17 years.. also says something about the pace of change back in the day
I'm pretty sure that if I started working on a piece of content today that is not physical media (sculpture, buildings, kitchen sinks) it will no longer be supported by any 2043 media formart
It wasn’t really a slower world so much as fewer competing inputs. And for 2043: formats will change, but most work doesn’t disappear because it becomes unreadable, it disappears because it stops being found or contextualized.
the Ballmer-era Microsoft example is the one that hits hardest, a decade of real output that compounded into nothing. Useful warning for any solo operator.
That’s the uncomfortable version of productivity: you can be consistently busy, even effective by internal metrics, and still end up with almost no compounding outcome if the effort is pointed at the wrong layers of the system. For solo operators, the lesson is sharper because there’s no institutional inertia masking it, misplaced effort shows up directly in what doesn’t exist later.
Dear Farida, this is such an important question, and I love that you brought attention to it!
Time is not only seconds, minutes, and hours.. it is also direction, density, rhythm, pressure, and placement. Farida has a rare ability to notice details and nuances whose meaning is much deeper than many people realise. Thank you for writing this with such care and clarity!!
Thank you Mila, that framing of time as direction, density, and placement actually fits the underlying idea well.
The core point is exactly that: time isn’t just what we spend, but what it turns into. Different structures of attention produce very different outcomes, even if the hours look identical on paper.
Exactly, and exhaustion is often just a proxy for friction, not progress. Darwin’s structure works less because of the specific hours, and more because it separates modes of work. Deep, compounding thinking is protected from constant task-switching, which is what usually dissolves it.
The Simon quote is where it all comes together, Fafi, because attention poverty is the real diagnosis, and I keep wondering whether more structure is actually the prescription or whether what most of us need is more honesty about what genuinely matters to us. What drew you to pairing those two thinkers?
Simon gives the diagnosis: attention is the scarce resource in an information-rich world. the compounding / perishable / noise framework is really just a way of answering the next question he leaves open: what deserves that scarce attention, and why does so much of it get consumed without accumulating? Structure helps because it forces selection under constraint, but I think your second point is the deeper one. Structure without clarity just optimizes the wrong priorities faster. So the real leverage is honesty about what actually compounds for you, and using structure to protect that, not define it.
Strong framing and a clear central idea, especially around compounding vs noise, but it leans a bit heavy on historical examples without tightening the argument early enough
I leaned on examples to build the intuition before stating the model, but that does delay orientation. A tighter version would likely surface the compounding / perishable / noise framework much earlier and use the examples as support rather than discovery.
There's a lot of wisdom in this post (!) and, although these days I proceed much more like Darwin, it has some timely reminders to stop feeding several patterns I unconsciously internalized during the course of my working life.
I haven't finished reading all your posts yet but wonder if you've written about American business school/MBA culture. I watched it destroy a regional bakery in the 1990's that was a century old (run successfully by 4 generations of family friends) and nearly do the same not once but three times to a women's clothing business (started by other family friends) that was a pioneer in post-war mail-order merchandizing. (They've also done in plenty of other companies in my native New England and the Pacific NW where I spent a dozen years.)
I see much of what you're diagnosing rooted in that 'priesthood'. In 2010, I recall an assistant dean at the Harvard B school admitting to the Boston Globe that they did not offer a single class, let alone a course, in ethics. Having reached Old Fogeyhood, I consider spreadsheets to be a gateway drug for AI. ;-)
There’s a useful distinction here between tools and dominance.
MBA logic can improve execution, but problems start when it becomes the only lens, when everything gets reduced to scale, efficiency, and comparables, and longer-cycle assets like craft or customer memory get misread as inefficiency. On ethics, it’s less about what’s taught and more about what the system rewards in practice.
Agree 100% except for possibly your last sentence. That touches on social/cultural values (Reagan campaigning that "government is THE problem" [my emphasis]) and the people who set up the given corporate systems in the first place. (Sado-monetarist Milton Friedman absolving corporations of social responsibilities.)
