When you read The Way We're Working Isn't Working, you get that satisfying feeling you have when someone intelligently articulates something you feel everyone knows is true, but couldn't explain why. As Schwartz writes, "across disparate cultures and at all levels, people share both a visceral sense that the way they're working isn't working and an intense desire for more satisfying, productive, and sustainable ways to work and live."
In a nutshell, the book's thesis is that a myth has taken hold that "human beings operate most productively in the same one-dimensional way computers do: continuously, at high speeds, for long periods of time, running multiple programs at the same time." This has led to a world in which:
The defining ethic in the modern workplace is more, bigger, faster. More information than ever is available to us, and the speed of every transaction has increased exponentially, prompting a sense of permanent urgency and endless distraction...