Original link: https://yufree.cn/cn/2023/09/23/implus-working/
I have always wanted to find a word to describe mental work. When I looked through my notes, I found that I had left the phrase “pulse time management” somewhere. I suddenly felt that the word “pulse” was very appropriate. The repetitive, redundant and diplomatic procedural work in today’s mental work will gradually be replaced by codes including generative code. In fact, for desk-bound intellectual workers, in the long run, they need to adapt to pulse-based work. Work.
A considerable number of current mental workers do not actually do creative mental work. Many of them are large processes or step-by-step procedures, which can be regarded as a mental version of the assembly line. For example, our institute assigns administrative secretaries to researchers. Here, one secretary serves three research groups. Every week, they will make a weekly report to the research group, listing the arrangements for the group meetings and individual meetings of the week. Give presentations that are invited or considered important by the topic leader. Then there is the need to receive emails from research team members every day, such as requests for leave, reimbursement, agenda cancellation and other chores, and then adjust the schedule. Many secretaries have directly changed to working remotely after the epidemic, and only come to make arrangements when they need to receive visitors. In fact, Arrangements will be made remotely, and our department secretary will move directly to North Carolina. It seems that their work intensity has decreased after the epidemic, but in fact, after the isolation policy, people discovered that many previous processes can be omitted, which seems to improve efficiency. After all, the fewer links on the assembly line, the higher the efficiency. However, I think that in the future, when this secretary retires, he may not recruit a new secretary, because the other secretary can be responsible for a few more research groups. Anyway, the efficiency is now higher, but it only reduces the personal working time and does not convert it into a higher level. capital utilization efficiency. To put it bluntly, short-term technological progress actually benefits individuals. Improvements in overall efficiency can only be seen in the long term, or you may turn secretarial work into outsourced temporary workers from the beginning.
It is entirely possible that this kind of mental assembly line for running programs can be replaced by software. For example, there is a new research group. The research leader uses some time management software to automatically send reminders and weekly reports. The monthly cost is 20 dollars, which is much lower than the one or two thousand dollars spent by the other two research group leaders to maintain a full-time administrative secretary. . Then the extra money can be used to conduct more experiments and even recruit more students. Of course, this does not mean that the higher the financial efficiency in scientific research, the higher the output will be. It just means that there are slightly more opportunities. This form of career replacement is what intellectual workers need to face. The financial reporting systems of many small businesses have actually made the presence of many accountants weaker and weaker. Yes, you do know how to operate these reporting systems, but if you follow the software instructions, there is a high probability that generative artificial intelligence can also understand it. From the perspective of the boss, if the funds are sufficient, it can naturally support the idle people, but when the economy goes down and it is necessary to reduce costs and increase efficiency, it will be a different story. In fact, many low-end programmer positions also face the same problem. It turns out that many needs require real people to respond. But if the product manager can use ChatGPT, he can say on his resume that he knows programming, and when he encounters problems, he will go to ChatGPT, and there is no need for communication. communication costs. Although there are still many programming needs, the demand side no longer needs programmers. The standard of technical talents that are actually left behind may be higher. The original brainpower assembly line may be compressed to one person. Of course, this person’s salary is three times that of one person, but originally this may be employment opportunities for ten people. From an enterprise perspective, the most Can reduce expenses by 70%.
Of course, this kind of mental work is not the focus of today’s discussion. What I want to talk about today is the work experience of the remaining person. If you’re in a creative field, you’ll know that it’s not something that can be programmed. The scenario of “planting one grain of millet in spring and harvesting ten thousand grains in autumn” is consistent with the brain of an agricultural society, but ask any PhD student in experimental subjects whether effort is directly proportional to harvest. Don’t ask about the master’s degree here. The difficulty of most master’s degree topics can be ignored. This degree is worth 24k pure silver in academia and is meaningless. Many people design a step-by-step plan, but the execution process is all unplanned options. I once read a doctoral thesis. There was a picture in the middle where the data for one month was abnormal. After reading it, it said that the laboratory decoration this month caused water intrusion. Abnormal, but this experiment lasts two years, so the abnormality cannot be repeated. The fact that this paper passed shows that the defense committee is humane. However, because of this anomaly, the scientific significance of the results of his paper is almost zero. This is not because of lack of ability, but simply bad luck.
A flash of inspiration in creative work is just a flash. It doesn’t take a brain to write it down and execute it, but the problem is that many people don’t have this flash. I often see people with papers in their resume suddenly bursting out in one year. This is a mistake. This is actually the majority. Those who can only flash once a year are at the level of research groups or research institutes. On an individual level, if you flash once in your life, you have a high probability of landing. If you flash twice, you are considered a successful person. I have never seen someone flash three times. Note that I am talking about an individual. The research team is very strong in the field. If a student is lucky and has a good foundation, it is still possible to make a mistake once a year. By default in the research field, PhDs and postdocs are the primary productive forces, and project leaders are mainly responsible for begging. To expect them to come up with new ideas is better than buying lottery tickets. This status quo has also led to pulse-type work. First, process-based permutations and combinations of work are used to maintain operation, and then a sudden breakthrough will occur. If others buy in, a high point will be formed at the high point, but more people will return to the daily process and try again. wrong.
