Stop pretending to do work
Stop pretending to do work
#121 - the first real week of the Y13 summer
Hi there,
Feels like summer is here as we move into July. It’s been a varied week, with coffee chats with 2 friends, returning to the gym and a lot of online research for my DofE expedition kit and our family holiday.
Highlight of the week: my sister’s birthday. After going in circles around Claire’s trying to find the best girl accessory stuff that I thought would suit her, it was a big relief that she liked it all. A delicious cake too (courtesy Asda) and a visit to Nando’s after a year to top it off!
I’ve been doing an online AI course (with an organisation called Leaf) and this week, we looked at how difficult it is to be clear about what goals we want AI systems to adhere to.
The example given: if your mum was trapped in a burning building, and you say “get my mum as far as possible from the building”, the AI agent could make the building explode to throw your mum’s body away from it.
A more real-life instance of this is how passing exams is an imperfect proxy to education. After all, in many cases, doing well in an exam doesn’t directly mean you’ve understood a subject well or mastered the content. They can either serve as memory tests and if you cheat, cram or selectively learn the exam technique and frequently appearing topics, you aren’t necessarily developing your knowledge as much as possible.
This analogy reminds me of the idea of ‘meta work’, work for the sake of work that doesn’t actually create much progress. There are a few examples of this in my own life.
Clearing emails: I’ve had to spend some time on Gmail this week, after it all piled up over the exam season. However, while it isn’t the most productive use of my time, it can still make me feel like I am in fact “doing work”.
Making a revision timetable: I vividly remember a conversation with Viraj, a friend, in Y10 when I showed him my elaborate first draft of a timetable for the Y10 exams
“Just make sure you aren’t wasting time making it” and upon reflection, I realisd I was! I was spending so long making the perfect timetable that I wasn’t getting up from 0% on the progress scale and getting on with work.
It was also a means of delaying when I started revision: “Oh, I need to find 2 hours to sit down and properly create a revision timetable”.
These 2 examples illicit a feeling of being busy, which feels good - “hey look at me, I’m doing work, I’m spending my time wisely”. Speaking of busy, how ‘being busy’ has become a status signal is a discussion for another day…
However, being busy doesn’t get you anywhere, it’s how much you get done in that time. As superbly put in this HBR article,
Being busy is not the same as being productive. It’s the difference between running on a treadmill and running to a destination. They’re both running, but being busy is running in place.
Other examples you might like (inspired from this blog post):
Researching to find the best piano player app rather than having a go and failing
Watching videos on how to edit videos
Reading books about meditation instead of meditating
Failing to realise when you’re succumbing to the seductive feeling of being busy and doing metawork is dangerous. Why? You feel like you’ve done your share of ‘work’ for that project in your life, but you’ve not gotten anywhere.
The blog post above also argues that
Meta work is another form of procrastination, and perhaps even worse (than scrolling, for example) - you aren’t giving yourself a break but you inputting energy isn’t resulting in meaningful output either
It is a form of escapism - it’s a way to avoid doing the hard yards which, deep down, you know you need to do and instead get the hits of dopamine from checking off menial tasks from your to-do list
Also known as bike shedding, it is a form of going down the path of least resistance and also the one that takes the least effort.
What do we do about it? Here are the 2 steps that will solve all our problems!
(Not quite)
Take some time to think about why we are procrastinating or metaworking: is it burnout, a lack of clarity of the next step or what the overall goal is, perfectionism? Or is it simply that you don’t want to confront the reality of the sheer work required? Be honest with yourself and then work out a small way to get started and move the needle.
Be intentional about devoting the time, energy and attention to completing it - the energy point is important: do you have the right amount of energy to engage in this difficult task? If not, you need to replenish it and go again. You’re doing present you and future you a disservice by not taking a break, ploughing through and ultimately being stuck in the same place.
There is no point in clearing your to-do list if you haven’t made tangible progress towards achieving your goals. Try to notice when you’re pretending to be productive, cut the fluff and get to doing the real stuff. And remember, starting imperfectly is better than being perfectly stationary.
That was a nice post to read. And after a mention last week, guess what’s back…Book of the Week!
Book of the week 📖
My dad wanted me to tackle the giant book (series, really) that is The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I’m 60 pages in…out of over 1000
Podcast of the week🎙️
The Economist: Leader of the package: Amazon turns 30
3 interesting stories, including the fact that one of the largest modern-day monopolies has a milestone year
What I’m grateful for this week 🙏
Google Maps, for being so helpful with bus times and planning journeys
Quote of the week 💬
The one who falls and gets up is so much stronger than the one who never fell Roy T. Bennett
Linking with this quote above, I hope you push yourself this week to try something that you might fail at. You’ll come out the other side a stronger person.
Adi