Category: Knowledge work

Bonnie Nardi on the structure of invisible work

Lilia points to what looks to be an interesting piece on knowledge work
and visibility/invisibility. As she says, “more to read.”

And while I was searching for the right link for “It's just a matter of common sense”: Ethnography as invisible work by Diana Forsythe to add to my story I came across A web on the wind: The structure of invisible work by Bonnie Nardi and Yrjö Engeström, which is an editorial for the “invisible work” issue of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Wonder how I could miss it – with all my interests in invisible work?

More to read 🙂

Productivity blog showdown

Without doubt, a false dichotomy, but this promises to be
entertaining at the very least. Any synthesis will be a helpful
contrast to the still all-too-prevalent notion that drudgery in and of
itself is good for the soul.

Like Frank, I start with a bias in favor of Fred's position as part of
my personal cursade to rid the world of busywork. It reminds me
of an incident during a college summer job over 30 years ago. I had
been hired as a “material accounting clerk” and my job was to spend
each day poring through three-inch thick stacks of greenbar computer
paper containing inventory control reports. I was looking for line
items with zero items in inventory but cost still on the books and
filling out forms to process write-offs. This was one of those seminal
moments that convinced me that I had no future in accounting.

For all that drudgery I could at least understand that this was a job
with some purpose. The incident that truly pissed me off was when my
supervisor handed me a handwritten sheet of numbers and asked me to
calculate the mean and standard deviation (with an adding machine and
slide rule). When I was done I brought the results to my supervisor and
asked what they were going to be used for. His response? He didn't need
the results for any purpose. He knew I was a statisics major and
figured I would enjoy doing the calculations just for fun! This was a
supervisor who believed in the virtue of work for its own sake and a
lesson to ask the right questions before doing what I was told.

Productivity Showdown, Day 1. Productivity Showdown, Day 1
— Is productivity rooted in intensity and effort or in laziness and
efficiency? Obviously a false dichotomy, but a potentially entertaining
one. To that end, Slacker Manager has organized a “blog showdown”
between proponents of each of the sides of the productivity coin.

“Welcome to Day 1 of a 3-day
'Productivity Blog Showdown.' If you're just joining us, here's the
quick background of what's going on. A few days ago, I noted that I'd
like to see a 'showdown' between two upcoming gurus of personal
productivity, Fred Gratzon and Steve Pavlina [who I've pointed to recently in my GTD mode – FP]. Both guys agreed to do the showdown, we collected some questions from readers, and here we are.”

I've got to get familiar with Grazton,
since throughout my career, I've always thought that the best
Industrial Engineer is a lazy Industrial Engineer, who ardently avoids
unnecessary work.

Efficiency is just politically correct laziness. (Laziness is the mother of efficiency?)

And productivity comes from applying efficiency to the things that need
to be done to achieve one's goals. And avoiding the things that don't
need to be done. There is no honor in putting in 12 hours a day if you
can get done what needs to be done in 10, or even 8.

I guess I know what side of the showdown I'm starting on. Let's see if Steve and Fred can turn the showdown into a synthesis. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]

Interview: father of “life hacks” Danny O’Brien

More on life hacks. What makes all of this interesting to me, besides
the potential productivity value of the hacks, is O’Brien’s observation
that alpha geeks are early adopters of practices that mainstream
knowledge workers are likely to be practicing in 12 to 18 months.

Interview: father of “life hacks” Danny O’Brien.
Just about a year ago, technology writer Danny O’Brien strung together
the words “life” and “hacks” and fired off synapses throughout the geek
community. After an infamous talk entitled “Life hacks – Tech Secrets
of Overprolific Alpha Geeks” at the… [Lifehacker]

Life hacks at Etech

More insight into Life Hacks from Cory. His notes walk this clever balance
between making me regret that I couldn't be there myself and feeling as
though I still got much of the benefit anyway.

One note that I'm sure others will pick up on. Danny talks about
wanting to find a keyboard macro program for Windows. One excellent
answer of course is ActiveWords. I predict a phone call from Buzz to Danny in the near future.

