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

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

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