The double edged sword wielded by the post-survivor knowledge worker: macro laws.

… there is very little, and perhaps no difference, between a genuine nugget of self-knowledge and what’s known as a “limiting belief.” A constraint that one minute helps you focus, in the next minute blinds you to an opportunity. A constraint that in one situation saves you from risk, in another situation limits your possibilities. This is why the skill of constantly formulating, discarding, testing, and refining macro-laws may be the most “meta” productivity skill of all.

A great article that essentially says work will always remain essential in the human experience, but once work is no longer being done to survive, the rest is a mind game.

In fact, I think the most sane view of modern “work” is that it’s simply a means for channeling thought, both for producers and consumers. Work occupies a worker’s mind, and the product of most knowledge work serves fundamentally to affect consumers’ states of mind: services, experiences, etc.

Work keeps us busy—a necessary condition for a sane western mind. No amount of technological progress or economic growth can change this. If anything, the need to stay busy increases with technological progress because the value of our time approaches infinity.

These imaginary problems are extraordinarily difficult to solve.