Reading :: Counterproductive

Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy
by Melissa Gregg

Full disclosure: For some years now, I've been conducting a one-day workshop on time management, based in part on my own empirical studies over the last 25 years, and in part on sources in management, psychology, neuropsychology, sociology, and anthropology. The goal is to give people a broad view of why their time is more fragmented now than ever before, to provide some basic theory about how people mediate their own actions via texts and other representations, and to discuss how they might develop their own mediatory strategies at the individual, small group, and organizational levels. I've presented shorter versions of this workshop to academics, medical doctors, research groups, and various others. People who take the workshop generally find it rewarding. They single out aspects such as taking a step back to figure out their overall goals; exploring different approaches and strategies; learning how and when to say no to obligations; and understanding how their work and text systems interact with those of others.  More than that, they express relief: they come away from the workshop with a better understanding of why they feel pressures from work and home life, and they have a better sense of how to deal with these pressures beyond simply reacting to them. 

So I'm hardly a disinterested party when it comes to reading this book. That being said, I was disappointed in Counterproductive, which "explores how productivity emerged as a way to think about workplace performance at the turn of the twentieth century and its ongoing consequences for the administration of labor today" (p.3). "Counterproductive shows how time mastery became a defining quality of professionals over an extended historical period, remaining constant through successive waves of managerial discourse" (p.4). Gregg (correctly) notes that the focus on time management is related to increasing worker precarity (p.6) — although in my view she does not quite get the connection, as I'll discuss below. Gregg ultimately considers the focus on productivity to be pointless due to the weakness of labor organization (p.8). 

Let's review Gregg's argument first, then I'll discuss the problems I have with it. Ultimately, I found the book valuable, not for its insights per se so much as how it forced me to articulate things about time management for myself.

First, Gregg's argument. Gregg presents it in three parts. 

In part I, she "tackles the legacy of time-management methods introduced by turn-of-the-twentieth-century progressivists to optimize work in the office and factory," beginning with Lilian Gilbreth's time-and-motion studies. She calls out Gilbreth and others for their "covert reliance on delegated labor both in and outside the home" (p.12 -- Lilian Gibreth had servants). Also in Part I, Gregg notes the "gendered dynamics" in early management theory and productivity literature (p.12). 

In part II, she analyzes contemporary time management books and productivity apps, arguing that productivity became "a way of life for knowledge professionals seeking affective security amid job volatility" (p.13). She adds, "My reading reinforces how time-management instruction and adherence have become a necessary form of immaterial labor in an information economy, training workers to embrace their flexibility" (p.15). 

In part III, she examines "the infatuation with mindfulness taking hold in technology and corporate cultures in recent years" (p.15). She argues that "the turn to mindfulness can be seen as a response to the decline in collective opportunities to experience ritual in the workplace" (p.15). 

She concludes with "a set of recommendations for post-work productivity" (p.17). One specific example is that of coworking spaces, which "demarcate the move away from company life to something more playful and free" (p.133). 

Where to start?

Let's start with a methodological note. To grossly oversimplify, I tend to think of research in the social sciences as belonging to one of two basic stances. In Stance 1, we ask people what they think. In Stance 2, we tell them what they think. 

Personally, I do most of my research in Stance 1: I interview people to get their perspectives and have them articulate their motivations, I observe them as they do things, I pick up the specific texts and other artifacts they use, and I turn these into an integrated understanding of their work. Usually I conduct some form of member check—that is, I bring my conclusions back to them and see if what I've produced fairly represents what they are experiencing. 

Gregg is doing her research in Stance 2: She reads texts and analyzes apps, then characterizes these as having a coherent message that represents the ideas, concepts, and concerns of the people who read and use them. She does not ask these people whether her conclusions match their lived experience. Stance 2 is in many ways more satisfactory for the individual researcher, since it allows them to avoid collecting feedback and therefore to avoid having to deal with any pushback that might complicate their conclusions. But the limitations are obvious.

