Why does defining work play such a fundamental role in your life?

Most of your life is spent doing “work”. However, the corporate-style work environment is not made for humans. It feels like school, where you, an adult “student” works hard, takes lunch breaks, and eagerly waits for the weekend to escape the torture.

When we morphed

In the industrial age, we began to view ourselves in mechanical terms: ramping up business, digging deeper, and fueling up.

In the digital age, we now use computer-related terms to describe ourselves: multitasking, life hacks, and processing data.

Here’s the issue: We are projecting machine features into humans. This is called mechanomorphism. Treating humans as machines.

It’s no surprise that we struggle to keep up, especially when we’re competing with computers.

Flip the Script

Instead of viewing yourself as a machine, start defining your work as a human activity that involves the things that you want to do.

This way work will start becoming more “play” and less “work”.

The way to start is by outsourcing memorization.

“Memory is what computers were invented for in the first place. In 1945, when Vannevar Bush imagined the “memex,” on which computers were based, he described it as a digital filing cabinet—an external memory. And even though they can now accomplish much more than data retrieval, everything computers do—all of their functions—simply involves moving things from one part of their memory to another.” - Excerpt From Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

Once you outsource your mechanical tasks to software, you begin to get a taste of your humanity back.

Don’t become the Robot

The basic idea is you shouldn’t do mechanical tasks yourself whenever you can use a tool to do those tasks for you.

• Reminders for tasks
• Routine checklists
• Tracking goals

When to be the robot: Engage in tasks that are novel, untested, or seemingly impossible for robots to handle, or where tackling a finite level of complexity by getting hands-on is beneficial.

When to use the robot: Utilize automation for tasks that are highly standardized, where manual intervention might not be necessary.

Post-Work Culture

How many problems can be linked back to outdated work concepts?

The economy, jobs, education, and quality of life. In all these areas where we struggle to make progress, the fundamental nature of work remains unquestioned.

For work to change, we need completely new ways of being organized. While technology is powerful, it’s not very useful on its own. The tough part is changing everything around it like the mental models, habits, and perspectives.

A new definition of work must place humans at its core. Work should not cause suffering.People aren’t just tools, they’re the foundation of a prosperous society.