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Glitch Black.

Twitter / Instagram / Gumroad / Patreon  

KnownOrigin / SuperRare / OBJKT / Zedge 

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A good summary of Newport’s thinking around the myth of multitasking and the issues of the modern “hyperactive hivemind” in the workplace. Check it out here if you don’t have an NYT subscription. My favorite part:

Traditional economic productivity largely requires people working toward a singular measurable output with a transparent process. You have this input-to-output ratio and a process generating it, and you can tweak that and see what it does to the ratio. None of that works in knowledge work. So we fell back to a proxy for productivity, which is visible activity. If I can see you doing work, it’s better than I can’t see you doing work. That was OK until we got to the ’90s and the 2000s, when we threw into the mix a lot more freelancing but also email and the I.T. revolution. Visible activity as a proxy for productivity spiraled out of control and led to this culture of exhaustion, of I’m working all the time, I’m context shifting all over the place, most of my work feels performative, it’s not even that useful. Slow productivity is all about identifying alternatives.

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A spoonful of history helps the willow bark go down – VCU Magazine: For Alumni and Friends

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IT'S CORONATION DAY

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Another bike ride across the James River

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I doubt he started it; it was probably going on 100 years before he was born. But I cackled!

(Also wish they had spelled “Allan” right. 🤓)

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This was me yesterday, though today is much better. The cicadas really killed me 😂

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Have a good weekend, Tumblr, etc. etc.

Goodnight tumblets, tumblerinos

Sleep to win, my sweet bambinos

To those in other hemispheres:

Go get that diem carped, dears

[tess]

I am once again coming to you to reblog the Perfect Date...

MISS CONGENIALITY (2000) dir. Donald Petrie

[tess]

The piece sort of has its heart in the right place - people are acting like out-of-control babies, treating workers like crap, and generally embarrassing themselves. The core problem with this article is that it shifts the blame away from personal responsibility - a constant theme in the pandemic - and onto a vague sense of “things are bad, and that’s why people are acting badly”

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I get what this anecdote is trying to say, but I hate it because I’ve never, and I quote, “lost it.” I am sure I’ve been a dick to customer support at some point (and I am deeply sorry), but I do not yell, I do not personally attack them, and I am also not the most emotionally strong or intelligent person. It does not take much effort to speak to someone normally - you can be upset, you can be firm about how upset you are, but you can also make it clear that the person in question is not a bad person.

[tess]

Nervously looking forward to speaking at Remote Design Week this year! 

(gif via the DesignX newsletter)

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Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.

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These petty fiefdoms are far harder to maintain when everyone is remote. Although you may be able to get away with multiple passive-aggressive comments to colleagues in private meetings or calls, it’s much harder to be a jerk over Slack, email, and text when someone can screenshot it and send it to HR (or to a journalist). Similarly, if your entire work product is boxing up other people’s production and sending it to the CEO, that becomes significantly harder to prove as your own in a fully digital environment—the producer in question can simply send it along themselves. Remote work makes who does and doesn’t actually do work way more obvious.

Even if we’re discussing some sort of theoretical, utopian office in which everybody is contributing and everyone gets along, each day during which a business doesn’t fail because of going remote proves that the return-to-office movement is unnecessary. Those in power who claim that remote work is unworkable are delaying an inevitable remote future by using logic that mostly comes down to “I like seeing the people I pay for in one place.” I have yet to read one compelling argument for a company that has gone remote to fully return to the office, mostly because the reasoning is rooted in control and ego.