I think we see some of those limitations throughout the book. For instance, Gregg draws a straight line from time-and-motion studies (in which consultants observed manual workers, then reconstructed their motions to make them more efficient) to productivity texts (in which managers are given advice on self-structuring their time to make themselves more effective). These are two very different things: in time-and-motion studies, workers are micromanaged by someone else; in productivity texts, managers are given tools to structure their own time and work. 

Equating these two functions allows Gregg to claim a direct lineage between the two. But the 20th century is a story of great change in how work was organized, due in part to information and communication technologies, which drove organizational changes, as well as an explosion in education and increasing automation. Consequently, work became more fragmented (and, yes, more precarious), and more importantly, people began to own their own work—that is, we saw fewer jobs that could be micromanaged through time-and-motion studies, and more jobs that required self-structuring. The vanguards included executive management, of course, but also ... housewives, a group that Gregg notes without catching the import (p.23). We can add traveling salespeople and independent contractors, who similarly are given work objectives but are allowed wide latitude in how to achieve these (i.e., command, but not control). They have high discretion over how they conduct their time, and they consequently carry more responsibility. And although I have listed four specific groups here, due to work trends such as projectification and outsourcing (and the precarity that comes with these), this trend continues. This is why Drucker's classic The Effective Executive continues to enjoy readership, and a much broader readership than just executives. In a sense, even those of us who are not in an executive position are functioning as executives—that is, no one is going to structure our time for us, and we have to figure it out for ourselves. 

Incidentally, this point also suggests the solution to a mystery that Gregg brings up several times: why time management is so often compared to athletics. Gregg maintains that athletics is inherently competitive, and this competition orientation is reflected in time management, in which people assert their status by delegating difficult parts of their jobs to others. She warrants this reading with a reference to Sloterdijk (p.138). But athleticism is not inherently competitive (at least I hope not—every morning I run an exceedingly slow two miles, and I don't compare my times with others). Athletics, however, is one of the most common experiences in self-discipline in the US school system. (Is this how people read the athletics analogy in the time management literature? I don't know, I haven't asked them—but to be fair, this is a blog review, not a book in which I confidently ascribe views to people.)

One strategy for self-structuring is to figure out how to delegate. Gregg bristles at this trend, which she sees as judging value of tasks based on status. But one of the sources discussing delegation is The Effective Executive, in which Drucker (reasonably, I think) argues that the executive must figure out what they alone can do, excel at that, and delegate the rest. Just as most of us don't grow our own food or make our own shoes, most of us identify tasks that don't fit in our wheelhouse and delegate them to a specialist—or automate. When I ask an electrician to rewire a faulty outlet, it's not because the task is beneath me, it's because I know they can do a better job, keep the wiring up to code, and avoid getting electrocuted. The electrician will be more effective. And if I can delegate this work to the electrician, I can turn back to the tasks that only I can do, such as teaching my classes or writing my research articles. I'll be more effective too. This is not "elite" (pp.95-96) but commonplace—and, I would contend, common sense.

Gregg goes on to argue that time management is a recursive distraction from identifying a worthwhile basis of work as a source for spiritual fulfillment (p.96), and argues that time management is "an epistemology without an ontology," a way of life, "religious devotion" (p.98) with "spiritual valences" when taken to its "logical extreme" (p.99). Here is where I think she could have really benefited from interviews with actual people, who (at least in my experience and in my field studies over the past 25 years) are just trying to get through the day, be effective in their jobs, and save more time for their home life. Yes, they are grappling with precarity, but I don't see these knowledge workers as becoming devotees to a new religion or even considering time management to be an epistemology.

In the conclusion, as noted, Gregg sees coworking as a hope for the future. Unlike Gregg, I have actually interviewed coworkers and coworking space proprietors, and I keep up with the research literature on coworking — much of which emphasizes the inherent precarity in coworking spaces. Coworkers have not checked out of time management. They tend to be independent contractors, dependent contractors, small business owners, remote workers, and others for whom it is critical to structure their own work and manage their own time. Although the coworking movement has often claimed that it is changing work, coworkers are hardly saying goodbye to time management—quite the opposite. 

