It describes the fact that we tend to make fewer contributions when we are in a group versus when we work alone (or are solely charged with the responsibility).
When a number of people could take it upon themselves to repair something, social loafing says a high percentage of them will assume that someone else will take the initiative to complete the task.
"Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook," wrote psychologist William James. Unfortunately, if this is the case then few of us can honestly say we're wise. Knowing where to allocate our attention has become the great challenge of our lives. And we're not making it any easier by exposing ourselves to so many distractions.
Sensory distractions (External): The things happening around us, like colleagues talking, phones ringing, people moving around us, music playing, etc.
Emotional distractions (Internal): The thoughts that make our attention drift from what we’re doing. For example, remembering a phone call you need to make or thinking about a future meeting.
Since October 2011, Zapier has grown to over 200 employees. You can read previous versions of this chapter written when our team size was 20 and our team size was just 6 people, to get a feel for how our remote team has scaled.
In a remote team, you'll need the right tools to make sure everyone stays on the same page and can continue to execute without a physical person standing next to them.
You likely will need a tool in certain categories like group chat and video conferencing to make remote successful.
It's been said many times that to have lots of good ideas, we need to have lots of bad ones, too. We need lots of ideas, period. What people often skip over when talking about producing ideas is the effort and skill required to filter out the bad ones and...
Someone asked me where I get all my good ideas, explaining that it takes him a month or two to come up with one and I seem to have more than that. I asked him how many bad ideas he has every month. He paused and said, 'None.'