How to break free from one-size-fits-none work.
I spent last weekend in a digital therapy session with ChatGPT, obsessing over whether I’m ready to end one of my most enduring relationships: My 17 years of taking all my notes in Evernote.
I’m not going to pull you down the rabbit hole of what note-taking geeks now call “personal knowledge management” (PKM). Instead, I want to explain why spending twenty hours comparing and analyzing note-taking apps and approaches is a good use of time—why, in fact, it may be the most important work we do: meta-work.
In praise of meta-work
Meta-work is the work we do on how we work. Meta-work sometimes gets a bad rap, as in this 2022 video by Sam Matla, who said obsessing over note-taking just distracts us from the real work of writing and thinking.
But lot has changed in not-quite-two years. Need a quick summary of a long document? AI’s got you covered. Want to draft a routine email? AI can do that too. Writing a long-form newsletter about meta-work? Yes, AI was hepful in doing that work, too.
Sure, you could continue to spend your days on the “real” work of poring over articles, synthesizing information, writing reports and constructing arguments. But you will be the artisanal seamstress in a world of factory sewing: Unless you are making couture gowns for the Paris runway, you’re going to be displaced by the mass production of the Gap and H&M.
In the AI era, knowledge production will increasingly get done by machines—which means that the meta-work of choosing tools and processes is not just the work that remains for humans, but the most valuable kind of work you can do. Meta-work is how we get past all the one-size-fits-none approaches that have cursed us with overload and overwhelm, because we’re trying to work in a way that doesn’t don’t account for the vast differences in how each of us thinks, perceives, and communicates.
Meta-work is the opposite of one-size-fits-none
When we get overwhelmed by our tasks or stuck in our writing or thinking, it is often because we need to do some meta-work. The friend who just asked me to suggest a task-management app is really asking a bigger question about how to prioritize her personal and professional responsibilities. The reader emails about my recent Wall Street Journal article on digital death cleaning, which included questions about how to store digital files and how to set up a database for your Playbills, are really questions about what information can die when you do.
All of these questions ultimately require meta-work. I can tell you which task management app I use, or how my files are organized, but I can’t tell you which app or process is going to be right for your particular tasks, document or brain. The more deeply I dive into the world of neurovariety—the functional differences in how workers think, perceive and communicate—the more I see that effective meta-work depends on understanding your own particular thinking, perception and communication style.
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Meta-work requires you to think about how you build and create knowledge, to consider where you truly add value to your organization or to the world, and to recognize that there is no right answer to any of these questions—just the closest answer you can find for yourself, right now.
Here’s how to approach it.
How to Tackle Meta-Work
- Start with problems or goals. My note-taking explorations became vastly more useful once I realized my core frustration with Evernote: Now that AI is so central to my work, I want AI to identify connections within my digital notes. Similarly, my death-cleaning plan got sharper once I asked a specific question: If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would my husband need to know (and what files would he need access to) so that his life doesn’t fall apart? When you’re clear on what you’re trying to fix, your meta-work will be more focused and effective.
- Use AI as a thinking partner. Ask an AI to interrogate you so that you clarify what problem you are trying to fix, or which approaches to consider. I saved tons of time exploring note-taking religions by asking the AI to explain how different methodologies and apps would address my core goals. And I asked AI for help identifying what might be missing from my death-cleaning plan.
- Pick a project. If you try to pick a single app or workflow for every area of your work, you will probably create a system that works for nothing. So identify a specific area you are going to try to improve, and set up a system for that one report, product launch or life event (yes, like your own death.) Over the course of a few projects and iterations you will arrive at some general principles, practices and templates that you can customize for each specific need.
- Designate a meta-work window. Plunge into drafting a report without first thinking about your planned approach, and you will waste a lot of time. Spend a month creating the perfect note-taking system, and you may never get around to drafting the report. So give yourself an hour or even a day to do the meta-work of setting up your process and tools, and then force yourself to stick with them for the life of the project (perhaps tweaking a little as you go) so that you can refine your approach based on what works in practice.
- Track your process insights. Whenever you identify a pain point you want to fix, log it. Do the same thing every time you find a practice, app or tweak that makes your work a little easier. Once you’ve accumulated a list, look for patterns in where you bottleneck and where you accelerate, and use that as a guide for where you’ll invest in improving your systems.
- Find your people. To figuring out the apps and processes that work for you, figure out what works for people like you—not in the sense of a job title or demographic, but in terms of your thinking and work style. Pick a couple of your favorite apps, productivity tactics or even hobbies, and look for people who share them. I have dug through the Internet for people who share my passion for spreadsheets, Broadway and knitting (there are a few of us!); for people who are into both mind-mapping and citation tracking; and for people who are exploring the combination of Obsidian, Zapier and Coda. When I find people who use two or three apps or approaches I love, I see what else has worked for them, and what they’ve hated. And I try to connect with those people on social media, too.
- Remember that meta-work is optional. Whenever you get lost in a meta-work rabbit hole, remember that you already have an alternative: You can just go back to whatever tech or system or process you were already using—even if it’s a messy desk of papers where you struggle to find what you need. Meta-work is about helping you work more efficiently and effectively, but precisely because it’s so meta, it won’t always come easily. Sometimes you just have to set the big rethinks aside, work on something else, and come back to your meta-work when you’re feeling inspired.
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