
The Over-Engaged Knowledge Worker - joeyespo
http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2019/01/overengaged-knowledge-worker.html
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colllectorof
_> This is the reality of knowledge work that none of these conceptualizations
address: it’s hard (in very specific ways), some of it we don’t want to do,
and the work we don’t want to do piles up and becomes dominant simply because
it remains undone._

Let me rephrase this for you. A lot of so-called "knowledge work" is just
tedious, mind-numbing bullshit. Not only that, but you have to plow through it
while fighting information overflow and your own overly complex tools, while
acting completely alone. There are no librarians on the Internet.

No wonder everyone craves distractions.

 _> In the context of the browser, how do we contextualize pages and
interactions inside some abstract task?_

This train has sailed off its tracks long time ago.

Browsers aren't real tools. They are designed to make for smooth information
consumption so that Google and co can harvest your money and attention as
efficiently as possible.

I can list _several hundred_ things a web browser should do if it aims at
being "knowledge worker's tool". Let me just give some categories:

1\. Features for pausing and restarting work in different mental contexts. 2\.
Local personalization. Shit like Timelines should be local and user-
controller. "This is too complicated, so let's let Facebook/Twitter/Microsoft
do it" is a lame excuse. 3\. Did you notice that browsers still don't have any
good authoring tools? Every websites reinvents their own WYSIWYG. "Developer
tools" have everything for debugging, but almost nothing for creations of
stuff. 4\. User-driven integration between pages. (For example, something as
simple as "when I open this page, go to that other page, find all the entries
with word X and paste it here".)

Bah, that's enough. I can continue, but I think the point was made, unless the
reader doesn't want to see it on purpose.

~~~
steve1977
_Browsers aren 't real tools. They are designed to make for smooth information
consumption_

Well yeah. They're browsers, that's what they are. "To browse: an act of
casual looking or reading."

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
They're not really browsers - they're web page viewers.

The views are organised by the needs of the source technology - "pages"
generated by a web server - not by the needs of the user.

A lot of useful features - cross-referencing, comparisons, task-based content
searches, dynamic content update notifications - are either impossible or
poorly implemented on the server side.

There's never been an active browser that tries to integrate information
instead of being a dumb page viewer with tabs and some form filling options.

~~~
chriswarbo
Early on, the Web was imagined to have a plethora of "agents" (bots) which act
on behalf of their users, extracting information from pages, following links,
aggregating the relevant data, etc.

This worked _really_ well for search engines, but certain economic incentives
crept in which pretty much killed off this idea. In particular:

\- Many sites gained revenue by advertising

\- Advertising only really works if a human is viewing it (it's possible to
integrate advertising into the data, with product placement, "native
advertising", etc. but that's more expensive than slapping some Javascript in
some iframes)

\- Exposing data publically in easily parsed formats will mostly stop humans
from viewing the page. Hence so much data is now in silos.

\- Exposing services, like search, to bots can get expensive. Hence the rise
of API keys.

There are other reasons too, like scraping being hard and fragile due to
styling having too much influence over markup (CSS helped a little; a more
radical attempt was sending raw XML and creating the page via XSLT). The rise
of Javascript-only sites, and the difficulty of implementing all of the many
JS APIs that a site might try to use, has also hindered alternative user
agents.

The end result is the Web being dominated by a handful of user agents: a few
search crawlers and a few user-facing browsers :(

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ColinWright
Could someone more familiar with the subject and vernacular provide some sort
of summary of what this is trying to say? I've read it two or three times and
I _still_ can't work out the point being made.

