Remote collaboration is thriving, thank you very much, thanks to digital tools and reliable broadband; you can totally motivate yourself with small steps and self-compassion; and finding the right tech to defeat your tech addiction. It’s Friday! 

Async? YOU stink! 

The research on worker productivity is all over the place like germs in a sneeze. A recent study in unassailable Nature, for instance, seems to document major harms to innovation and creativity among fully remote teams. But Gleb Tsipursky points out that we haven’t been reading the fine print. The data shows a more complicated picture with revolutionary changes in the nature and efficacy of remote work occurring in the 2010s and onward, changes that overlap with better digital infrastructure and the development of new tools for collaboration. 

“Between 2000 and 2010, this innovation gap starts to shrink dramatically, dwindling to a mere 1%. But the real plot twist emerges post-2015. The previously negative coefficient, a marker of the remote work disadvantage, not only zeroes out but takes a surprising leap into positive territory.” Tsipursky argues that with virtual asynchronous brainstorming, remote teams can collaborate productively, and he’s optimistic that AI will pitch in with its own set of creativity-boosting ideas. 

– Fortune

I Prefer Not to

Has January got you feeling the Bartleby of it all? WIRED has some advice for getting past GO in 2024 (if not collecting $200). The shortlist: Show yourself some compassion, track your wins, and protect your time (we’re looking at you, Microsoft Outlook).  

But if you’re anything like me, reading the words “remind yourself of core goals” sends a signal to your hypothalamus to curl up in a ball and go back to sleep. Go-getters may live longer, but we won’t tell if you’d rather head to bed and wake up in March. 

– Wired

Too Much Pasta :/

The classic children’s book Strega Nona illustrates the perils of mixing short-term rewards with powerful technology. When the local witch goes out of town, her gofer Big Anthony tries out a spell and accidentally floods his whole town with never ending pasta. Facing some pretty angry townspeople, Strega Nona hands Big Anthony a fork and tells him to tuck in.

When it comes to online distraction, we’re sure boiling a lot of pasta. We’re anxious, distracted, and packed to the gills with pisghetti. As a wise woman once said, it’s time to slow the fork down. 

Enter digital minimalism. A burgeoning array of entrepreneurs are ready to sell you some slow forks. These new tools are the negative image of the run-a-small-country-from-your-device ethos of our current smartphones. There’s a heavy emphasis on e-ink here, from the text-and-call-only style of the Light Phone II to the 80s-word processor look of the Astrohaus Freewrite. And of course, there’s even  – gasp! – new interest in paper tools, like a pricey Amish-made take on the bullet journal. 

We like to think we’re smarter than our tools, but the human brain is less than 100,000 years old and 99% of those years were spent in environments where the most sophisticated tech was the ability to start fires. It might seem absurd to fight tech with tech, but maybe there’s something to having tools that meet you where you are. 

– WSJ

ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNETS

YESTERYEAR TECH OF THE WEEK

“As soon as a man gets used to one thing, by golly someone wants to take it away from you.”

See ya next week, 

– The EiT crew at Status Hero 🫡