The Processed Pleas Edition
Sleep-working into irrelevance, fungal zombies and cars that spy on you.
In the rush to digitise everything, we forgot how to work. Knowledge workers often find themselves submerged in the daily grind, losing sight of the grander scheme of things. Blinded by the tasks at hand, we stumble through our work, unaware of the methods we employ and squandering chances for growth and improvement.
Take a leaf out of the playbook of software developers or design and marketing creatives, who possess a keen awareness of the power of process. These professionals recognise that adhering to a structured approach - from briefing to execution and review - ensures optimal output while conserving time and resources.
The hurdle for many knowledge workers lies in our limited understanding of the tools at our disposal, the imposed constraints on tool selection, and too-often the glaring absence of a coherent process. We grapple with cumbersome, sanctioned tools that distort our thought processes and engage in futile "meetings" where unsystematic insights are presented to modify our work. The outcome: something that resembles work, consumes a colossal amount of effort, yet under-achieves dramatically.
Liberating ourselves from this vicious cycle necessitates recognising the value of process. Three thought-provoking quotes provided ample food for thought this week:
Beware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done it before." - Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing." - W. Edwards Deming
Work out what works and do that. - David Mitchell, novelist
Sometimes work is none of these things. It kind of happens. Sleep-working.
So, where does this leave us, as individuals and as a society? By stepping back and reflecting on our work methodologies, we can question conventional wisdom and adopt inventive approaches to accomplishing tasks. The payoff: heightened productivity, more gratifying work experiences, and a vibrant, innovative workplace culture. In essence, it's high time to overhaul the way we work.
Reductress on work
If that was all a bit much, then try this book from the brilliant satirists Reductress: How To Stay Productive When The World Is Ending. I’ve not read it yet but am putting it on order.
AI tool of the week: Consensus
Consensus searches academic papers based on your question and tries to answer it using their content.
This is lovely, both for its usefulness and for its vivid demonstration of what generative AI can do when you point it at specific information.
For instance, if we ask “Does exercise help cognition?” it gives us:
Could The Last Of Us really happen?
In The Last Of Us, a fungus like the one that has been observed to turn ants into zombies, infects humans. Apocalypse ensues. But could that really happen?
Two experts from Kew Gardens say: "Yes, but not like that":
TL;DW: We could have a fungoid pandemic, and know a lot less about how to fight it than viruses; but very unlikely that we would turn into flesh-eating mushroom people.
Samsung secrets leak, because: ChatGPT
A reminder that posting your work to ChatGPT is as private as leaving a paper copy on the bus when you’ve finished reading it.
Techradar reports:
[Samsung] allowed engineers at its semiconductor arm to use the AI writer to help fix problems with their source code. But in doing so, the workers inputted confidential data, such as the source code itself for a new program, internal meeting notes data relating to their hardware.
Oops.
Not in front of the Tesla!
Some Tesla employees got nervous about driving Teslas, reports Reuters, because they knew what might happen to the video footage the cameras were capturing. Footage of accidents, people having arguments in their garages and other things were shared for laughs on internal message-boards.
One of the perks of working for Tesla as a data-labeller in San Mateo was the chance to win a prize – use of a company car for a day or two, according to two former employees.
But some of the lucky winners became paranoid when driving the electric cars.
“Knowing how much data those vehicles are capable of collecting definitely made folks nervous," one ex-employee said.
Once again: oops.
AI made you do it
Is faster bureaucracy better than slow? Previous waves of digital transformation have not weaned Nestlé’s 15,000 marketers off of TV ads, so now the CMO is bringing in AI to check their work and force the change, according to The Drum, an industry
Now, Nestlé’s 15,000 marketers – who work across 2,000 brands in 200 territories – as well as its agency partners are required to run all creative assets through the system to check they meet the new requirements before they can run.
What will be interesting to see is how it affects performance. But other C-level leaders in large corporation will take note of being able to automate the execution (enforcement?) of their policies.
Reading this week
I rattled through two non-fiction books, a business book, The JOLT Effect, and a psychology self-help book called The Tools. Both are worth filleting or having a friendly newsletter writer do it for you, but neither needs to be a 250-page book to do the job.
250 pages is the standard short book length for publishers because of the printing process, but I’m sure we’d all be grateful for an option to buy the short version a lot of the time.
The JOLT Effect is about sales and the power of decision paralysis. Because choice overload affects so much decision-making – ever found choosing a streaming TV show a chore? – its insights are useful beyond selling.
Summary: fear of making a decision slows and kills more decisions than anything else. Based on the analysis of millions of sales calls using machine learning (another form of AI) the authors say that the most effective sales people help customers buy by reducing the number of options, being a friendly guide and giving them ways to avoid regretting their purchase (opt-outs, money back etc.)
The Tools is a book by a psychologist so loved by Hollywood celebs that Jonah Hill made a documentary about him. The approach is to help people get on with changing things rather than analysing how they got there.
Behaviours shape attitudes, so start taking action to solve problems. So far so sensible and five of the “tools” are practical and useful versions of things like embodied cognition (fake it ‘til you make it) and reframing relationship dynamics.
What gets in the way of it being a satisfying selp-help book is that the padding around this solid advice is made of shaky spiritualism and talk of higher powers. These ideas and impulses can be interesting and even useful when well written – The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, mentioned in last week’s Antonym contains similar themes of “woo” universe-and-forces, but is a wonderful, poetic read. “Higher powers” is a concept that is used well in Alcoholics Anonymous, without necessarily being preachy or dogmatic about a creed. It didn’t work for me here though.
If you pick it up, the tools are summarised at the end of each chapter – I’d recommend reading these and the introduction. Or watching Stutz, the Netlfix documentary.
In a sentence: Don’t just stand there – do something; maybe x or y will help.
That’s all for this week…
If you’re hungry for TV recommends, Succession needs re-watching or watching immediately. Also the weird and vicious satire Triangle Of Sadness is free now for Amazon Prime subscribers.
Thank you for reading, sharing and subscribing – I’m grateful to share my thoughts here.
Antony