The Chokehold of Knowledge Worker Productivity

The term “knowledge worker” was first coined by Peter Drucker in his book, The Landmarks of Tomorrow (1959). He suggested in the 21st century, routine work will be replaced by problem-solving tasks that require thinking. In the ’50s, most people generated value doing routine work. Today, we see Drucker’s prediction has come true. All the pressure is on our minds to focus and create value with information. Routine work is rapidly being transformed into automated processes. For the 21st-century knowledge worker, to survive is to think, and be creative.

Nevertheless, the explosion of the information and communication technology has created new challenges as the volume of information we’re allowing into our psyche has significantly increased. This wealth of information has created a poverty of attention. The massive supply of information is constantly hijacking our focus and attention, leaving us feeling frazzled, forgetful and unable to be productive. We can’t help but grab our cell phone the moment we hear a notification. Even when there is no notification, if we aren’t checking our email or Slack every five minutes, we fear we might be missing out something important.

In addition to the external distractions, our attention gets hijacked by our own mind too. We are overwhelmed with the thoughts of all the commitments, overdue projects, untried initiatives, and unachieved goals. Our conscious mind is limited to think about two or three things at once. Once other thoughts creep into our conscious mind, we get distracted and we lose our focus. In his classic book, Getting Things Done, David Allen says, “If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.”

So, why haven’t we succeeded to adapt to the knowledge worker era? Despite a plethora of productivity tools and methods, research shows productivity is at its lowest rate since the 1970s. This is because the nature of our productivity has changed much more rapidly than have our tools and training to deal with the challenges. The modern tools and methods have facilitated easier and faster ways to access information and better ways to capture, process and organize the incoming information. But, they haven’t been sufficient as we continue to see rising levels of stress and overwhelm. According to some research, 50% of people polled said they were consistently exhausted because of work.

Our ability to be relaxed and in control of our work demands new ways of thinking and working. It demands new tools designed for our era when the proper use of our time is of the utmost importance. Most productivity tools help us do things faster and hence claim their value in time management. However, the real challenge in managing time is not to do things faster but to do the right things in the limited time we have. It’s about realizing the opportunity cost for every task we choose to take. It’s the compass to help us navigate our attention.

When we take a closer look at the available tools for time management, we realize that the key primary tools haven’t fundamentally changed for centuries. There are two primary tools that are widely used: the clock time and the calendar. The clock time gives you a reference to the now (e.g. 2:38 PM), and the calendar gives you the plan. These are the primary time management tools we use. The digital to-do lists and reminders have been helpful with the capturing, processing, and organizing the information. But they don’t help in playing the zero-sum game of time management. The most productive, and prolific knowledge workers spend quite a bit of time doing manual work to prioritize their work and budget their time.

Isn’t it time for this to change? Have you ever wondered what progress we, as humanity, have had in developing time management tools in the past several centuries? The fact is that the clock and the calendar were designed hundreds of years ago. They were certainly not designed for the knowledge worker age. Yet, they remain to be our primary tools for managing our time demands. We do have modern smartwatches in recent years. But, when it comes to time, it still shows 10:10. The rest is just bells and whistles as far as managing time is concerned. This is pretty much the same as what we got from a watch 300 years ago!

Or, you might be using a modern Google calendar. The fact remains that the format and how everything is put together goes back to the Roman empire. All the other features like ease of use, availability, and ubiquity, collaboration, and meeting planning are still not good enough to help with the budgeting of your time — the best way to win the zero-sum game.

To appreciate the real advancement of tools, we should be looking at other industries like communication or transportation. The change is massive. Compare how we used to communicate in the 19th century using morse code with how we use FaceTime or Skype today. Or, compare a horse as the primary transportation power to a modern car. The question is why our time management tools haven’t progressed as much?

The challenge with time is that it’s finite and inflexible. It is also amorphous and deceptive. And, that’s why we always wonder ‘where did my day go’ ?! We tend to think we can do much more than we can humanly get done in a day —what is known as the planning fallacy. We are hardly conscious of the opportunity cost when we are working on a low-value task. Overall, we are generally poor at time management.

Now compare that with space management or money management. We do far better with them because we’re dealing with tangible assets. When we spend money we can clearly see the reduced balance. Or, we can easily tell if there is no more room on the shelf for another book.

Now, what if we could concretize time? This is the primary factor that makes time different from space or money. The reality is that time is already concrete and finite. But our mind is not able to sense it. And, that’s why we need the right tools to help us to get in control.

At SkedPal, we have taken a step (Fuzzy Planning) to explore different perspectives on time management. We see concretizing time as an important requirement in our ability to realize the opportunity cost of every hour that passes. That’s a small step in a long journey that we need to collectively take to align ourselves with the seismic shift our world is going through.