The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

by Scott Berkun

What's sad is that right now, as you read this, there are hundreds of similar organizational off-sites and retreat meetings happening, and the thousands of people attending them have the same central, desperate struggle: to stay awake. The crushing boredom that plagues these events is a disease born of good intentions gone wrong. No manager wants to bore people; they just can't help themselves, and the bureaucracies they work in make it worse. Event planners crush curiosity under the weight of agendas, topic lists, working groups, and exercises, all crammed together like a bad, hyperactive vacation. The slippery slope toward misery starts with all major players having their own agenda, their own thing they're championing this quarter, and they push to make it part of the official schedule. And as their peers respond in kind, a series of endless slices are made into every day, and every hour, until there is no room to breathe. And nothing is real. There is no actual work being done. Instead it's all metawork, or discussions about future work. It's a sea of abstraction.