Tedium: Difference between revisions

← Older edit

Tedium (view source)

Revision as of 08:20, 6 June 2023

1,625 bytes added , 6 June 2023

no edit summary

Amwelladmin

Bureaucrats, Interface administrators, Administrators

82,883

edits

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{g}}Descriptive of any activity which, when you stand back and look at it, serves no [[Substance|substantive]] purpose, however emollient it may feel from a [[form]]al perspective. If you have shaken your head and asked yourself is there really no better way to do this? then you have looked into the tedial abyss. [[Abyss|Careful, lest it looks back into you]].
+{{a|work|{{image|Nerf|gif|Can you review this NDA please}} }}{{d|Tedium|/ˈtiːdɪəm/|n|}}<br>1. The state of being [[tedious]]; a [[noun]] ''so'' dull that dictionaries regularly define it by reference to its [[adjective]].<br>
+. Descriptive of the intellectual content of life in a modern multinational. If you ''don’t'' find it [[tedious]], you are going to be first against the wall when the revolution comes. The revolution, by the way, is most likely to come in the shape of a [[chatbot]] or [[algorithm]] and it won’t waste ammunition on you when you are up against the wall — it is simply there that you will find the hook on which your coat is hanging, which you will be invited to [[Get your coat|get]] as they hand you your [[Iron Mountain box]] and wish you well. You probably won’t even get time for a [[farewell]] [[email]].
-===A short, tedious history.===
+===A short, [[tedious]] history.===
 [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tedious Merriam Webster] is amusing on the etymology:
-{{box|Words frequently change their meanings, and some even will go from meaning one thing to meaning something almost opposite (such as “nice”, which in its earliest use meant “lewd, wanton, dissolute”). Tedious is not one of these words; its meanings may have shifted over the centuries, but they have always had something to do with irksome, boring, or overlong things. The word comes from the Latin ''taedēre'', meaning “to disgust or weary.” Tedious has been in use since the 15th century and has been included in hundreds of dictionaries, although perhaps none have rendered so poetic and succinct a definition as Nathaniel Bailey’s entry in his 1756 New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: “Wearisome by continuance.”}}
+:''Words frequently change their meanings, and some even will go from meaning one thing to meaning something almost opposite (such as “nice”, which in its earliest use meant “lewd, wanton, dissolute”). [[Tedious]] is not one of these words; its meanings may have shifted over the centuries, but they have always had something to do with irksome, boring, or overlong things. The word comes from the Latin ''taedēre'', meaning “to disgust or weary.” Tedious has been in use since the 15th century and has been included in hundreds of dictionaries, although perhaps none have rendered so poetic and succinct a definition as Nathaniel Bailey’s entry in his 1756 New Universal Etymological English Dictionary: “Wearisome by continuance.”''
+===Tedium and interest===
+I can’t prove this, but [[tedium]] is not the opposite of “interesting”. There is an intermediate purgatorial state which is not particularly [[interesting]] in any meaningful sense of the word, but is not especially tedious either. Bruce Springsteen’s album ''Nebraska'', for example.
-===The [[third law of worker entropy]]===
+[[Tedium]] describes any activity which, when you stand back and look at it, serves no [[Substance|real purpose]], however ''[[form]]ally'' emollient it may feel. Given how utterly pervasive it is in modern corporate life, it is extraordinary no more research has been done into what tedium is and why we are obliged to endure it.
-Hypothesis: [[all other things being equal]], if an activity is [[tedious]], it is ''[[waste]]ful''. If it is wasteful, you ''shouldn’t do it''. This can be articulated as the Jolly Contrarian’s [[third law of worker entropy]]:
-''There is a 100% correlation between (i) activities that, however important they might seem, in fact have no value, and (ii) activities which are [[tedious]].''
+If, as a young clerk, re-dating a stack of trust deeds at 3 in the morning after a bished execution<ref>You may think this has the searing scar of verisimilitude about it. You would be right.</ref>, you have ever regarded the clock, shaken your head and asked yourself, “is there ''really'' no better way to do this?” then you have looked into the tedial [[abyss]]. [[Abyss|Careful, lest it looks back into you]].
-If an activity is 25% tedious it is 25% wasteful.
+===''Superficial'' tedium versus ''intrinsic'' tedium===
+Most meetings are tedious. Almost all [[operating committee]]s are. But — and loathe as I am to speak a word in support of these ghastly assemblies, here goes — the ''idea'' of an [[opco]] isn’t ''utterly'' stupid: in a large organisation oversight of the distributed governance is important, so the onus is on those presenting at [[opco]]s to present material that ''is'' innately important, and therefore interesting — and no, [[internal audit]], that does not include news of your own internal reorganisation — in a way that is likely to impact somehow on the consciousness of those poor saps required to attend.
-===Tedium and interest===
+VARY YOUR TONE, FOR GOD’S SAKE. LEARN THE BASIC RUDIMENTS OF HOW TO ADDRESS A LARGE GROUP OF PEOPLE.
-I can’t prove this, but [[tedium]] is not the opposite of “interesting”. There is an intermediate purgatorial state which is not particularly [[interesting]] in any meaningful sense of the word, but is not especially tedious either. Bruce Springsteen’s album ''Nebraska'', for example.
+''Speak'' to your [[slide]]s: ''don’t just read the godforsaken things out''.
 {{sa}}
-*The [[JC]]’s [[first law of worker entropy]]
+*The [[JC]]’s [[laws of worker entropy]]
-*The [[JC]]’s [[second law of worker entropy]]
 *The [[seven wastes of negotiation]]
 {{c|entropy}}
+{{ref}}
+{{c2|cosmology|Work anthropology}}
+{{c|tedium}}