for engaging in the debate: I think attention is the fundamental productive commodity in our current economy. I think as knowledge workers, our attention is what we use to make our economic productive way through life. It's how we create value and and the means by which we we earn our food. Drucker's hypothesis: American economic growth that we experienced in the 20th century was based on huge increases in in labor productivity. Therefore if we're going to maintain our economic growth level, then we've got to do the same thing with knowledge work. We have to increase the productivity of knowledge workers So our ability to deploy and manage our attention is important, both for us as individuals and also for the economic society at large. Do we have a problem with increasingly short attention spans? Our question Work, particularly knowledge work, requires that we pay attention to it for periods of time. I'm mostly interested in the impact of attention on on work and economic productivity. I think that things that that interfere with our ability to focus for extended periods of time, hurts us. Humans have always been distractible and have needed to be taught to have an attention span of any duration What does attention span mean? (Based on: The Distracted Mind, 2016, Gazzaley & Rosen) Attention is fundamentally selective - it has an object. The persistence of this selectivity is what we mean by attention span Therefore, logically it includes the ability to to block out other things So-called “compelled attention" interferes with our ability to block out Attention Crisis? Really? There have been attention crises prior to the modern version. Plato didn't like the technology of writing "Amusing Ourselves To Death", Neil Postman, 1985. The threat of TV "The Shallows", Nicholas Carr, 2010. The threat of the internet "The Sirens Call", Chris Hayes, 2024. The threat of active technology Hayes Attention is a commodity – it gets captured and sold to people who want us to buy something We have a thing called “compelled attention” (involuntary attention) “Attention engineering” is not a new thing, but its intensity is increasing as the value of attention increases We’re “Penned into a way of paying attention that we don’t like” Immerwahr The data are equivocal and “distracted from one thing is to attend to another” Increasing length of movies, television, and video games as evidence that our attention spans are not shrinking The hand wringing comes from elite “attentionistas” who are in the old-school attention business My thoughts Sometimes we must pay attention to that which is not attention grabbing, like work Advertising is monetized attention and is growing When it comes to utilizing our brains and our attention in functional ways, I think a decrease in the ability to sustain attention is bad. My concern is whether or not we control our own attention If we're gonna think well, then we have to think in long sequences. That's challenging to us So attention span is important. The good news is that we can work on maintaining our attention and focus in the face of "Compelled Attention" and any shortening attention span. I offer coaching, Attention Compass implementation training, and this podcast as ways for you to combat the theft of your attention and the negative consequences for knowledge workers.…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
The Wrong Mindset May Be Causing Bad Results - DBR 070 51:53

hace 7 weeks51:53

51:53

It's time to update on philosophy of work; I've got some more info for you. A lot of this is going to be review, but I think it's absolutely critical that we put ourselves in the right mindset towards work. It's important because work is what actually produces the things that we then associate with productivity. Unfortunately, there's a lot of a lot of weird stuff going on in our heads about work. Our perspective on work has significant impact on our lives and our productivity: We’re more likely to procrastinate things we “don’t like” We have more stress around them, quality of life We tend to rush at them without thinking about how we could get better at them Your brain gives you what you expect - if you expect "miserable" that's what you get So, can we change our mindset? We just want to get these things out and inspect them get our mindsets right about work, and get rid of some of the weird stuff. We’ll cover: A historical perspective on work Cultural ideas about work What might work mean for humans More recent ideas Historical view of work Hunter/gatherer to agriculture and herding – reduction of risk The rise of business (work for money) The era of slavery in the West and America Modern employment is sometimes compared to these other kinds of work Model of work as slavery, drudgery, serfdom Cultural issues with work Only ‘hard’ work is virtuous; sweating is virtuous, and not sweating is not virtuous. Things that are easy (for us?) are not accorded much virtue. We glorify the hustle culture in America. Artifacts of a consumerist culture - The ’cash problem’ We're working critters We enjoy working as 'making the world and ourselves into what we want them to be' Most of us despise the idea of doing nothing. We call it boredom. We can't avoid goal seeking based on imagination and problem solving Currently common ideas Start With Why? We can “choose our own adventure” to some degree Your standard (of quality) is your own; think about your standard. Minimum effective dosage (Matt Reynolds via the AOM podcast) there's such a thing as as doing it the easy way Think through these mindsets and determine where yours has come from. Check it against reality to see if it matches up. If not, try to learn to think in different ways. If we consider our work to be joy, then we'll get joy from it. larry@dobusyright.com www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

