Invest in Technique to Get Better at Knowledge work - DBR 064

Do Busy Right - The Task and Attention Management Podcast

If you've listened to this podcast for very long, you know that I'm fascinated with human performance. Particularly when it comes down to work, how do we do work? How do we get better at work? I don't think there's a ton of knowledge out there, so I'm trying to move the needle a little bit here, and get us some more information about this thing. We know that our work is stressful. We know there's a problem. We know that work life balance is an issue. We know that we have individual/personal issues around our work. We also know economically that we need to improve productivity. Labor productivity has been flat for a while. According to Peter Drucker, if productivity is flat, then we cannot expect to enhance our standard of living in the long term. And so that's what we're all about. Add to that the fact that in our modern world, business is the way we create, generate, and distribute value in the world. We need to get better at our work. The approach and why I chose it

• Remember: knowledge work
• What is the data / experiment
• Our question: how do we get better at what we do?
• Focus on tools and techniques to get better?
• We’ve tried formal education
• Tools are a typical approach, particularly in our Knowledge Work
• Are tools as good as they’re going to get?
• My personal history with this question
• We’ll look at sports (and games), music, and knowledge work

Categorizing sports and games

• Endurance / athletic sports
• What’s the theme
• Mental game?
• Skip the defense?
• Levels of defense
• Heavy on technique
• I never really paid for coaching.

Learning & getting better as an adult

• Here’s my story about learning as an adult – the bass
• I got a coach pretty quickly
• “You’ll just hear it” – the issue of ‘innate’ talent
• Coach = technique BOSS
• What does technique do for a bassist/musician
• We may be missing technique in the modern computer-mediated world
• Musical parallels to talent and athleticism
• Where does athleticism matter
• Talent might interfere with learning technique
• Tools might interfere with motivation to learn technique
• Tool-mania in certain sports and games
• Tools won’t save bad technique

Application to knowledge work

• Knowledge work is not well-understood
• Tools and knowledge work
• Education and knowledge work
• Coaching and knowledge work
• Technique and knowledge work
• Talent and knowledge work
• Athleticism – is there a parallel in knowledge work?
• Athleticism as a substitute for technique in sports
• So lack of athleticism in Knowledge Work indicates that we should have other ways to work on technique
• Focus our attention – parallel to “being where you need to be”
• Information and attention athleticism?
• Good technique may be the key to information and attention athleticism, thus improvement
• Technique with coaching needs a serious try in improving knowledge work productivity

Bottom line / recap

• Think about technique
• Have a coach
• Focus on attention – get it where it needs to be when it needs to be there
• Try to worry less about tools