ETECH Notes: Life Hacks Live!. Cory Doctorow:
Here are my notes from Danny O'Brien and Merlin Mann's Life Hacks Live,
at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Danny's
been doing variations on his Life Hacks talk since the last Emerging
Tech conference — it's basically an effort to research the
productivity patterns of very prolific geeks and convert them to wisdom
that anyone can follow. Merlin has been adapting the fantastic
productivity cookbook Getting Things Done into a series of tools for geeks, on an equally fantastic blog called 43 Folders.
They're now working on a book version of their stuff for O'Reilly
called Life Hacks, and today's session was a preview of it — it was
uproariously funny and incredibly inspiring.

Here's a recap of last year, in bumper stickers:

HACKERS HEART PLAIN TEXT

Geeks store what they do in text and spurn big apps, using plain
text editors. Simplicity and speed, ease of search and extraction, cut
and paste. All you need in a filing system.

MY OTHER APP IS IN ~/BIN

If it wasn't plaintext, there's one app that they loved, like
mail, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. The rest was little glue scripts in
~/bin, secret scripts they are embarrassed about and don't share with
others, though it turns out that they're all really similar.

SUPER PROLIFIC GEEKS DO IT IN PUBLIC WITH COMPLETE STRANGERS AND LIKE IT. OH YES.

(don't put this on your car)

Geeks get their credibility and prolificness out of sharing
everything — put it in public and the public organizes it for you. Put
it on a Wiki and others will fix it.

A Swiss Army Knife Approach to Project Management

I’m running a bit behind these days. That makes it a bit ironic that my
most recent column at Enterprise System Journal looks at the topic of
project management.

The column actually appeared last week and looks at project management
from a minimalist perspective. Jim Powell, my editor there, decided to
title it A Swiss Army Knife for Project Management.
My launching point was to ask what everyone needed to know about
project management rather than what the specialists needed to know.

My thinking on this topic has certainly benefitted from the excellent Focused Performance Blog by Frank Patrick and Hal Macomber’s Reforming Project Management.
I’ve also begun to take a close look at basecamp and at ubergroups as
toolsets that are trying to simplify project management for all of us
in place of supporting the complexities that only a small handful of
experts actually need.

Valuing specialist knowledge

While this has been true and will likely continue to be so, it's also
cause for concern. To be a specialist in anything implies we are at
best generalists in most everything else. If we don't learn to value
and appreciate specialist knowledge that we don't have, we will
continue to be at the mercy of those who can best pretend to expertise.

“The only people who value your specialist knowledge are the ones who already have it.”

– William Tozier, On trivia and details and miscellanea: [Seb's Open Research]

Contracting, clarity, and requirements

I’ve certainly been guilty of this kind of approach at multiple points throughout my career. The best techniques I’ve encountered for dealing with these challenges are the “contracting” conversations that Peter Block advocates so strongly in his excellent Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used. Regardless of which side of the table you are on, you had better become more adept at Block’s contracting or you will be building or paying for
entirely too many custom-made drywall saws.

Clarity, Junior Engineers, Requirements, and Frustration.

There’s an amazing essay at The Spurious Pundit on “Picture Hanging.” It’s an allegory that explores how simple requirements in software aren’t that obvious to folks who may not have context. The writing is wonderful, do check it out, it’s worth your time. Subscribed.

A highlight:

You tell him to hang the photo of your pet dog, and he comes back a week later,asking if you could “just double-check” his design for a drywall saw. “Why are you designing a drywall saw?”
“Well, the wood saw in the office toolbox isn’t good for cutting drywall.”
“What, you think you’re the first person on earth to try and cut drywall? You can buy a saw for that at Home Depot.”
“Okay, cool, I’ll go get one.”
“Wait, why are you cutting drywall in the first place?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure what the best practices for hanging pictures were, so I went online and found a newsgroup for gallery designers. And they said that the right way to do it was to cut through the wall, and build the frame into it. That way, you put the picture in from the back, and you can make the glass much more secure since you don’t have to move it. It’s a much more elegant solution than that whole nail thing.”
“…”

This metaphor may be starting to sound particularly fuzzy, but trust me – there
are very real parallels to draw here. If you haven’t seen them yet in your professional
life, you will. [Spurious Pundit]

[ComputerZen.com – Scott Hanselman’s Weblog]