Ideas: The Virtue of Productiveness
Cal Newport offers insight on so-called remote work conflict
Recently, I’ve been listening to podcast episodes by Cal Newport which continue to add value. Newport, whom I first encountered at a Massachusetts conference in 2021, wrote Deep Work, which I reviewed here. He’s writing The Deep Life. I’m reading his newest book, Slow Productivity. Slowly.
Cal Newport makes a distinction in an episode of his podcast which I think is very helpful. Countering author Adam Grant, who’s become a champion for so-called remote work, an insufficient term for working from home, who complains about companies as employers trying to get employees to come back to the office to work, Cal Newport makes a cogent and different point.
The post-lockdown cataclysm to shelter in place and never work with humans in an office again exacerbates the problem of isolated, lonely, distressed Americans and the ghosting of America’s greatest cities’ commercial properties and downtowns, which are filled with vacant skyscrapers and offices. Newport proposes that the problem lies not in people needing to be free to work from home for the rest of their lives and never encounter another human being as long as they live while they work.
Newport argues that the problem lies in the ubiquity of technology invading our daily experiences. In other words, Cal Newport’s thesis is that the resistance to going back to the office to work stems from technology insidiously overcomplicating work with the constant back-and-forth of text messaging. The upshot: today’s tech robs the individual from being in control of his work experience within certain boundaries.
Newport contends that today’s all-in, all-the-time tech mentality prompts the fatigued individual to seek greater autonomy. Working from home, he points out, lets the individual choose autonomy over the madness of incessant work projects bleeding into daily life, interfering with attending a child’s ballet recital or soccer game or managing medical conditions, which are complicated by ObamaCare, and having to spend hours and hours dealing with bureaucracy in travel, so-called health care and owning and managing property. The resistance to return to an office to work with other people, he theorizes, stems from the individual wanting dominion over his life.
I think Cal Newport is right. Companies, such as Apple, seeking to entice workers to come back to work in the office—and I agree with Tim Cook, Apple and others advocating working in an office (at least part or most of the time)—can learn from Newport’s proposal to grant greater autonomy for stable and predictable boundaries in what constitutes work including when work is conducted. Deadlines matter, boundaries matter, structure matters. None of it justifies becoming dogma.
The individual becomes creative and productive with autonomy, Cal Newport says. I think Deep Work author Newport, not Grant, who argues that humans should rarely work in an office, is right on this fundamentally false conflict between so-called remote work—an asinine term in my judgment—versus working in the office.
The problem has been misstated and misunderstood. The problem can be solved with greater autonomy for the individual in the workplace. What this means for each company will vary from company to company, market to market, city to city, individual to individual. Imagine how less lonely and isolated one can be when emancipated from technology as dogma and restored to using tech as a mere means to enjoying one’s life—and work.
I agree with the Author. Coming from hands-on technology and production, you can only do so much from home. Jobs such as sales, marketing, accounting can be handled from home. But what actually produces product? Planning, production, testing, shipping. All of these are hands-on efforts. And, what is out to replace these? AI. One can argue this is a scheme to eventually eliminate the white collar class. First, move them out of the workplace. Next, eliminate their positions and make them stay home.
Everyone has jumped on the AI bandwagon. What is the eventual outcome? Less humans means less salaries and benefits for companies to pay out. This, in theory, means more profits. But, what happens when fifty percent of the workforce is unemployed? No income means no taxes collected. No money to buy products. The government will suffer. Companies will suffer. We may end up a socialist or communist class because if our own short-sightedmess. Or, we may end up in a moneyless society like Star Trek. Except that we don't have replicators to produce anything we need.
We will exist as METROPOLIS suggested. Slaves at the bottom doing menial tasks, elites in penthouses at the top.
Our government may collapse under our own weight. All because AI
was the next "bubble" to embrace. AI is replacing the very class of humans required to hold a degree. We will be indebted for college loans and no way to use the education or pay off those loans because the jobs requiring them will be gone.