To sum up: I was not a fan of this book's argument or methodology. The book did, however, allow me to really think through  and articulate some of the things I have seen in the time management literature, so I still found it valuable. You might as well. 

Reading :: Carbon Democracy

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil
By Timothy Mitchell

Just a brief review for this book. The author notes that oil is often blamed for destabilizing democracies. However,  he says, the relationship is more complicated: mass democracy, he argues, emerged due to fossil fuels. That is, when England transitioned to coal, coal's properties (including where it was found and how it was extracted and transported) allowed coal miners to create chokepoints that they could control, thus exercising political power. The history of coal and oil extraction in the years since has been characterized by a struggle over who would control the extraction and flow of fossil fuels. 

Mitchell characterizes his analysis as Latourean and symmetrical. Although he does make some attempts to carry out a symmetrical analysis, it is not—at least, it doesn't seem to me—Latourean or symmetrical overall. Rather, it reads like a straight history in which individual and collective human actors are attributed with agency and nonhuman actors are typically acted upon. Furthermore, the story is simplified. For instance, I think Mitchell makes a plausible case that controlling chokepoints could allow miners to exercise political power—but that doesn't explain why this power took the form of mass democracy in particular. What other trends, causes, etc. contributed to this particular form of government over others? Why did parliamentary democracy do well in comparison to fascism and communism in the 20th century? Laying the origin and success of democracy at the feet of fossil fuel deposits seems oversimplified. 

I still recommend the book as a fascinating history of fossil fuel development, but only as part of the story. 

Reading :: The Constitution of Algorithms

The Constitution of Algorithms
By Florian Jaton

In this book, Jaton uses a Latourean approach to examine how algorithms are constituted. I found the introduction to be really interesting -- the case studies less so.

Let me set the scene, since it may be affecting how I read the book. I actually read this book a few months ago, in PDF format, and added comments to it in Google Drive. Since then, UT has announced that we no longer have unlimited storage space on GDrive, and it turns out that I was far over the new quota. So I have moved all of my PDFs to my UT space on Box.com, which is unlimited—for now. Unfortunately, although the comments transferred over to Box, I can only see them by mousing over the page—there's no visual indicator that the page has a comment until I happen to mouse over it. That makes writing this review more difficult.

Fortunately, most of the comments are in Chapter 1, which—to my mind at least—is more valuable than the case studies that support it. In Chapter 1, Jaton considers the question of algorithms. From a Deleuzian standpoint, they have fluidity, swiftness, and distributivity, and can be characterized as devices: They circulate and link up sparse actants quickly (p.6). STS scholars have examined algorithms' workings and agency, but Jaton is more interested in how "unrelated entities (e.g., documents, people desires) ... come into contact to form, in the end, devices we may call 'algorithms'" (p.8). Jaton sees algorithms as durable, mobile, and carrying characteristics of other actants, just as Goody's graphical objects, Latour and Woolgar's inscriptions, and Dorothy Smith's documents (p.13). 

Jaton proposes to study these in terms of constitution rather than construction. The term constitution evokes a political settlement, and constitutions can be amended (p.17). To explore the question, Jaton introduces his ethnography of a computer science laboratory. 

Although I usually enjoy ethnographies, I confess that I was not that interested in this one. It reads a bit like Laboratory Life, but whereas LL provided momentously new insights to me, this ethnography mainly seemed to transfer those insights to a new activity. I did learn a lot about how algorithms are developed, but the insights felt small and incremental. As the author notes in the conclusion, "these empirical elements [from the case studies] might seem quite tenuous when compared with the ogre to  whom this book is explicitly addressed: algorithms and their growing contribution to the shaping of the collective world" (p.283). I agree. Although Chapter 1 is well worth reading, I don't think the case chapters measure up to it. 

Should you read this book? If you're interested in understanding where algorithms come from, or exploring them from an STS standpoint, definitely—but spend most of your time in Chapter 1.

Reading :: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices
By Peter F. Drucker

I picked up this thick (839pp.) book in a thrift store. Although I have plenty of sticky notes in the margins, I'll write a short review. 

