A Knowledge Worker’s Manifesto
“If Tetris has taught me anything. It's that in life, errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.” -@GameModJr
A Knowledge Worker is someone who thinks for a living
The term 'knowledge worker' was coined by author Peter Drucker in 1959 to describe specialists in fields such as finance, law, computer science, academia, and engineering. Sixty years later, this description seems almost quaint.
The nature of work has changed. In our developed world, almost everyone thinks for a living. Even if your occupation involves physical labor, a significant portion of your time is likely devoted to tasks like planning, communication, documentation, accounting, and decision-making that guide your physical efforts. You may be physically tired at the end of your day, but your cognitive work is still the main driver of your success.
Everyone is getting more done, contributing more, and is connected in ways that Mr. Drucker couldn’t have imagined. We have upped our game. So why are continually falling behind and feeling overwhelmed?
Acceleration begets acceleration
In the early 2000’s, it was normal to receive 10-20 emails a day, and meetings were things that you attended by getting in a car. Most decisions were made in person, and the biggest complaints were tied to technology working slowly, long voicemails, paperwork, and not enough time in the day. The weakest links, or constraints, were tangible.
Fast forward to today, you can rack up 10-20 new emails in the time it takes to step away from your desk and fill a cup of coffee. Most decisions are made during online meetings. We manage twice the number of concurrent projects, and we juggle communication coming at us from stand-up meetings, online meetings, phone calls, texts, and instant messenger apps. Most of the old constraints aren’t here anymore. In-person meetings with clients are rare; we don’t often drive across town. The computers and internet connections are lightning fast. ‘Paperwork’ is now a legacy term like ‘mix-tape’. Files are stored digitally and are instantly searchable.
All the old constraints are gone, but the volume of incoming work and concurrent projects has increased to fill the void. The weakest links of the past have disappeared, and your inbox has exploded. It's no longer merely a matter of work-related stress or busyness. This now concerns the boundaries of human cognitive capacity.
The knowledge worker is now the constraint.
Stupidity should be painful
One advantage of physical projects is that errors are concrete, and their origins are rarely enigmatic.
If you’re a foreman responsible for building a house and you stack drywallers, electricians, plumbers and carpenters in the same room on the same day, you are going to have a bad time. But, if you have any sense you’ll at least know why.
If you store your building supplies and tools three blocks away from the job site, even if you don't witness your workers shuttling back and forth throughout the day, you'll notice a conspicuous drop in production by day's end.
If you run a commercial kitchen, and push your staff for 12-14 hour days and the air-conditioning is broken, you’ll see them collapse or walk out. Everyone has limits.
But a knowledge worker who attends 4-5 online status meetings a day, context-switches between 10 projects, reads 120 emails, sends 50 replies, texts, instant messages, fills out department reports, lookaheads, timecards, 1 on 1 reviews, and marketing requests is falling behind on their projects? Maybe they aren’t as motivated as when they first started here. Maybe we need to start looking for their replacement.
Invisible stupidity is painful, but the causes aren’t as obvious; the causes are just the weather of the modern world.
It gets worse
Perhaps honest physical work could be an alternative to this insanity. Unfortunately, if your physical job doesn’t include at least some key knowledge work activities, if your responsibilities are limited to performing physical tasks that someone else has done the thinking for, then there’s a fair chance that there are futurists hard at work this very hour dreaming up ways to build apps and machines that will do it better than you.
This isn’t a luddite rant against technology and venture capitalists. I think new technology is awesome. But even if you disagree, you’ll find that change is here regardless of your preferences, and it is reshaping the ground under our feet.
I recently had to hit the pause button on a lively discussion with a friend on whether or not, given the risks, we should allow AI to take an active role in our world of commerce and ideas. This is a pointless debate. These are not centralized decisions being made, there is no-one waiting for our approval, and the genie is not going back in the bottle.
The question isn’t whether or not we allow AI and machine automation into our new economy , it’s whether or not we will adapt to stay part of it ourselves. Human workers are no longer 100% essential to the knowledge work equation.
We were meant for more
So we’ve reached a point where knowledge workers are spending 25%-50% of their time bogged down on overhead tasks and processes that don’t drive the real results, while they are stymied in achieving the results that they were hired to produce. I am convinced that the entire concept of the weekly status meeting exists as a live context-switching session for over- assigned workers and managers, as they try to hold on to the threads of the ‘actions needed’ on projects that they are too busy to actually work on. Overworked multitasking isn’t just tiring, it's dangerous. It isn’t sustainable, it isn’t profitable, and worst of all it just isn’t fulfilling.
Moreover, it wastes the remarkable potential inherent in each of us.
Your life, your physical body, and your mind are a miracle of creation. There's nothing else in the known universe of your fantastic nature. Nothing we've ever found can experience wonder and awe. And you can create. You are a time sensitive miracle.
So to have your precious days consumed by purposeless labor, mind-numbing tasks, and the commercialization of your thoughts and creativity, for tasks better suited for machines is an affront to the universe.
Our options are clear: either we seek a return to the simplicity and sanctity of nature, or we must tame the creature that we've unleashed. We must re-learn how to think for ourselves and how to think for a living. We must conquer scarcity. We must learn to create abundance in the life of our bodies and discover the abundance of our minds.
We do not have an abundance of time.
Take very good care of your body. They only give you one, and you'll need it for the whole time you're alive.
Take care of your people, they are miracles. And so are the strangers outside of your circle.
Work on your mission. If you haven’t found yours yet, find someone else who inspires you and help them with theirs until yours appears in view. Be a creator in every way you can. Your best work really should feel like play!
So now what?
There’s no place for doom and gloom. It’s time to confront two distinct challenges:
Problem #1: We've accelerated our work activity to the point where we have become the bottleneck, and we’ve lost agency and joy in the process.
Problem #2: We've ushered in a new chapter in history where artificial general intelligence might eventually supplant us.
We need to tackle these problems on an individual and on a group level:
We must start building tools and practices that help us live in a healthier way. If you think for a living, you need methods that will guard you from internalizing the noise and distraction of constant acceleration and demands. Our practices need to prioritize human-to-human connection and creative work. We need wholeness in mind and body. (health)
We must build new ways to see our thinking. This means self-awareness, clarity, and more visibility for what isn’t working. It also means seeing the constraints and setbacks in thought-work in the same way that we see them in our physical labors. (awareness)
We need to take ownership of AI as a companion tool, not as a threat, and not as an app that someone hands us. We need to develop a common general mastery of AI tool-making. With this shared ability, we may be able to turn Problem #2 into a solution for Problem #1. (agency)
Knowledge Work Studio is your resource to start working on these problems in community.
Tetris
I’ve always loved this game. Maybe its the music, or just the fact that you get to put everything right where it belongs. It reminds me of the satisfaction that I felt early on in my project management career. But gradually the game gets harder. And no matter how much fun you’ve had, no matter how good you get, Tetris only ends one way.
So let’s work together and find a new game to play.
We’ve got this!
I bring you the amazing musician Davide Di Bello to conclude this manifesto, as he is clearly playing a different game.
Remember that you are meant to thrive and do beautiful things!