What Do You Mean? I'm Not Doing Busy Wrong - DBR 051

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

What do you mean? I don't think I'm doing busy wrong. I don't really get this one directly, but it's a consistent subtext when I talk to folks, and it's not that I misunderstand. For years, I thought I wasn’t swinging a golf club wrong, but I think maybe people take it a little bit too personally, let’s think about why this might be so. The cultural idea: One's ability to use technology in the modern age is really unfortunately connected to efficacy as a human being, and the culture is such that we buy that notion. The thinking here is an outgrowth of the learning experiences that I've had as an adult We’ll talk about three interrelated areas: personal productivity, knowledge work, and work from home The tech (for various reasons) doesn’t support our learning.

• Evidence: Software, the industry and the software marketing business
• Evidence: usability is hard and the economics don't drive companies there
• Financial motivations in the software industry
• The whole software business is built around solving a problem that every human being has, and so you're going to be able to sell a billion copies of it. And that makes you rich, right?
• if you sell it to two people, you lose – that’s not the business model
• Two ways:
• Build a piece of software that does everything right, solves a problem so big that everyone needs it. This is very, very hard.
• Market to people and make them believe your software does everything, and you don't want to constrain them by telling them how to use your software
• Software builders are trying to be everything to everybody.
• Somebody has to teach you that's not what hammers are for, that's not what screws are for.
• Back to "intuitive"
• Marketing has managed to equate intuition with your intelligence. And more likely: intuition is related to your experience.
• the new one better look a whole lot like the old in order for my intuition/experience to be employed.

“Intuitive” is a weird word. It moves the responsibility to the user.

• There's nothing intuitive about it
• "Intuitive" is really kind of a strange word.
• It snuck in there and all these implications that are not, not really true.

Software Marketing

• Spin it such that, if it wasn't intuitive for you, then it's not our fault, it’s yours.
• People simply don't design things for usability – they simply claim that they do
• So not only do we start off with bad metaphors, but those metaphors tend to persist.
• The email metaphor is terrible
• Evidence: The envelope metaphor for email Fascinating: the interfaces haven't changed.

DBR – basically information management

• Password management as information management
• I asked a cybersecurity class – overwhelming majority don’t use good password management
• Do you understand what a password manager does? It's okay to say no, it does not make you stupid. Can you learn about this stuff? Yeah. Do you have time? Probably not.
• The “password = key” metaphor is wrong
• Imagine if you couldn’t keep a physical copy of your car key but that's a metaphor for passwords Password questions
• Do you understand the challenge of managing passwords? Have you been taught?
• Well, why not – it’s hard and our metaphors are wrong
• Data (electronic information) storage
• This is a hard problem that hasn’t been solved
• Were you taught how to use email?
• It’s complicated and we’ve not really figured it out
• Have you been trained in the difference between synchronous and asynchronous communication? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Work from home?

• We went to offices, because at an office, somebody else took care of many of the services for us,
• How's your home ergonomics?
• How's your networking? Are if it doesn't work, who has to fix it.
• Data integrity in your home office? Have you been taught?
• Have you been trained in how to backup software, maintain your data?

Knowledge work

• We sort of knew how to do physical. In knowledge work, we really don't know how it's best done.
• Do you know how to manage information assets, to collect and organize information in such a way that you can find it again?
• If you can't remember being taught, you probably weren't. Are you self-taught?
• You know, a lot of people say, Well, I was trained for knowledge work when I was in school. I've already done a podcast on that. No, you weren't.
• I talked to college students about this stuff, and they're just flabbergasted that we know something about how to do these things. And they're like, why hasn't anybody ever taught me this before?
• But were you trained to solve problems?

Finally

• I don't think I'm doing busy, wrong. Well, what's the evidence that you're doing it right?
• It is not very easy stuff.
• The tech industry is not really helping us, yet we fixate on the latest innovations. “Maybe this will finally solve my problem.”
• “It just works for me”. Compared to what and/or who?
• Respectfully, I've spent 15 years trying to figure out what knowledge work is and how it's best done.