Originally published August 11, 2024
First, I'm so excited you're here! Second, I'm even more excited to share the shifts in this newsletter with you 🎉
I wanted to make this a space with more than just insights where you can:
Take a moment to pause.
Learn something new.
Get an actionable tip.
And yes, still some personal insights.
Just wait until you get to today's personal share... lol.
Here's your hint: 💩
But above all, I wanted to help more; share more.
There is an overwhelming amount of free information available in this world.
And while there is always exceptions, hello rampant misinformation, most of it is true and helpful for someone. You just have to find the thing that works for you specifically and figure out how to implement it on your own.
Which is where it can get hard.
The putting it into practice part.
It's why we hire coaches, find mentors, go to therapy, and crave community.
To help us along the way.
It's why I'm calling this iteration of the newsletter, The Purposeful Pause.
I hope it can be that for you - a pause with purpose.
The Cost of Switching
A client shared a post with me this week from r/overemployed, a subreddit for people who work multiple remote jobs, where one user said “All these jobs are easy and manageable.” and in the same thought “I feel like I'm going to drop d3ad anytime soon.”
I immediately wanted to start a dissertation on why the sentence “All these jobs are easy and manageable” is not even remotely the full story (a blog post I'm working on now), but I wanted to speak to part of the topic here that you can do something with today.
Because a huge reason that knowledge-based careers can lead to burnout - whether it's one or more jobs at the same time - is because of context and task switching.
Before we dive into all things switching, let's talk about today's work world.
In 1959, Peter Drucker, the inventor of modern management, coined the term knowledge work a term that to this day doesn't have a clear definition.
For today, we'll use the description: work that involves complex problem solving and is done by a person who is not only a expert in their field but is also able to apply it by navigating the social maze of their workplace, understand the quirks of their organization, and building relationships along the way.
Then in 1966, Drucker also coined the term knowledge workers.
As of February 2024, a survey by Gartner found the United States had around 100 million knowledge workers. That's 60% of the population. Globally, it's over 1 billion knowledge workers.