1
Why you need commonplace books and how to create them - DBR 069 51:56

hace 8 weeks51:56

51:56

One of the primary uses of information is to help us learn. When we are explicitly learning, we work to collect information. It works the other way, as well. As we are exposed to new information, we have the opportunity to learn. The relationship between learning and merely storing information in our brains is mysterious. Many people would say that ‘learning is more than storing facts’, but when we try to figure out what that ‘more’ is, there is no clear consensus. To help think through the need for information, I’m going to argue that the commonplace book from the previous episode is a great target and goal for post-compulsory education. So one thing that came out in the Personal Information Management podcast (Episode 68) is that learning styles have changed, and certainly the techniques and technology have changed to some degree. So learning has changed a little but we want to think about our goal. Once we get done with the formal educational system, how do we go about learning? Developing a definition of learning Learning has a lot to do with recreating the thought processes that another human being thought first, How do we go about learning? The modern view of learning in one sense: we practice thinking like the people that we want to think like later. Learning and practice AI is a best in class practice machine. Part of learning then is collecting this existing information so that we can practice having our brains think in these ways. If practice is involved, then we have tasks and, thus, attention We need to collect and manage information, and organize our attention such that we actually do the practice Multiple goals are in play at the same time, we've got to allocate our attention amongst the goals The historical tie between learning and books is so tight that it must be useful Books are, at a minimum, a ‘required feature’ of pedagogy there's huge debate over whether or not the standard pedagogy is the best possible pedagogy In the 21st century, textbooks are the teaching books (and primary pedagogy) of choice But there was a time before textbooks. What did pedagogy look like then? What about our own (personal) books and non-textbooks?? When secondary education is complete, some sort of a commonplace book would be a reasonable target for further education At some level, this podcast is a commonplace book for me, where I go out and learn things and then try to bring them back in and put them somewhere where you can find them if you're interested. What would our commonplace book look like? A book on a subject that I would write for myself would be structurally different from a textbook. We'd want some instruction about different advanced techniques that are rarely used. Cases, examples, war stories on applications of the knowledge. It's somewhere between authoring and scrapbooking closer to the scrapbooking end of the spectrum. Organizing so that you can find things, indexing and table of contents What tactics would we use? What technology(s)? How can we collect in such a way that puts it in this position of being part of the record for what we're going to do anyway? Project folders as learning tactics I teach clients to collect a project file to have a storage location where data can live Let's have both a short term storage location and a long term storage location Notebook for the daily, have another one or more to collect up the considered, important information Attention Compass is an ideal workflow to help you capture a commonplace book in real time. Hit me up for a free session: https://calendly.com/larrytribble . Email me: larry@dobusyright.com Or find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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The History of Paper as a History of Personal Information Management - DBR 068 52:20

