At face value, what you’ve written makes sense. It depends massively on the structure of the job of course. But if you have a flat amount of non-core tasks and a much larger number of core tasks, then… yeah, you are right.
I think that one of the challenges is that many of the non-core tasks require a lot of context, so you can’t just outsource them or hire an administrative assistant to handle them. They tend to be tightly tied to other tasks, or at least to your thinking and knowledge (such as a civil servant that has to write a report on what work she has accomplished this week). And I imagine there are some scenarios where it would be feasible to outsource the task but organizational rules and culture don’t allow it (such as a academic researcher delegating all teaching responsibilities to someone else). And if I need to communicate information verbally to several people, could they all send their assistants to attend the meeting instead of coming themselves? I suppose they could, but that means that when we make a decision the assistant needs to be empowered with decision-making authority, and the assistant’s judgement and context might be inferior to the manager’s.
My reaction to this line of thinking is basically that there are lots of challenges and impracticalities and aspects of various situations that make it not very feasible. But for situations that don’t have much of those barriers: yeah, you are right. 👍
Strong agree. By no means am I suggesting organizations outsource or cancel more of their non-core work. It’s hard for organizations to define those, non-core work needs a lot of context, and a lot of grunt work is genuinely “real work” that people don’t appreciate.
But from an individual POV, I wanted to make sense of the feeling that extra hours could sometimes be increasing in value even when I was very tired. And I think it’s this dynamic with some tasks or career goals where the last N% is where most of the rewards are. So spending more time once you get there is a big deal.
I believe Claudia Goldin calls these “greedy jobs”.
At face value, what you’ve written makes sense. It depends massively on the structure of the job of course. But if you have a flat amount of non-core tasks and a much larger number of core tasks, then… yeah, you are right.
I think that one of the challenges is that many of the non-core tasks require a lot of context, so you can’t just outsource them or hire an administrative assistant to handle them. They tend to be tightly tied to other tasks, or at least to your thinking and knowledge (such as a civil servant that has to write a report on what work she has accomplished this week). And I imagine there are some scenarios where it would be feasible to outsource the task but organizational rules and culture don’t allow it (such as a academic researcher delegating all teaching responsibilities to someone else). And if I need to communicate information verbally to several people, could they all send their assistants to attend the meeting instead of coming themselves? I suppose they could, but that means that when we make a decision the assistant needs to be empowered with decision-making authority, and the assistant’s judgement and context might be inferior to the manager’s.
My reaction to this line of thinking is basically that there are lots of challenges and impracticalities and aspects of various situations that make it not very feasible. But for situations that don’t have much of those barriers: yeah, you are right. 👍
Strong agree. By no means am I suggesting organizations outsource or cancel more of their non-core work. It’s hard for organizations to define those, non-core work needs a lot of context, and a lot of grunt work is genuinely “real work” that people don’t appreciate.
But from an individual POV, I wanted to make sense of the feeling that extra hours could sometimes be increasing in value even when I was very tired. And I think it’s this dynamic with some tasks or career goals where the last N% is where most of the rewards are. So spending more time once you get there is a big deal.
I believe Claudia Goldin calls these “greedy jobs”.