A third factor at that time --1979-81-- was the incursion of increasing numbers of comptrollers and chief accountants into corporate America's C-suites. That change was a regularly discussed topic in Fortune, Forbes, et al. All the bean counters knew was numbers! What about the products?!
It all made for what I consider a perfect storm that turned the Calvinist Protestant Ethic into an ideological imperative whose lurid sunset we're living through now. It will end -- either due to environmental constraints or the new global financial order that will run through China, Asia, Europe and the Global South. I won't be surprised if the Europeans find that working with the Chinese psychologically easier than dealing with the US was over the past 45 years.
The MBAs I worked with in my twenties (almost all were from the top programs; Ivies, Chicago, Stanford, etc, who got their degrees from early 50's to early 70's) were a different breed from the grads of the late 70's onward. I experienced the latter firsthand during my dozen years in banking and credit cards from the mid 90's. The former viewed the world and their work through multiple lenses, not just one. But those were the days when a Liberal Arts/Humanities education was the foundation that set you up for life and study for any advanced degree.
I figured out that my most productive time is split throughout the day. Ever since doing this my productivity just skyrocketed. Great piece with the breakdown
Yes. It's important to sit down and audit where your energy is going. Good productivity techniques spent on the wrong thing will just get you to the wrong place faster.
17 years.. also says something about the pace of change back in the day
I'm pretty sure that if I started working on a piece of content today that is not physical media (sculpture, buildings, kitchen sinks) it will no longer be supported by any 2043 media formart
It wasn’t really a slower world so much as fewer competing inputs. And for 2043: formats will change, but most work doesn’t disappear because it becomes unreadable, it disappears because it stops being found or contextualized.
The pace of innovation and change were definitely a lot slower than they are today
Great points about time management btw!
Appreciated Jonas :)
the Ballmer-era Microsoft example is the one that hits hardest, a decade of real output that compounded into nothing. Useful warning for any solo operator.
That’s the uncomfortable version of productivity: you can be consistently busy, even effective by internal metrics, and still end up with almost no compounding outcome if the effort is pointed at the wrong layers of the system. For solo operators, the lesson is sharper because there’s no institutional inertia masking it, misplaced effort shows up directly in what doesn’t exist later.
makes sense. no bureaucracy, easier to notice.
Dear Farida, this is such an important question, and I love that you brought attention to it!
Time is not only seconds, minutes, and hours.. it is also direction, density, rhythm, pressure, and placement. Farida has a rare ability to notice details and nuances whose meaning is much deeper than many people realise. Thank you for writing this with such care and clarity!!
Thank you Mila, that framing of time as direction, density, and placement actually fits the underlying idea well.
The core point is exactly that: time isn’t just what we spend, but what it turns into. Different structures of attention produce very different outcomes, even if the hours look identical on paper.
Thanks for a very welcome Ah-hah! moment! I was thinking of you as I read Farida's piece.
Thank you @Gordon
Most people aren't unproductive. They're productive at things time will erase.
unfortunately Yes,
We tend to measure productivity by how exhausted we are at the end of the day, rather than what we actually moved forward.
Darwin’s schedule works because it forces a boundary between deep thought and shallow execution.
Exactly, and exhaustion is often just a proxy for friction, not progress. Darwin’s structure works less because of the specific hours, and more because it separates modes of work. Deep, compounding thinking is protected from constant task-switching, which is what usually dissolves it.
So many nuggets here
I’m working more of a Darwin model now that I’m distracted by family duties
Curiously, as you suggest , I getting more real lasting work done
Well, I am happy you are enjoying your real lasting work, JOY count too
The Simon quote is where it all comes together, Fafi, because attention poverty is the real diagnosis, and I keep wondering whether more structure is actually the prescription or whether what most of us need is more honesty about what genuinely matters to us. What drew you to pairing those two thinkers?