hace 9 weeks52:20

52:20

This episode is about the history of personal information management as viewed through a now ancient technology, PAPER We’ll have a couple of takeaways: One is human beings have been trying to manage their own personal information for a long time, so we don’t need to be so worried about the current need – we’re humans so we manage information. We’ll glean wisdom from these previous efforts to manage the information that the world presents to us. We’ll assess tactics and mindsets that are going to be useful to us. Hat tip to the Art of Manliness website, and to Roland Allen talking about his book, The Notebook. There's also information in this podcast from a book called Hamlet's BlackBerry that I read some years ago, and a book called The information that that talks about the history of our understanding of information and its use in our world, so some combination of those things. The management of personal information Ancient: Plato was skeptical of writing as an information management technique. Less ancient: people used wax tablets. In the 1300s we were using money. We had language; we had poetry; we heard things that we wanted to record and wanted to tell other people. And so, life was not a ton simpler than it is now. Note on reusable media. Even less, but still fairly, ancient: the commercial availability of paper Note: we had blank paper for hundreds of years before we had the printing press. People would get a bound collection of paper called a notebook. Also hundreds of years before printing. Gave rise to various practices in information keeping, information management. Non-printed Books Initially, books were handwritten and hand copied Note on the reliability measures of Old Testament copying Making a hand-copy of a book while sitting at a desk for extended periods of time being read to and writing this down. A bound set of pieces of paper that you write in would not have been foreign The commonplace book Printed books The notion of an almanac Printing created a more authoritative position for authors and publishers, along with a broader reach Education Use of notebooks in education – what can we learn Diaries and travelogues would have been more autobiographical The notion of a textbook really dates from the 1800s or so The notion that education could very likely have been the creation of books for oneself 500 years ago, education may have consisted of putting your book together so that then you had the compendium of knowledge as it was presented to you Same possibly in the trades Modern ideas Nuances of reusable media Allen: there was kind of a scratch notebook, and then a big notebook Modern journaling The possible need to have two notebooks Is the creation of a book a good educational goal? How do we apply modern technology? Capture and Processing using modern tech Complexity led to ancestors keep records of people and places and things. Some of that turned into financial record keeping Maybe we should be spending our time trying to create our commonplace book(s) as we learn things. Summary…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Operating system for attention, tasks, information (and time) - DBR 067 54:04

hace 10 weeks54:04

54:04

We need a new operating system. We need one that is specifically dedicated to knowledge work. So I'm going to point you to one that already exists. When we start talking about ways to manage our information, the tech is really important, and I'll explain why. But the tech is dealt with and managed through some sort of overall plan, and some tech is better than other tech, and we'll talk about all these sorts of things. When we think about an operating system, it's both a set of tools and some mapping of those tools to a process or flow. And so that's what I think we need, and that's what we've developed with Attention Compass. When I say we've got bad tech, I mean it's not been updated - it uses archaic metaphors. (I talk about metaphors in a previous episode - episode 40, if you want to know more.) These metaphors impede our ability to do what we want to do or what we need to do with the information that we use the tools for. https://dobusyright.com/what-does-our-it-really-do-for-us-dbr-040/ I'll explore the relationship between attention and information, because they're so tightly linked that all of the tools that we utilize are information tools in nature. And that's going to be important, because the ways the current tool set fails us are that they don't let us work with information the way we should best work with information. Now this is an attention show, attention compass, and our attention is absolutely critical, for reasons that I've talked about previously – like episode 57 where we talk about time versus attention. So I'm going to try to explain or interpret the relationship between attention and information. We want to manage our attention well, so I’ll relate attention back into the nature of information. This will help us understand why our tools are not designed to manage information in the ways that best support our attention management. https://dobusyright.com/protecting-ourselves-with-a-model-of-attention-dbr-057/ Two reasons attention is important one - how we direct our will (what to DO) When we're making or doing something in the world, we're using our attention, directing it to some situation in the world. Two – our attention is how we engage with information Attention to consume information, to do the work of ‘transmuting’ information, to encode the information What we need to be able to do with information Find information Utilize some media to consume the information Store/encode the resulting information Why are the tools important Information doesn't exist by itself. It is easy to make the argument that, without tools or tech of some sort, information could not be comprehended. Information is always encoded in some sort of medium. In particular, when we USE information, it has to be encoded. Encoding involves one or more media Media and its surrounding tools are technology. Media involves tools. Tools involve technology, and skill. Things around and about tools that get in our way Tools are our (imperfect) inventions. Tools are developed to be used in certain ways in certain environments with certain materials Metadata The “Application Limitation” in modern OS A new Operating System for Knowledge Work Attention Compass Handle the Metadata problem Handle the "Application Limitation" At the end of the day, when we look at knowledge work, we recognize that four things are involved: attention, information, tasks, and time. They are interrelated and cannot be dealt with in isolation. Many people focus on "Time Management", but time is the junior partner of the four. When we deal with these four things effectively, we can say that we Do Busy Right - lower stress and greater productivity with less waste. Attention Compass is the operating system to Do Busy Right. larry@dobusyright.com linkedin.com/in/larrytribble…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Top 10 Productivity Tips? NOT - DBR 066 41:22

