Most White-Collar Work Is Now Utterly Meaningless

It's a slow demise into meaninglessness, fueled by the problem of "iteration" vs. "communication."

That chart above is from some new-ish Microsoft report on the future of work — I’ve read parts of the report, but not all of it, and I can only assume that the solution at the end of the report is “Buy Office Online” — and while it doesn’t seem that bad in terms of 57% vs. 43%, you need to also remember what “work” is.

Ideally, you’re supposed to complete tasks and create things — services, products, experiences — for people, in exchange for money. That’s kinda the base-level description of the economy. Instead, it seems like most people nowadays are “communicating,” and if you’ve ever worked inside an office for 11 seconds, you know that the “communication” often isn’t very strong or coherent, so in the 57% of time you’re doing that (which I bet is higher), what are you really doing?

I think you have a couple of different things at play here: