Knowledge work and athleticism
On a recent podcast with Andrew Huberman and Cal Newport, they contrast the relatively robust approach athletes have towards maximizing their physical performance against the fairly weak and unstructured approach knowledge workers tend to take towards maximizing the value they create.
Athletes have their performance dialed down to a science between their sleep, diet, and training schedules.
In contrast, many knowledge workers perform tasks throughout the day while sporadically engaging with distractions such as instant messages or apps on their phone which Huberman and Newport consider to be the effective equivalent of an athlete smoking cigarettes.
This begs a couple of questions:
- To what extent are knowledge workers’ output suboptimal, requiring them to put in more time than necessary to accomplish something?
- How much more meaningful work could be accomplished — in less time — if they invested even just 10% more energy into deliberately structuring their approach to work?
There is an interesting notion of athleticism in the context of knowledge work insofar as there is an opportunity to optimize the quality of our work through the deliberate adjustments of our environment and routines — similar to athletes.
Ever constrained by time, it makes sense for us all to strive to be more athletic at the activities we care about.
