Workforce

I have been thinking a lot about Time recently—mostly because I have so little of it under my own control. Don’t get me wrong; it’s nice to be busy. However, when something you value becomes scarce, it also becomes incredibly precious.

So here are a few somewhat-connected (at least in my mind) perspectives on Time, and how it affects our work and our organizations. I’ve chosen to focus in particular on how well-managed organizations (and effective individuals) allocate their work activities using Time as a major sorting mechanism.

When I’m trying to understand something, I start drawing graphs using whatever data’s available; pictures help me more than tables of numbers or regression coefficients. So here’s a picture I drew to see recent trends in US labor productivity — how much more output the American economy gets from its workers over time.

Moving files and programs into clouds sounds great, but how secure will they be? Business and organization leaders everywhere are asking this, and many remain undecided on the answer. They wonder whether they really should trust the cloud with their most sensitive records.

Cloud computing made big strides forward in 2012, and if a host of industry experts proves correct, it will make even bigger advances in 2013.

I was recently asked a question that I hear all too often:

You have been studying today's most favored methods of working for many years. What are the big headlines about that? Just where are we going? Or rather, are we all going to stay home and work from there all the time ?

No, we’re not all going to “cocoon” and never leave our home offices! That would be insane.