💎 Chapter 2: Deep Work is Rare
by Aidan · 5 things on Twos
- "Big trends in business today actively decrease people's ability to perform deep work"
- The Principle of Least Resistance: In a business setting, without clear feedback on the impact of various behaviors to the bottom line, we will tend toward behaviors that are easiest in the moment.
- "In a business context, if we are not clear on the priorities that will lead to impact, we tend to do the easiest activities in order to prove that we are valuable and productive. This natural human tendency often leads us to focus on shallow, low-impact activities that hinder our ability to have a meaningful impact that will be rewarded. We need to fight this tendency by identifying high-impact, challenging activities that many be harder in the short-term, but reward us immensely in the long-term."
- Busyness as Proxy for Productivity: In the absence of clear indicators of what it mean t be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity; doing lots o stuff in a visible manner.
- "Knowledge work is not an assembly line, and extracting value from information is an activity that's often at odds with busyness, not supported by it"