I get that this is how productivity is measured, but as a project manager/product owner I always felt that my whole job is to juggle and set priorities among the dozens of obligations and let the...
In office jobs, by contrast, productivity remains rooted in notions of busyness and multi-faceted activity. The most productive knowledge workers are those who stay on top of their inboxes and somehow juggle the dozens of obligations, from the small tasks to major projects, hurled in their direction every week.
I get that this is how productivity is measured, but as a project manager/product owner I always felt that my whole job is to juggle and set priorities among the dozens of obligations and let the devs and data scientists and designers under me focus on their specific tasks.
I think guys like Newport end up with a skewed view of who knowledge workers are because they are more likely to talk to people like me (higher up on the management ladder) and people like me are also more likely to worry about productivity and time management because that's the core skill/issue we need to manage. If the cognitive load of doing that stuff is trickling down too much to the development teams I view that as a failure on my part. (Obviously it's more of a sliding scale than a binary thing. The more senior or lead devs also have to be involved with the planning and priority setting and communicating, but that's what makes them senior.)
His book, Deep Work, helped me a lot a few years ago. I had a network of blogs that had amassed north of a million subscribers and was taking all of my time, and definitely driving me slightly...
His book, Deep Work, helped me a lot a few years ago. I had a network of blogs that had amassed north of a million subscribers and was taking all of my time, and definitely driving me slightly insane. I read that book (which is decent, not fantastic, but decent enough) and it gave me the thought processing power to leave it behind and realign my life. I still reread it once a year or so. His follow-up book "Digital Minimalism" was also fairly decent (maybe even better), and his newest book on email was not nearly as good in my mind.
I've since read many, many, better books on the subject, but this was certainly the catalyst.
I get that this is how productivity is measured, but as a project manager/product owner I always felt that my whole job is to juggle and set priorities among the dozens of obligations and let the devs and data scientists and designers under me focus on their specific tasks.
I think guys like Newport end up with a skewed view of who knowledge workers are because they are more likely to talk to people like me (higher up on the management ladder) and people like me are also more likely to worry about productivity and time management because that's the core skill/issue we need to manage. If the cognitive load of doing that stuff is trickling down too much to the development teams I view that as a failure on my part. (Obviously it's more of a sliding scale than a binary thing. The more senior or lead devs also have to be involved with the planning and priority setting and communicating, but that's what makes them senior.)
His book, Deep Work, helped me a lot a few years ago. I had a network of blogs that had amassed north of a million subscribers and was taking all of my time, and definitely driving me slightly insane. I read that book (which is decent, not fantastic, but decent enough) and it gave me the thought processing power to leave it behind and realign my life. I still reread it once a year or so. His follow-up book "Digital Minimalism" was also fairly decent (maybe even better), and his newest book on email was not nearly as good in my mind.
I've since read many, many, better books on the subject, but this was certainly the catalyst.
Deep Work
Digital Minimalism: Choosing A Focused Life In A Noisy World
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36335104