Get Lost.

For a short time, this is back around 2013, while I was between jobs (and when aren't we between jobs--even when we're working full-time or double-full-time) I worked with an agency owner, a friend and art director who drove me fairly mad.

While we were "concepting," J. would never look at me. He'd be staring at his screen and moving type or photos or whatever, one pixel this way or one pixel that way.

I realized, I do the same thing. I doodle while in conversation, or do a crossword, or look at a cache of old photos I've stumbled upon.

We do dumb, kind of mindless things, to take our minds off of other high-intensity things. If you're an ordinary runner like I was and you run a marathon, some of the 26.2 miles ain't fleet-footed--they're plodding. They're almost "rote" miles. Ones you use to restore yourself for the tougher ones to come.

Just last week, I read the article above. 

Since the discovery of the wheel, or the spark-inciting flint, human-kind has said to other kinda-humans, "this new technology will make life so much easy. It will eliminate the boring shit you hate doing."

Probably within an axe-length of you right now, no matter where you're reading this, there are a dozen tools that were conceived, built, bought and sold on the premise of being labor-saving devices. Drudgery-eliminators.

A friend told me the other day about an agency wanting to freelance people 20-hours-a-week. You know, they want to pay only for "typing time." They don't want to pay for "thinking time," or "kibbitzing time," or "talking to colleagues time." They consider that downtime.

Here's the bit of the article above that the MBAs who run agencies, who concoct elaborate time-accounting systems and who babble on (unproductively) about productivity don't want to think about, fathom or, heaven forfend, even try to understand.

Or, more succinctly:

The world's "Frederick-Winslow-Taylor-derived" mania for productivity--for Stakhanovite-ness--is misguided and misbegotten. 

I suppose Silicon Gulley's current obsession with 996 is another, even more rancid, slice from the same moldy pizza.

One of the issues of the world today--Hannah Arendt called it the "Banality of Evil"--is the even worse Banality of Bullshit.

Today the world's self-affirming echo chamber is so unescapable that as Mark Twain is said to have said so long ago, "A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes." Today, some tax-negating trillionaire or faux-celebrity can say some asininity and in less time than it takes tump to steal another trillion, a billion willing-executioners are parroting the imbecility on social media.

It becomes believed via repetition. Like stupidisms like "the creator economy," or "AI customer service," or "brave clients."

That's swallowing of bs, aka hooklineandsinkerism, is why every agency went to "conversation-enhancing" open plan workspaces within about 20 minutes of each other. It's why they all issued RTO orders the same week. It's why they all foist the same efficiency gimmicks with conviction and no questioning even when they fly in the face of data and experience.

Once something is repeated enough so it becomes lodged, most people stop questioning it. And despite a million contrary reasons our un-questioning age should be just the opposite. We should be saying "prove it" about 92,000 times a day.

3:18, "Prove it."

I wish one of the $3,000 suits who take one of the 22 black cars waiting outside of office starting 4:30 would read this and write to me. I wish he would tell me about the efficiency they've brought to the ad business and how AI will bring more, simply by eliminating mundane tasks.

Too many technocrats (too many technocrats is a tautology. It's like saying 'too many herpes viruses') fail to understand that the world's most-effective productivity technology is not AI-based. It does not leap fully-formed like Athena from Zeus' head, and is not the product of binary code.

It's leaving your phone on your desk, throwing on a light-sweater and taking a two-mile walk in the middle of the day. Preferably near a body of water, without music and alone.

Let's get lost.