Hello there, friend!

I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with productivity or metawork as I call it. On the one hand, it's something I've been interested in since the days of my gaming addiction, and it grew into pretty much my life's purpose. I still think that the most important skill is the ability to learn new skills, and the most important work is figuring out what's the most important work.

On the other hand, the idea of writing about productivity tips and tricks bores me. It feels unimportant, almost counter-productive. By definition metawork is not the main work, so obsessing over it feels like obsessing over getting the perfect running gear without even going for a jog. And writing about it feels like propagating such misguidance.

A problematic attitude, given that metawork coaching is what I want to do for a living (and writing about it is how I plan to build credibility).

And yet in terms of what I'm interested in, there's no contradiction between productivity tips, management practices, and the pursuit of wisdom. I believe that personal metawork, collective metawork, and cultivation of wisdom can mutually support each other, so where does the tension come from? The answer is so obvious it almost makes me laugh:

The contradiction between metawork and wisdom emerges when metawork becomes a goal in itself. When mastery gets separated from meaning it becomes... well, meaningless.

But as authors like David Allen, Cal Newport or Peter Senge make clear, metawork DONE RIGHT can bring clarity about where we are now, where we want to go, and what are the steps to get us there. It can help us recognize which commitments are realistic and which will lead to burnout. It can help us understand why we're failing in our pursuits, and how we can improve. It can help us integrate different parts of our lives that are inherently at odds with one another. As such, metawork can be a wondrous tool of mental hygiene, even almost a spiritual practice.

Though it wasn't my intention when I coined the term for myself, I really like "metawork". "Productivity" seems to have the air of something to strive for – after all who doesn't like replying "very productive" to "How was your day?" But metawork inherently points to something else as being the goal. It also lacks a clearly related adjective.

So when we do metawork right, how else can we answer to the question about our day?

In my writing, I want to make a case for "intentional" and "wise".

Last week’s dig-ups

Personal metawork

• A thought-provoking article on why learning mental models is useless – they can only convey explicit, propositional knowledge, but to apply them correctly, you also need all the tacit knowledge behind them.

  • The author later wrote a whole series about how mental models actually can be useful, so I’m looking to get into that soon. My expectation is that he’ll talk about using mental models to guide attention to get better and faster feedback, but I find Cedric Shin’s writing really insightful, so I’m sure there will be much more to it than this.

• Not happy about this since I’m very much digital-first, but if Andrew Huberman says so… guess I’ll have to experiment with trying to fit handwritten notes into my learning flow 😏

Collective metawork

• Aaron Dignan on why work agreements (rules you agree on with your colleagues about how work gets done) should expire by default – they can be extended, updated, or revoked, but the review process is essential to keep them alive

• A post from Enliveningedge.org describes 3 aspects of a business – organization (how is work organized), company (property or assets), and association (the community). Though these should be developed simultaneously, a common pitfall of self-managed companies is focusing too much on organization. Also, the company aspect for new ways of working is better served by new bylaws, hence the proposal of the for-purpose enterprise.

Entrepreneurship

• A great, wide-ranging conversation between two of my favorite entrepreneurs, Dan Koe and Dickie Bush. Lots of gems in here, for example, how the value of useful ideas you successfully get across to your audience grows over time, or why nothing beats investing in your growth.

Philosophy & Sense-making

• According to Ezra Klein, the best analogy to AGI development comes from novels about occultism – the developers are like mystics already under the spell of the demon they're trying to summon, and those closest to the code are the craziest. They feel like it's their responsibility to bring this alien intelligence into our world, regardless of the consequences.

  • This is very reminiscent of Jung's notion that the religious impulse never disappears – we need to worship something, and without an acceptable religion we end up worshipping things like youth, beauty, wealth... or uncontrollable artificial super-intelligence that threatens to destroy humanity.

• What’s more, Microsoft recently laid off its “Responsible AI” team

• Fortunately, quite a good interview with the CEO (Sam Altman) and COO (Mira Murati) of OpenAI also came out – they didn't get technical (e.g. how exactly do they intend to prevent AGI ruin), but the reporter did ask good questions (e.g. "Can you keep it so that these systems don't become more powerful than humanity and plan our destruction?") and Altman acknowledges that he is “A little bit scared” and that governments need to get up to speed fast because regulation will be very important.

Reflection

• The main point is that I want to be ok with writing shorter essays, as I did today. The thesis work is still a priority. Gradually though, I want to get back to tweeting regularly.

• Also, I noticed that one of the most energizing activities for me are live intellectually stimulating conversations.

And that’s it for this week, reply to this email and let me know what resonated!

Until next time

Chris