Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster.

My imagined audience, however, also includes those who might work for larger employers but still enjoy significant freedom in how they go about their work. As a professor, for example, I fall into this latter definition, as would, say, a product designer who is expected to effectively disappear until she’s ready to bring a new idea back to the team

You might be working on a client report at the same time that you’re gathering testimonials for the company website and organizing an office party, all the while updating a conflict of interest statement that human resources just emailed you about. In this setting, there’s no clear single output to track.