The task arrives in Asana. A ghost, a title, a due date. Then the questions begin, not in Asana, of course, that would be too simple. They bloom in Slack, a chaotic garden of @-mentions and threaded replies that spiral into cul-de-sacs of confusion. There are 46 new messages in the project channel alone. Someone drops a Loom video to ‘quickly explain’ their perspective, which requires a new tab and seven minutes of your life. Someone else has built a sprawling Miro board, a beautiful and completely indecipherable constellation of digital sticky notes, meant to represent the workflow we’ve abandoned. It’s referenced in a Google Doc, which has 236 unresolved comments from six different people. And after all this digital collaboration, this symphony of productivity, I find out that Mark, in marketing, is doing the exact same thing I am.
We buy software subscriptions that cost $676 a year, promising a single source of truth, and in doing so, we create a sixth source of truth. Each new platform is a fresh coat of paint on a crumbling wall. We’re meticulously polishing the plumbing in a house with a cracked foundation.






































































