Relentless Productivity™ has a dark side. The more capable your tools, the faster the work accumulates - and with Claude Cowork, that accumulation happens session by session, each one spawning its own entry in an ever-growing sidebar list that becomes harder to read by the day. I know this from experience. My Cowork sidebar had grown to the point where I could no longer tell what was live, what was done and what was waiting.
As I prepared to race out the door this morning, I snatched up the hand-scribbled agenda for the team meeting and thought: “Oh, at a minimum, I should photograph this.” So I don’t lose the piece of paper. The next thought was: “Hey, I should send this to Claude.” Before I knew it, Claude had read it and turned it into a proper document - ready to throw into the stack for the day ahead.
A friend of mine, let’s call her Jane, runs a marketing consultancy. Fifteen years in, small team, strong client list, had used Claude for chat only. I offered to spend an hour showing her what’s possible now we’re well beyond that. Wednesday night I realised winging a 75-minute demo next morning would burn too much time on navigation and too little on value. I opened Claude Cowork, uploaded a brief I’d quickly hacked together from emails and went on with my evening.