The Conservation Of Work

Science is always right, until it's proven wrong.

Consider the poor guy, whose name is lost to history, who had to go into a room full of map makers and say something like, "So. Funny thing. This whole 'world is flat' thing that we've been telling everyone about. Well, I just got a letter from Portugal. Guy named Magellan. You'll be hearing his name a lot. But more important question. Does anyone know what a 'globe' is?"

I tell you that to tell you this. I try to apply levels of science to my job.It's more like 1950's DC comic book science than actual science. But it helps me process order from chaos.

One of the "science" type of rules that I invented is "Noah's Conservation of Work." It's based on the law of the conservation of mass...but y'know, for work stuff.

In it, I used to tell people that much like matter - work can not be created or destroyed. It just gets moved from one tool to another.

This concept came about during the frustration I felt when so many of the tools that were designed to save me time and save me the trouble of going from one tool to the next really just had me overloaded with notifications coming from every different direction and I was using three screens instead of one and they still meant I was doing the same amount of work (heck, sometimes more).

All of that to tell you that I'm pleased to say that IBM and Box are doing something about it. Specifically, we're looking at workflow automation and how we reduce the 'cycle time' (which is engineering speak for the amount of time you need to get stuff done so you can do other things).

And you will see it announced in a few weeks. And after we announce it, I'm gonna have to go into a room full of folks and talk about making globes with all the spare time we now have.

Folks. The world ain't flat. And work can be destroyed. Hashtag "#workflowforall"

Watch this space. More to come. And don't forget to register for BoxWorks(and keep an eye out for me in the IBM booth).