The Tedious Work Paradox: When Digitalization Undermines Creativity

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Elizabeth Long Lingo’s fly-on-the-wall observations of people at work in the music studios of Nashville have yielded insights into leading innovation and the intricacies of negotiation in entrepreneurial settings.

Elizabeth Long Lingo's research reveals the impact that too much digitalization has on creativity.

Elizabeth Long Lingo

But there’s another surprising lesson from Long Lingo’s research in the rooms where music is made: Digital technologies designed to supercharge productivity can actually threaten creativity.

In a paper published in 2024 in the business and management journal Administrative Science Quarterly, Long Lingo and co-author Hille C. Bruns of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam reported that digitalization and an explosion of data in two very different fields—music production and systems biology cancer research—posed a risk to the creativity of workers if not managed correctly.

“Digitalization has made it possible for music producers to record multiple versions of songs and for labs to rapidly screen thousands of biological samples,” says Long Lingo, an associate professor in The Business School. “That wealth of data can positively impact creativity by inspiring new ideas that lead to novel outcomes. Yet managing the repetitive, detailed, and expertise-based work generated by digitalization can also drain workers’ energy, harm their mental focus, and even hijack creativity.”

The research offers an alternative view of digital technologies at a time when rapidly evolving artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are being marketed as low-cost tools with unlimited potential to generate and refine the creative work traditionally done by humans.

Long Lingo and Bruns, who met at a conference and recognized parallels in their research, based their findings on years of observation in workplaces where new technologies were changing the rhythm of creativity in both the arts and sciences. Long Lingo spent seven years studying the music production industry as digital technologies expanded opportunities to record, isolate, and micro-edit music. Bruns spent a year and a half in U.S. systems biology labs at two universities and a pharmaceutical company as high-throughput technologies such as gene sequencing and mass spectrometry enabled scientists to more precisely analyze bigger and bigger datasets in the hunt for answers about cancer.

We tend to think of creativity as exhilarating and positive, but the real impact of digital technologies on creative work was a wakeup call for me.

Elizabeth Long Lingo

Associate Professor, The Business School

As part of their research, Long Lingo and Bruns observed workers in the music industry, where the goal was to produce a hit song, and in labs, where the goal was to find health care solutions. They also conducted formal interviews and even tried their hands at the jobs they were observing. Long Lingo co-wrote and co-produced a song. Bruns shadowed scientists in their lab.

“In Nashville, it was clear that music production was evolving as digital technology was coming into play,” Long Lingo says. “The technologies created opportunities, enabled new ways of doing things, and made some tasks easier. The technologies also created a lot of new work that people had not anticipated.”

Long Lingo and Bruns discovered that across the arts and sciences, digital technologies amplified tedious work—repetitive, detail-oriented tasks requiring significant focus and expertise. While a certain level of tedious work was needed to achieve novel outcomes, they found, too much could hijack creativity.

Tedious work identified by the researchers fell into four categories: fishing, administrating, polishing, and compiling. Fishing involved generating volumes of data. Administrating required workers to painstakingly track data and document processes. Polishing involved fixing errors and making improvements. Compiling focused on selecting, combining, and recombining data.

A sound engineer told Long Lingo that while compiling recorded vocals, he could spend weeks listening to songs one word at a time in an effort to make judgments about subtle differences in pitch or timing. A biologist who filmed cell movements with a tracking program to capture motion data explained to Bruns that validating the computer analyses of the cell movements could take three straight days of polishing.

With so much time and energy spent on tedious tasks, the researchers found, workers were at risk of wasting time, feeling disengaged, and experiencing information overload. To cope, leaders and workers would strategically “curb” the use of technology to meet deadlines and reduce tedious work. They also automated tasks, when possible, and practiced “sustaining” rituals such as focusing for blocks of time and taking breaks to reset. When overwhelmed by details, leaders and workers “zoomed out” to consider an entire song or modeling project and regain perspective.

Long Lingo says that although she had researched information overload and digitalization previously, she was surprised at the “cognitive, emotional, and physical exhaustion” that workers in creative fields were experiencing as digital technologies transformed their work.

“We tend to think of creativity as exhilarating and positive, but the real impact of digital technologies on creative work was a wakeup call for me,” Long Lingo says. “Tedious work is vital to creativity, so it cannot be eliminated. However, tedious work poses a management challenge to business leaders who are charged with supporting workers’ creativity and guiding innovation as new technologies continue to transform workplaces.”