Why Do Better Tools Make Me Worse at My Job? (w/ David Epstein) | Monday Advice

In 1984, a former physicist-turned business guru named Eliahu Goldratt published a strange book. It was called The Goal, and it was what Goldratt described as a business novel. Now this book follows the fate of a fictional plant manager named Alex Rogo, who meets an enigmatic physicist who, through a series of long Socratic dialogues, helps Rogo turn around the profitability of his plant. It also features a storyline about Rogo's marriage as well as a sort of extended detour to a Boy Scout camping trip.

I I told you this is a strange book. But here's the thing the goal went on to sell more than 10 million copies. Why? Because contained within those novelistic plot lines is a critically important idea that Goldrot calls the theory of constraints. Now I've come to believe that this theory helps explain a paradox that I talk about often on this show.

The reality that digital tools designed to make us more productive often end up instead just making us more busy. Now, if you want to know why this happened and how you can avoid it, how in other words to shift from busy to better, then you need to understand the theory of constraints. Well, today is Monday, which means it's time for an advice episode of this show, so this is the perfect opportunity to dive deeper into the question. of how this old theory can solve a lot of new problems in productivity. All right, here's my plan.

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