employed to help us organise and share information use operating systems that cannot talk to each other, stretching our already frayed attention spans to the limit. We now regularly find ourselves working on pro- jects spread over many years, multiple continents and involving tens or even hundreds of team members. The challenges collaborators face today make the Tower of Babel look like a project that might have been finished off over lunch by the graduate trainee team from the sales department.


But while collaboration is one of the dominant features of the current commercial landscape, it also has its downsides. We regularly spend more than half, even up to three-quarters, of our working lives respond- ing to emails, attending meetings and fielding calls. Perhaps feeling a little like the tragic hero Sisyphus, of ancient Greek mythology, whom the gods cursed to spend eternity rolling a large boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll straight back down as soon as he reached the top.


We might be tempted to think that our time at work would go much better if only there weren’t so many other people getting in the way. This perspective is sup- ported by the stories we often tell ourselves about the most inspiring achievements of the commercial world. We eulogise the lone entrepreneur, the isolated actor or the difficult genius who sit alone in their garage, mulling over how to get things done without having to rely on anyone else.


11


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