I never believe that any discovery or creation is made after more than ten years of accumulation, because what is accumulated for more than ten years is data, and it actually doesn’t take long to discover and extract information. Of course, this depends on fate. Some people spend a long time making a bunch of rubbish with the same data, while others may discover new situations through exploration. The former is the normal state of assembly line mental work, and the latter is the state of creative work. Innovation is unlikely to be produced through assembly line operations, but intellectual workers who cannot do assembly line operations may not even be able to find a job. For creative mental workers, you must first prove that you are a waste who understands the assembly line before you can survive in a standardized modern society. Although this is a bit darkly humorous, the current modern system of mental work represented by the assembly line naturally suppresses creativity, and innovation does not Always a blessing, it can also be a nightmare. I also have doubts about the idea that quantitative change induces qualitative change. Only when there is a qualitative change can you define the previous step as a quantitative change, but defining qualitative change is inherently a metaphysics.
More mental work time is spent waiting, such as collecting data, data preprocessing, communicating with collaborators, chatting and gossiping, listening to podcasts and watching videos… Then as soon as the data comes out, it enters a state of stress, with high-intensity exploratory work for several days. After analyzing the data and getting the conclusion, rest and return to the daily routine. This is a typical pulse-type work. It is difficult to define it by an eight-hour work system. Simply recording working hours may be more than ten hours a day, but only ten minutes are productive, and the rest of the time is essentially spent anxiously waiting. But the interesting part is that these ten minutes will indeed produce extremely high efficiency, which can cover the efficiency loss caused by fishing. Fishing is even tied to efficiency. Some people just rely on the shame of fishing to promote high-efficiency production. out. This pulsating state is exclusive to creative mental work. Many inspirations and opportunities either don’t come, or come all at once, and basically don’t appear stably.
So how to deal with it? There is no good way, just calm down. Pulse-type work can cause high stress in the short term, but it is not lasting, or our brains cannot be excited for a long time and then return to baseline. If you feel that you have been under high pressure for a long time, you must seek psychological counseling or counseling, otherwise it is not surprising that you will go crazy. I have observed that my favorite thing to do when I am in a short-term high-pressure situation is actually to do repetitive manual labor, and the effect is not bad. At the end of the month, when I have to write a research letter, I will do all the housework at home. Even if the creative labor results are not good, at least the results are not good. The house is cleaner. But I can predict that as long as you are doing creative mental work, you cannot expect the project progress bar to advance at a constant speed. Getting stuck or suddenly advancing is the norm. If you don’t like this kind of work with ups and downs of pressure, there are still other repetitive processes at the moment. It is possible to engage in chemical work, but it is difficult to say in the long term. If you can’t manage your emotions well or value your emotions, don’t choose creative mental work. It’s important to stay calm under pressure. Otherwise, it’s hard to say whether your body can withstand the emotional pulse. Of course, you’re an artist. That’s another matter.
Here are some ways to maintain homeostasis and even pursue flow through meditation. I feel that if you have good self-control, you don’t need to resort to these methods, and there is no need to expect these methods to bring you long-term benefits. It’s not easy to suppress distracting thoughts through external actions. It’s no big deal if you can’t suppress them. You’re not trying to become an immortal. Just don’t be obsessed with finding solutions. Some problems actually don’t need to be solved or don’t need to be solved. They will disappear on their own after age or that high-pressure stage. Blindly pursuing high-efficiency work has little significance for creative mental work. Efficiency and creativity are not things in the same system. I thought of those superstitious pigeons. They were originally fed randomly, but the pigeons’ brains still forced them to discover some fundamentals. There is no law. Many times when I read articles that introduce tools or efficient experiences to white-collar workers in the workplace, I feel like I am looking at pigeons. I feel that they have summarized a bunch of rules that are either unused or non-existent and then swear by their importance. As mentioned in the first few paragraphs, the improvement in personal efficiency may just give more time to fish. Maybe what these people really need is a sense of accomplishment or the approval of others. I think these are all false. Do what you should do well and finish it. External pressure has no reason to affect your sleep. Just have a clear conscience.
Speaking of which, I have also noticed a pulse of blog traffic recently. After checking, I guessed that the electronic version of “Guide to the North of Modern Scientific Research” has been released. Let me explain here that the current electronic versions of Jingdong, Get, and WeChat Reading are electronic versions of the publisher’s paper version. They are different from the open source version I have on GitHub, but the difference is not big. I said at the beginning of the year that I would update the open source version this summer, but I underestimated the complexity of the current work. I will try to update it within the year. The main content should be about artificial intelligence. I’m very glad that this book was published last year. It was a worry at the end of the pre-artificial intelligence era. If it had been delayed until this year, I would have used ChatGPT to polish it a lot. It might have read like the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I should still write the subsequent updates myself, but I basically admit that GPT-4 is better than me in many aspects.
There is no way, after all, I am a remnant of the old era. There is no ship to carry me in the new era. I am just curious, how can the current generation ride the waves?
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