Simon gives the diagnosis: attention is the scarce resource in an information-rich world. the compounding / perishable / noise framework is really just a way of answering the next question he leaves open: what deserves that scarce attention, and why does so much of it get consumed without accumulating? Structure helps because it forces selection under constraint, but I think your second point is the deeper one. Structure without clarity just optimizes the wrong priorities faster. So the real leverage is honesty about what actually compounds for you, and using structure to protect that, not define it.
Strong framing and a clear central idea, especially around compounding vs noise, but it leans a bit heavy on historical examples without tightening the argument early enough
Thank you Petar, you highlight fair point
I leaned on examples to build the intuition before stating the model, but that does delay orientation. A tighter version would likely surface the compounding / perishable / noise framework much earlier and use the examples as support rather than discovery.
Modern luxury "he walked, rested, read correspondence, and thought without agenda" plus a private chef would be on my list 💙
I am envious 😍
Currently I'm the private chef 🥗🤣
There's a lot of wisdom in this post (!) and, although these days I proceed much more like Darwin, it has some timely reminders to stop feeding several patterns I unconsciously internalized during the course of my working life.
I haven't finished reading all your posts yet but wonder if you've written about American business school/MBA culture. I watched it destroy a regional bakery in the 1990's that was a century old (run successfully by 4 generations of family friends) and nearly do the same not once but three times to a women's clothing business (started by other family friends) that was a pioneer in post-war mail-order merchandizing. (They've also done in plenty of other companies in my native New England and the Pacific NW where I spent a dozen years.)
I see much of what you're diagnosing rooted in that 'priesthood'. In 2010, I recall an assistant dean at the Harvard B school admitting to the Boston Globe that they did not offer a single class, let alone a course, in ethics. Having reached Old Fogeyhood, I consider spreadsheets to be a gateway drug for AI. ;-)
There’s a useful distinction here between tools and dominance.
MBA logic can improve execution, but problems start when it becomes the only lens, when everything gets reduced to scale, efficiency, and comparables, and longer-cycle assets like craft or customer memory get misread as inefficiency. On ethics, it’s less about what’s taught and more about what the system rewards in practice.
Agree 100% except for possibly your last sentence. That touches on social/cultural values (Reagan campaigning that "government is THE problem" [my emphasis]) and the people who set up the given corporate systems in the first place. (Sado-monetarist Milton Friedman absolving corporations of social responsibilities.)
A third factor at that time --1979-81-- was the incursion of increasing numbers of comptrollers and chief accountants into corporate America's C-suites. That change was a regularly discussed topic in Fortune, Forbes, et al. All the bean counters knew was numbers! What about the products?!
It all made for what I consider a perfect storm that turned the Calvinist Protestant Ethic into an ideological imperative whose lurid sunset we're living through now. It will end -- either due to environmental constraints or the new global financial order that will run through China, Asia, Europe and the Global South. I won't be surprised if the Europeans find that working with the Chinese psychologically easier than dealing with the US was over the past 45 years.
The MBAs I worked with in my twenties (almost all were from the top programs; Ivies, Chicago, Stanford, etc, who got their degrees from early 50's to early 70's) were a different breed from the grads of the late 70's onward. I experienced the latter firsthand during my dozen years in banking and credit cards from the mid 90's. The former viewed the world and their work through multiple lenses, not just one. But those were the days when a Liberal Arts/Humanities education was the foundation that set you up for life and study for any advanced degree.
Thanks again for another insight-laden essay!
I figured out that my most productive time is split throughout the day. Ever since doing this my productivity just skyrocketed. Great piece with the breakdown
Thank you Joel
Yes. It's important to sit down and audit where your energy is going. Good productivity techniques spent on the wrong thing will just get you to the wrong place faster.
Exactly Hodman, Efficiency doesn’t fix misalignment, it amplifies it.