I spent over 500 hours researching and writing this article. Those 500 hours were spent reading through dozens of books/studies in 10+ fields (history, economics, technology, philosophy of science, manufacturing, management, sociology, investing, innovation). I spent so much time because the topic was both much more interesting and complicated than I originally thought. And, as is the case with all of my writing on Medium, I use the blockbuster philosophy. This means I don't click publish unless I think it is one of the best articles that has been written on the topic.
As a result of going through the research process, I will never think about productivity in the same way. What I learned blew my mind over and over, and I hope it does the same for you as the reader.
This really makes me think of all the projects I've worked on for companies what were simply abandoned for political reasons (I'd say ultimately the vast majority of the stuff I've done never saw the light of day). It also reminds me how much less I've learned at larger companies than smaller ones.
This is just my personal experience but I feel we've become so risk averse as to be wildly wasteful on the wrong side is the bell curve. You can take chances and break things, burning resources to try moonshots with high risks but massive rewards, or you can just waste tons of the same resources to aggressively ensure some relatively smaller outcome almost definitely happens (the next iphone selling 2% better than the last one).
I also feel like we're just not utilizing talent at all. Too many brilliant people I personally know who got dumped by our hyper rigid education and corporate systems are working shitty jobs right now. I have to assume that trend extrapolates will beyond my circles...
This also isn't a uniquely American problem, the more I look abroad the more I see similar issues.