Getting into "The Zone"
Certain types of work require certain types of mindsets. If we aren't in the correct mindset it can take a while to make the transition and attune ourselves to where we need to be. Thinking of the world in terms of vibrations, we need to be set to the right frequency in order to be effective at certain tasks.
The generic intelligence of the human brain can accomplish a diverse set of operations, but more often than not has difficultly multitasking unless the jobs at hand are on "autopilot"; things we've done so many times we don't even have to think about them they just kind of get done without too much thought or effort required. A good example of this would be muscle memory or listening to music as background noise for focus.
Don't try to do everything at once:
A very common saying that has a lot of truth to it. Many people are often to inclined to brag about how good they are at multi-tasking and juggling their attention all over the place, but that doesn't mean their self-assessment is actually accurate and the best way to get things done. Breaking up problems into smaller and smaller sub-problems is often the best way to accomplish big projects as quickly and accurately as possible. When we rush or lack focus this tends to create a wake of errors that can take more time to fix than the original solution itself.
Jack of all trades?
Do we want to be really good at one thing or moderately good at many different things? This is a question without a definitive one-size-fits-all answer. Do the multiple skills synergize together? If we focus too long on the one thing will we mentally burn out and abandon that skill altogether? There are many questions that need answering before we can actually walk such a path in real time.
However, the economy definitely values specialization and expert skill. What's better? Five people who all have middling skill of five different sets... or five people that are masters at their one specific job all working together in unison to get the thing done? Clearly if properly organized the masters are going to crush all the competition because each one of them can outperform the journeyman. And thus: the career was born.
Oh he's wired in.
The Social Network movie portrayed this idea of attunement quite well. Computer programming is one of those activities that requires IMMENSE ATTUNEMENT. Getting out of the zone as a programmer can cost hours of time. If you have to get up to eat you might lose it. If you have to talk to people or just use another part of your brain that isn't just completely analytical and math based it can take a while before you can get back into the mindset you were in 15 minutes ago. This is a known phenomenon across the entire industry. Is it any wonder why developers on Hive don't really blog? We might think it only takes an hour to write a short post but that's because we don't count all the contact switches that need to take place during the transitions.
Absolutely could not have been said better.
There are so many situations like this in normal day to day life and the corporate world where human potential is just absolutely squandered and flushed completely down the toilet. I would venture a guess that as a species we are likely operating on less than 1% efficiency once we factor in all the waste, lack of cooperation, and greed that exists on Earth. This is to say that I absolutely do believe that it would be possible to advance technologically 100 years in a single year if we were able to reduce that level of socio-economic friction to near-zero. Will this actually happen? I mean of course it won't, but we can also see that tech continues to explode exponentially into new boundaries even within the current system that we have now.
What can crypto do to help?
Ironically blockchain both helps and hurts the situation. By design, crypto is an ineffective redundant solution that only exist to combat the unhinged corruption or massively centralized unchecked systems of power. Crypto is both the scaling solution and also simultaneously the thing that is very hard to scale because of this redundancy. We are in the process of finding that Goldilocks Solution; the secret sauce. Just enough centralization to be efficient and scalable but just enough decentralization to avoid descending into absolute corruption.
The nice thing about crypto systems is that they are digital and opt in by nature. It's not like being born into a country and forced into that country's citizenship and legal system by default. With crypto a lot of what goes on is totally transparent and when a problem presents itself: users of a particular network can just seek greener pastures elsewhere instantly and without permission (aka removing the friction and contact-switch problem). This bootstraps an economic system build on a foundation of free-market dynamics. Whoever is offering the best deal is going to get the most attention within the attention economy, and attention is everything within an infinite digital landscape.
Conclusion
There's a lot of waste and broken mechanics within the world and the systems we've constructed within it. This type of inefficiency is everywhere, from day to day activity, to work life, and extending into macro economics and geo-political conflict. The psychological need to one-up our fellow man and scramble up the rat-race pyramid is boundless.
The first step in preventing this spiral is to change our own behaviors to reflect what we want to see in others. The ability to know ourselves and how we best operate is a skill unto itself. Will we give ourselves what we need or engage in self-sabotage? It's interesting how many choose the latter but that's a tale for anther day.