When Meta-work Becomes the Work

In Duly Noted, I warned of the allure of meta-work: the work we do to enable “real” work. Writing a paper is work; setting up and maintaining your writing environment is meta-work. Meta-work is important, but fiddling with tools is an occupational hazard. At least it was, until AI agents came along. I’ve wasted countless hours testing new to do apps, distraction-free editors, Obsidian plugins, citation managers, read-it-later apps, etc. Each promises to unlock productivity. Some might, but in aggregate they don’t make up for the time wasted. Worse, meta-work creates the illusion of progress while accomplishing little. AI agents change that equation. I’ve been migrating many of my workflows to agents running on Claude Code, OpenCode, and Codex. Setting up and optimizing them is meta-work, but it’s of a different kind than learning a new text editor. Investing in this kind of meta-work isn’t a waste of time. For one, these “tools” (the agents) will be the ones doing the work (under my…