Number of words: 317<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem with this approach, of course, is that it ignores all the negatives that come along with the tools in question. These services are engineered to be addictive \u2014robbing time and attention from activities that more directly support your professional and personal goals (such as deep work). Eventually, if you use these tools enough, you\u2019ll arrive at the state of burned-out, hyperdistracted connectivity that plagued Baratunde Thurston and millions of others like him. It\u2019s here that we encounter the true insidious nature of an any-benefit mind-set. The use of network tools can be harmful. If you don\u2019t attempt to weigh pros against cons, but instead use any glimpse of some potential benefit as justification for unrestrained use of a tool, then you\u2019re unwittingly crippling your ability to succeed in the world of knowledge work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This conclusion, if considered objectively, shouldn\u2019t be surprising. In the context of network tools, we\u2019ve become comfortable with the any-benefit mind-set, but if we instead zoom out and consider this mind-set in the broader context of skilled labor, it suddenly seems a bizarre and ahistorical approach to choosing tools. In other words, once you put aside the revolutionary rhetoric surrounding all things Internet\u2014the sense, summarized in Part 1, that you\u2019re either fully committed to \u201cthe revolution\u201d or a Luddite curmudgeon\u2014you\u2019ll soon realize that network tools are not exceptional; they\u2019re tools, no different from a blacksmith\u2019s hammer or an artist\u2019s brush, used by skilled laborers to do their jobs better (and occasionally to enhance their leisure). Throughout history, skilled laborers have applied sophistication and skepticism to their encounters with new tools and their decisions about whether to adopt them. There\u2019s no reason why knowledge workers cannot do the same when it comes to the Internet\u2014the fact that the skilled labor here now involves digital bits doesn\u2019t change this reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n