If any.

~~~
svat
When people discuss “knowledge work”, they often slip into imagining an
“idealized” knowledge worker: one who is very engaged, and doing “big”
meaningful things one at a time.

In reality, (1) we are all distracted, (2) our work usually consists of a
large number of small chunks that are spread over time (3) we all have a large
pile of undone work (both “job” and “personal”) that we're always feeling
guilty about.

What do we do about this difference between the ideal and reality? We could
just give up on the ideal and resign to the reality — or even make it worse.
Or we could try to fight it superficially, and fail (there's a reason things
are the way they are). Or we could start from accepting the reality (instead
of ignoring it), but try to move towards the ideal, e.g: (1) reduce whatever
it is that makes us seek distractions ( _very different_ from blocking
distractions), (2) make it easier to get back on track (e.g. keep track of the
task being done).

In coming up with this problem statement, the author believes he's diverged
from the usual problems being imagined: things like trying to block
distractions, trying to maximize efficiency, “collaboration”.

[That just restated the post, so I don't know if it helps :)]

~~~
commandlinefan
> who is very engaged, and doing “big” meaningful things one at a time.

And one who knows exactly what steps are going to be involved and how long
each one is going to take, weeks or even months in advance. The fact that I
approach every new programming problem with: "ok, how the hell do I figure
this one out?" made me feel really nervous early on in my career, since there
seemed to be this default expectation that not just good, not even just
adequate, but even mediocre programmers could blurt out a list of the tasks
involved in solving a problem, "estimate" (meaning predict with +/\- 5%
accuracy) the hours associated with each and then robotically plow through
each of them. This was back in the 90's, before somebody named this "agile"
and built a set of Orwellian tools and "coaching strategies" around it, but
after a few years I couldn't help but notice that, in spite of being an abject
failure at accurately predicting how long each bug fix was going to take
before I even really knew what it entailed, I was also one of the most sought
after developers in every organization I worked at.

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ingenieroariel
Most people who uovoted would know but others may not. Ian Bicking is creator
of virtualenv (and others) and one of the people doing meta thinking of tools
and envs in the python world. Interesting to see something from him after some
years.

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hajderr
I'm so connected yet so disconnected with my inner self. Knowledge workers are
under appreciated in the regular day job. If you also happen to be creative
then you'll be challenged by some other ego trying to take credit for your
work. In the struggle and dilemma: "should I care about this guy?" you forget
about it and start to build resent. Then burnout is then a fact. Your
challenges in college were way more benefitting and purpose-driven instead of
your boss's wallet. That's why I say CS degree was awesome, working as dev is
draining.

What's this comment about? Just need a rant...

~~~
pm90
I guess it also depends on where you work. You can do some pretty amazing and
creative work if you find the right niche to work in.

~~~
hajderr
true that! yet to find...maybe I move into hardware, something tangible is
inspiring

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linkregister
The problem statement is eloquently stated. Yet the blame is nonsensical. The
developers of _Solitaire_ are to blame? Solitaire was a non-trivial
application written for the express purpose of selling an operating system.

The reality is that the problem statement, that knowledge workers are
constantly engaged with unproductive, nonsensical asks, is true. Knowledge
workers must overcome this by being exactly the worker they've been advised
_not_ to be: ignoring emails and chats, not being present at their open-plan
desks, declining any meeting that won't immediately please their manager.

No sinister force is the cause of these problems; simple entropy of
organizations is to blame: failing to allocate resources to document and
streamline processes is to blame.

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montenegrohugo
In order to minimize context-switching and mantain browser "sessions" I
recommend OneTab[0], really simple idea but is really useful.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall?hl=en)

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whatshisface
> _So how might we approach idea generation around knowledge work without
> idealizing the knowledge worker?_

Editing tip: you can delete sentences like this without loosing much. The
following text should do a good enough job of making a point without an
introduction helping it along. The trick to editing is to backspace as many
words as you can.

~~~
rco8786
What’s wrong with an introductory question?

Also, losing not loosing.

~~~
falsedan
It’s conversational, and adds nothing: the reader who was following along
already asked themselves that question, and the reader who’s hasn’t latched
onto the thesis doesn’t understand why this is a good question to ask.

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MisterOctober
Claudius : Can you advise me?

Laertes : I am lost in it, my lord.

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bryanrasmussen
a friend sending you a mortgage refinance proposal isn't work though, unless
that friend is giving you money for looking at it. And I guess the only people
getting sent mortgage refinance proposals are people who might have some
expertise in that subject.

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justwalt
This website is beautiful.