If you've read much Drucker, there aren't too many surprises here. Drucker draws on scholarship, but also many, many case studies, to illustrate his thoughts on the tasks of management, the manager, and top management. Here, I'll just skip around, picking out some quotable principles. 

Early in the book, Drucker argues that management is practice and performance, not science or knowledge (p.17); it is a social function, socially accountable and culturally embedded (p.18). 

Drucker alleges that "Productivity means that balance between all factors of production will give the greatest output for the smallest effort"—not productivity per worker, not productivity per hour of work. Those measures are still grounded in manual labor and "still express the mechanistic fallacy—of which Marx, to the permanent disability of Marxian economics, is the last important dupe—that all human achievement could eventually be measured in units of muscle effort" (p.68). Instead, Drucker argues, greater productivity is achieved by doing away with muscle effort: via "capital equipment, that is, mechanical energy" or via knowledge (p.68).

Skipping forward, Drucker discusses the shift to knowledge work: "A larger and larger proportion of the labor force in all developed countries does not work with its hands, whether as skilled or unskilled workers, but with ideas, concepts, theories. ... The tool of the file clerk is not hammer or sickle, but the alphabet, that is, a high-level abstraction and a symbol rather than a thing" (p.170). Importantly, knowledge workers are only productive via "self-motivation and self-direction" (p.176; cf. p.279). Indeed, he considers the alphabet to be "the most advanced, most perfect example of scientific management" (p.182). 

Of course, there's plenty not to like about this book as well. Drucker, writing in the early 1970s, seems uninterested in the Civil Rights movement except to the extent that it affects management and the labor pool—resulting in many jolts as, for instance, Drucker characterizes "pre-industrial people, whether peasants in developing countries, the former craftsmen in the mills of England in the early years of the Industrial Revolution, or Blacks from the ghettos of the American city today" (p.192). This is, to put it mildly, not a very nuanced understanding of the respective situations and cultural development of the three groups mentioned. 

Should you pick up this book? I mean, if you can get it for a dollar at a thrift store, or if you're a Drucker completist, or if you want to learn a lot about how management was understood in the 1970s, sure. But if you have already read the more popular Drucker books, I think this one won't provide many new insights. 

Reading :: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
By Oliver Sacks

Like Cheaper by the Dozen, this book came out of the Little Free Library down the street. Amazon lists this version at $46 new, $20 used, so free is quite the bargain.

Sacks was inspired by the work of A.R. Luria, a member of the Vygotsky-Luria Circle and pioneer in neuropsychology, and no stranger to readers of this blog. Sacks calls Luria's works "the greatest neurological treasure of our time" (p.235). So, when Luria actually asked Sacks to write detailed cases about his right-hemisphere brain damage cases, just as Luria had written cases about left-hemisphere cases (p.5), he did. Like Luria's The Man with a Shattered World, these cases, are detailed, poignant, and good representatives of Luria's "romantic science" approach. And I was personally delighted to see so many of Luria's works being referenced, including his twin study. Leontiev and Zaporozhets' book Rehabilitation of Hand Function also gets a mention.

The stories in the book are all fascinating. I'll just mention one. In Ch.7, Sacks reports treating an elderly patient with Parkinson's disease whose vestibular system had been affected. He consequently walked with an unconscious tilt. When he was shown a film of himself walking, he was astounded, but quickly developed a solution: a pair of glasses with a spirit level (or bubble level) built into the frame. The level gave him instant feedback to help him compensate for his vestibular difficulties. Although it was distracting at first, in a couple of weeks this feedback soon became integrated into his actions "like keeping an eye on the instrument panel of one's car" (p.76). What a great example of how people can compensate with external mediation, and how that mediator can become integrated into a new system.

Reading :: Cheaper by the Dozen

Cheaper by the Dozen
By Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

 Just a quick acknowledgement here that I read this book recently. I read this classic a few times in my childhood, and when I saw it in the Little Free Library down the street, I decided to pick it up and enjoy it again. 

But I didn't just pick it up out of nostalgia. This book was mentioned in another reading that I had recently completed, a book on time management -- which I'll review soon.