Every day, knowledge workers around the world log into their computers, ready to tackle their projects and to-do lists. Their desktops cluttered with a bunch of apps, tools, and tabs - Google Docs, Microsoft spreadsheets, Miro boards, Trello Boards, Calendars, Slack channels, emails, website tabs, Asana boards, Chat GPT windows, Salesforce, Hubspot, Confluence pages, you name it. How many of us start our workday with a dozen tabs and apps left open from the day before to ensure we don’t lose anything and know where to start?
And yet most days, we don’t know where to start or where all the things related to the initiative or workstream we need to tackle are located - like the Evernote with our boss’s action item or the team meeting doc with the crucial project insights that we can’t quite remember where we saved. It seems like with every new tool, there’s more info we need to hold in our heads about what we’re using, where it’s located, what needs to be done, when, why, and how it relates to all the other relevant apps, tools, and info.
It’s overwhelming.
And we’ve developed countless hacks to cope. There are books, articles, paper planners, digital planners, and yes, even more apps like Notion or Todoist, designed to help us manage this deluge of tools that’s meant to make us more productive.
All these tools and apps are fantastic (I personally don’t know what I’d do without Google Docs). In isolation, they can help organize thoughts and materials, visualize tasks, coordinate and collaborate with others, and heck, they can even create content for us! So why are we more frazzled today than we were yesterday? Why aren’t these apps helping us coordinate better so we can focus on bringing our best selves to the work that matters most?
Well, it starts with how we use them.
The Desktop GUI
Think about it. Our desktop GUI (graphical user interface) hasn't fundamentally changed in almost 50 years. Each application operates in isolation, requiring us to constantly switch between them, fragmenting our work and our focus. I remember still having to load a program on my Texas Instrument TI-99/4 back in 1982. One program. One screen. We didn’t even have windows!
So the multi-window design was a cool and significant advancement when it was introduced. It allowed us to operate multiple applications at once, mimicking the way we use physical desktops filled with papers and folders. But it didn’t take into account how much our work would become so complex and interconnected (hello remote and global work). The design clearly has its limitations. That’s why we now juggle dozens of applications and browser tabs, each operating in isolation, forcing us to constantly switch contexts and manually piece information from a bunch of different sources.
The work we do has changed. The tools we use to do the work have changed. The way we work together has changed. But our desktop GUI? The way we work with our computers? Our digital environment? It’s still the same.
The Hyperactive Hive Mind
Cal Newport, a renowned productivity expert and thought leader who has greatly influenced the thinking behind what our founder and CEO, Jeff Szczepanski is building at Reframe, describes our modern work environment as the “hyperactive hive mind” because of the frantic, disjointed way we manage our tasks, driven by constant notifications and the need to stay on top of multiple projects simultaneously.
The tools we use are supposed to help us manage this chaos, but they often end up contributing to it. Since each application operates in a silo, holding its own set of information and context, we’re the ones left having to hold that context in our heads and manually integrate them into our workflow. So here we are, in our cubicles, home offices, or cafes, walking around with hyperactive hive minds, trying to get stuff done. Not fun, nor impactful.
The Real Problem: Context Fragmentation
As you can probably tell by now, the problem isn’t the tools themselves, it’s in the fragmentation of context. It’s in the disorganized, disjointed environment that forces us to use these tools in isolation when we’re trying to collectively use them to serve a specific purpose, for a particular workflow.
Every piece of information, whether it’s a task in Trello, a message in Slack, or a document in Google Drive, exists in its own bubble, even though they’re all supposed to be helping us work on a certain project or achieve a specific goal. We, the users, are left to bridge the gaps between these bubbles, keeping track of everything in our heads or through a patchwork of manual processes. This approach is not only inefficient and ineffective, it’s also mentally exhausting.
Imagining a New Approach
Imagine a world where your desktop holds the context of your work and enables a seamless integration of information across all your tools and applications. A world where your computer has context intelligence and uses that to bring together all the corresponding tools and apps you use and need into one coherent stream of work.
What if your work no longer feels app-based but stream-based? Instead of operating in isolated silos, your tools work together in harmony, with all the context and content you need at your fingertips.
What if your disorganized, chaotic, multi-window-based desktop GUI environment became one organized work environment? No more switching between tabs and apps, no more fragmented information. Just a cohesive, streamlined flow that reduces your cognitive load, freeing you up to unleash your full potential, maximizing true productivity.
That world isn’t far away. It’s exactly what we’re building here at Reframe. We want to help make work flow. And we’re closer than ever.
Want to get early access to Reframe’s Organized Work Environment? Sign up to join our waitlist!