hace 11 weeks41:22

41:22

This episode is about what it is I'm trying to do with attention compass. And why I hate current productivity “help”. I developed this AC stuff. I didn't discover it. I didn't invent it. These are the principles, and they produce specific results. I make no bones about the fact that a lot of people went before me did a lot of really good thinking about productivity. AC is derived from Stephen Covey, from David Allen and from a lot of different folks who thought a lot about this and who are well regarded in what's going on. This ain't magic. I'm not some genius, brilliant dude. I just got tired of being told mindset things. “You're just thinking about it the wrong way”, and “change the way you think about it” I love Covey. I love the seven habits, but you gotta take what he says and then figure out how to implement against that. It's not magic, it's not secret sauce. That's one of the great things about David Allen - he's not playing around. He says, “Look, you got a piece of paper in your hand, do this with it.” The principles are important. I'm an academic and a scientist, and so I want them to be true, but at the same time, it's got to be actionable advice. The headline here is stop wasting time and causing yourself a whole bunch of anxiety by listening to people who are giving you less than helpful input. If you want different results, then you have to DO differently, behave differently. Some stuff I tried that didn’t work – day-timer and GTD. These were my first attempt at having my stuff where I needed my stuff to be, but continued to thrash so I kept trying. I still want to keep up and I get intrigued. Here’s what I see when I look out into Productivity Advice land. The pinnacle of productivity advice c. 2025 "Top 10 productivity tips" - anonymous. work from rest, not for rest take regular breaks daily tackle the biggest tasks first designate time daily for emails. keep the main thing, the main thing keep your energy level high. Prepare the night before win the first hour, win the day protect your margins. engage in activity stacking Problem: Everybody's heard that, and apparently most people are still not able to do it. Three problems with the productivity industry One - people say all the same things over and over Two - it's not actionable, it's not doable Three - most of the advice is about mindset Attention compass is really fundamentally different. There's a workflow that will get you on top of this stuff, I want to educate you a little bit on how your brain works with information tasks. I'm going to bring you Information Systems level understanding of information storage, information use, and the value of information in your work and life. What do we do about and with information? I’m going to bring you a software developer’s knowledge about your information tools. If you don't buy what I’m saying, do an experiment. The rules of productivity are pretty simple Reuse everything you can. Don't reinvent the wheel. Focus, don't thrash simple. The problem is the interference that we get from our culture's (incorrect) view of dealing with information and communications and the existing tools. Athleticism as a metaphor for attention Tennis metaphor Physician metaphor Excel metaphor That's what AC does with attention. It gets your attention where it needs to be, so you're not thrashing around daydreaming Other good habits flow out of that ability. All these tips are great – do you have the ‘athleticism’ to address them? I think a lot of people are worn out by all this information. Don't give up. Hit me up on LinkedIn or at larry@dobusyright.com.…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Knowledge Work Careers via Resistance and Linchpin - DBR 065 48:29

