Dr. Cal Newport

We got networks.

We got email.

Pseudoproductivity can't be sustainable in that context because now with something like email and then later tools like Slack, I can demonstrate effort at a very fine grain because I can send an email, respond to this, jump onto a Slack conversation.

I can now do that at a very fine-grained level and essentially everywhere and anywhere.

All throughout my day, I can be demonstrating labor.

At home, I can be demonstrating labor because we have mobile computing.

We get the smartphone revolution.

So there's now an ability to constantly be demonstrating effort at all points of our day.

And that's where I think the wheels came off the bus and led to this point that got worse and worse starting in the early 2000s and hit ahead in the pandemic of knowledge worker burnout.

knowledge worker exhaustion and nihilism of like, what's going on with my job?

Like all I do is Zoom all day, what's happening?

I think that's pseudo productivity plus front office IT revolution.

They did not play nice together.

And you can see this by the way, if you look even at productivity books,

You see this huge shift that happens early 90s versus early 2000s.

It's like a completely shift in tone, right?

Early 90s, it's Stephen Covey is very optimistic.

It's like, how are we going to self-actualize and like carefully choose the most meaningful activities to fulfill all of our dreams for all of our roles?

Early 2000s, now we have email.

You have David Allen.