If you can’t tell what a person does all day at work, it’s because they work in the metaphysical space rather than the physical...

They build and reshape thinking, not action.

The ones improving thinking are our most valuable people. The ones harming our thinking are our worst.

Action is in the middle.

We are driving ourselves off of a cliff with the idea that action is more valuable than thinking. In fact, the metaphor of driving off a cliff is perfect for this. At least we are driving, right?

Action is not the most valuable thing a business does. Not even close. Thinking is. It determines where the action takes us.

Now this isn’t to say action is unimportant. It’s critical because it turns out thinking into outcomes. And it’s also the source of testing and discovery. Sometimes it’s necessary just to help us think. The Air Force came up with a model that illustrates this well: the OODA loop.

Observe, orient, decide, act.

Thinking does the first 3. Then we take action.

The reason this is a loop is because it’s continuous. Sometimes we can’t observe or orient before we act. We can’t know until we try.

That means the first intelligent action must happen in loop 2, not loop 1.

Other times there is a lot we can observe in loop 1. There’s data. There’s the ability to talk to people and ask questions. There’s the ability to think about this information quite a bit.

Many people have a bias to action. They refuse to believe we can better observe and orient to the world. That’s super dumb.

These people are anti-thinking. That’s why it’s called bias. This results in poor action in loop 1 and loop 2, 3+ will still probably be pretty dumb.

These people keep us away from success longer, trying silly things, learning slowly while pretending it’s the only way to learn.

And that creates needless suffering in those taking action. Tasks take longer to complete than necessary. Data is a mess. Architectures are a mess. Communication is a mess because we laid such a poor foundation in loop 1.

Metaphysical workers are next level workers. For better or for worse.

If you don’t know what someone does all day, it’s because they are either dramatically improving your life or dramatically harming it. And it’s easy to figure out which one. If it isn’t obviously the first, it’s the second.

So what should we do about it?
1. Stop being a jerk to metaphysical workers by doubting their value or productivity.
2. Pay attention to the quality of their contribution...is it improving or harming thinking?
3. If it’s harming, get them to work for our competitor

4. If you can’t succeed in #3, run like hell.