hace 12 weeks48:29

48:29

I rarely talk about what we need to do to have a meaningful, successful career. So I gathered some sources... The first I'll bring up is Seth Godin, the author. The book that we'll look at today is called Linchpin. He’s got some things to say about being successful in the modern era. On this podcast, we're looking at knowledge work, at improving it and getting better at it. We also look at the productivity of knowledge workers. That's what Godin's book is about. I'm normally about the micro level, the very base. I'm about helping you fix the wastes of attention, and to a lesser degree time, that you face as a knowledge worker. This is that next level: strategically speaking, how should we position ourselves such that we can have impact? How can we arrange our work so that we create value in the world, and thus be able to take a share of that value for ourselves and be economically successful. I’ll add in some thinking from Steven Pressfield and his book The War of Art. Pressfield is all about motivation and, having chosen what we’ll do to create value, how do we continually convince ourselves to do it? Godin wants us to do some pretty dramatic things. Pressfield will help us not be derailed by the fear of those dramatic things. Your takeaway: career growth opportunities and encouragement and tactics to avoid fear-based procrastination when confronted with those opportunities. Our concern is: How do you deliver profitable value in such a way that it's meaningful to you as the creator of that value? Linchpin and the changing work world Work is changing - 20th Century work is now a race to the bottom. If your business plan to be unusually good at well-known things, you've got to be better than 7 billion people. You don't have to have a Nobel Laureate IQ, just be willing to be curious and investigate and solve problems. Pressfield and the Resistance The resistance is this set of forces acting to prevent us from producing our value. The muse, the "inspiration model" of great work, is really not a thing. If you're gonna be a linchpin, then you're gonna face this resistance. The problems with being a Linchpin There aren't mile markers along the way, so we're robbed of the way we usually get reassurance. The (actual) course of invention You're not going to get a lot of support if you're in this space, because people don't understand your thing. We have to get comfortable with the notion that there is no previously trod path. The risks of being a Linchpin You spend a whole bunch of time and effort and then quit before you're done. Ignoring and/or dismissing feedback out of fear. Why you’ll face the Resistance You have to look to people who who don't love your stuff so that they'll be willing to tell you what's going on. Your buddies are too worried about hurting your feelings. Whether or not people crack open their wallet because they're serious about how valuable it is It's a skill just to have the guts to pitch your thing. Prepare yourself Develop feedback mechanisms in your world. Learn to use feedback in school Don't expect a textbook. You're writing the textbook. You're inventing this as you go, experimentally. Get good at doing things in the face of the Resistance. Find a place to put the "lizard brain". Your work is different than your parent's work. Don't learn to do the wrong things in the wrong way.…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Invest in Technique to Get Better at Knowledge work - DBR 064 55:53

hace 13 weeks55:53

55:53

If you've listened to this podcast for very long, you know that I'm fascinated with human performance. Particularly when it comes down to work, how do we do work? How do we get better at work? I don't think there's a ton of knowledge out there, so I'm trying to move the needle a little bit here, and get us some more information about this thing. We know that our work is stressful. We know there's a problem. We know that work life balance is an issue. We know that we have individual/personal issues around our work. We also know economically that we need to improve productivity. Labor productivity has been flat for a while. According to Peter Drucker, if productivity is flat, then we cannot expect to enhance our standard of living in the long term. And so that's what we're all about. Add to that the fact that in our modern world, business is the way we create, generate, and distribute value in the world. We need to get better at our work. The approach and why I chose it Remember: knowledge work What is the data / experiment Our question: how do we get better at what we do? Focus on tools and techniques to get better? We’ve tried formal education Tools are a typical approach, particularly in our Knowledge Work Are tools as good as they’re going to get? My personal history with this question We’ll look at sports (and games), music, and knowledge work Categorizing sports and games Endurance / athletic sports What’s the theme Mental game? Skip the defense? Levels of defense Heavy on technique I never really paid for coaching. Learning & getting better as an adult Here’s my story about learning as an adult – the bass I got a coach pretty quickly “You’ll just hear it” – the issue of ‘innate’ talent Coach = technique BOSS What does technique do for a bassist/musician We may be missing technique in the modern computer-mediated world Musical parallels to talent and athleticism Where does athleticism matter Talent might interfere with learning technique Tools might interfere with motivation to learn technique Tool-mania in certain sports and games Tools won’t save bad technique Application to knowledge work Knowledge work is not well-understood Tools and knowledge work Education and knowledge work Coaching and knowledge work Technique and knowledge work Talent and knowledge work Athleticism – is there a parallel in knowledge work? Athleticism as a substitute for technique in sports So lack of athleticism in Knowledge Work indicates that we should have other ways to work on technique Focus our attention – parallel to “being where you need to be” Information and attention athleticism? Good technique may be the key to information and attention athleticism, thus improvement Technique with coaching needs a serious try in improving knowledge work productivity Bottom line / recap Think about technique Have a coach Focus on attention – get it where it needs to be when it needs to be there Try to worry less about tools…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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What does proactive have to do with busy and productive - DBR 063 46:10

