We need a new operating system.
 
We need one that is specifically dedicated to knowledge work. So I’m going to point you to one that already exists. When we start talking about ways to manage our information, the tech is really important, and I’ll explain why. But the tech is dealt with and managed through some sort of overall plan, and some tech is better than other tech, and we’ll talk about all these sorts of things.
 
When we think about an operating system, it’s both a set of tools and some mapping of those tools to a process or flow. And so that’s what I think we need, and that’s what we’ve developed with Attention Compass.
 
When I say we’ve got bad tech, I mean it’s not been updated – it uses archaic metaphors. (I talk about metaphors in a previous episode – episode 40, if you want to know more.) These metaphors impede our ability to do what we want to do or what we need to do with the information that we use the tools for.
 
 
I’ll explore the relationship between attention and information, because they’re so tightly linked that all of the tools that we utilize are information tools in nature. And that’s going to be important, because the ways the current tool set fails us are that they don’t let us work with information the way we should best work with information.
 
Now this is an attention show, attention compass, and our attention is absolutely critical, for reasons that I’ve talked about previously – like episode 57 where we talk about time versus attention. So I’m going to try to explain or interpret the relationship between attention and information. We want to manage our attention well, so I’ll relate attention back into the nature of information. This will help us understand why our tools are not designed to manage information in the ways that best support our attention management.
 
 
Two reasons attention is important
  • one – how we direct our will (what to DO)
    • When we’re making or doing something in the world, we’re using our attention, directing it to some situation in the world.
  • Two – our attention is how we engage with information
    • Attention to consume information, to do the work of ‘transmuting’ information, to encode the information
What we need to be able to do with information
  • Find information
  • Utilize some media to consume the information
  • Store/encode the resulting information
Why are the tools important
  • Information doesn’t exist by itself.
  • It is easy to make the argument that, without tools or tech of some sort, information could not be comprehended.
  • Information is always encoded in some sort of medium. In particular, when we USE information, it has to be encoded.
  • Encoding involves one or more media
  • Media and its surrounding tools are technology. Media involves tools. Tools involve technology, and skill.
Things around and about tools that get in our way
  • Tools are our (imperfect) inventions.
  • Tools are developed to be used in certain ways in certain environments with certain materials
  • Metadata
  • The “Application Limitation” in modern OS
A new Operating System for Knowledge Work
  • Attention Compass
  • Handle the Metadata problem
  • Handle the “Application Limitation”
At the end of the day, when we look at knowledge work, we recognize that four things are involved: attention, information, tasks, and time. They are interrelated and cannot be dealt with in isolation. Many people focus on “Time Management”, but time is the junior partner of the four.
 
When we deal with these four things effectively, we can say that we Do Busy Right – lower stress and greater productivity with less waste. Attention Compass is the operating system to Do Busy Right.