hace 14 weeks46:10

46:10

I'm interested in this difference between busy and productive, if there is one. It’s hard to tell the difference, even from the inside. I think this has something to do with the relationship between the terms. Busy is a state that we are in intermittently, occasionally, as circumstances drive us. We mean that our time is fully or somewhat over committed. It is a term of reaction. We would like to say “No” to some work, but we (for whatever reason) don’t feel that we can. Busy is more of a feeling/emotion, a response to the environment. Productive is a more long-term, personal trait. We mean that results are produced. We sometimes also add in the idea of ‘efficient’. I think this is where the overlap with Busy comes in. Is busy something we can avoid? This is going to take us on a deep dive into the first of Covey’s 7 habits – Be Proactive Expectations and consequences We do many things because we want the results of the doing - we do others because of the consequences Recently, we defined some kinds of work/effort. The first two: 1) work proper, which is work for money and 2) chore, which is maintenance work to meet some standard, often external. We defined hobby, as well. Here we do things because we enjoy doing them, and the doing is its own reward. Consequences are powerful behavioral controls. And these are "police" in our world, bosses. Other people closer to us, we more experience consequences with them than they're the deliverer. The sphere of influence and the sphere of concern ideally, I think our sphere of influence and our sphere of concern would coincide, and we control both of these things. One we control in the long term, the other we control in the short term. We can control the sphere of concern in the short term, and most of us need to shrink it. Busy/productive – how does Covey address this Habit one is be proactive. This is neither busy nor productive, but precedes both. Covey defines being proactive is to subordinate an impulse to a value – I don’t love this I think most of us hear proactive and we think pre active (contrast to reactive) Proactive, in some ways, is response to a lack of stimulus, or the ability to create our own stimulus. In order to act, we look at values and our own desires and we initiate action, rather than constantly being at the mercy of external stimuli. Back to spheres Technology allows us to expand our sphere of concern (and our number of stimuli) beyond any reasonable scope relative to our sphere of influence. A lot of people waste significant time and emotional energy on areas of the sphere of concern that don't overlap with the sphere of influence If we're in the sphere of concern and not in the sphere of influence, then the only action we can really take is to worry, and that takes our attention and drains our mental energy. Modern communication technology tempts us to expand our circle of concern so we can, you know, investigate what's going on in areas of the universe that really just have nothing for us Moving to commitments and action – delivering influence The very heart of our circle of influence is our ability to make and keep commitments Commitments are promises to ourselves and to others about what we will do and how we will behave. But the commitment is always first and foremost to ourselves, because we're the ones who are going to have to act. If we commit to others, then that commitment is to act and to act in ways that that other person's environment changes to some degree because of our result. Production is the result and the delivery of the artifact that satisfies the need. When we say we want to be productive, that means that we want to produce results so that we can meet commitments that we've made Productivity and production capacity Productivity is about the quantity of result and Covey talks about this. He calls it production capacity, defined as skills, learning, abilities and assets that allow us to produce We want greater productivity. What we mean is that we want to have greater production capacity. And by greater, we mean more results or more valuable results. And the more is shorthand for more per unit of input, where input is some resource of value: time, money, raw materials, energy, all these different sorts of things. If we have greater production capacity, then we can produce more results or better results, which are more valuable, and we can get rewarded more The relationship between commitment and stimulus Covey says we want to be the kind of people who meet commitment. Particularly, I would suggest we meet commitment even in the face of a lack of external stimulus. We learn this capacity. We grow this capacity. We learn it by, you know, looking back on yesterday and saying, Yeah, I was able to do it yesterday Internal and external stimuli Interesting to note that the thing that is your BAD HABIT typically has no means to create any stimulus. The cookies in the cabinet cannot call out to you. As we're learning to act with lack of stimulus, can we learn to not act with lack of stimulus? Productivity as compared to busy. Perhaps busy has a lot to do with others and commitments to consequence keepers. Where productive includes commitments to ourselves and thus this ability to be proactive. Takeaways Is the Sphere of Concern the right size? Are we response-able and can detect the difference between important and not important? Do we need to develop another plan for consequences…

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

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Don't Like Work? Why? - DBR 062 50:36

hace 15 weeks50:36