Chasing Productivity
Can you catch it?
Today was productive! This week could have been more productive. I have not been very productive lately…
If you are like me, you hope that your day will be productive. That you accomplish your tasks, do them faster, and to a higher quality than you have in the past. It is part of most knowledge workers’ ethos — the act of being productive. We hope for it and our managers expect it. If we don’t achieve it, we’ve failed, or at least have fallen short.
What is productivity exactly? Is it simply checking more tasks off than we expected? Is it getting to the next milestone in your project? Maybe it’s delivering that design or report. As a consultant, more recently in the realm of productivity, I have been thinking about this a lot.
By definition productivity is:
the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production process, i.e. output per unit of input, typically over a specific period of time
So, doing less and outputting more. Simple enough. But why do we make such a big deal about achieving productivity and why do we scold ourselves for being less productive?
I have written about my productivity setup in the past. This hasn’t changed much and still works pretty great for me. Since then, I have worked on other people’s and company’s systems. These systems range in size from 10-500 users. They usually have the same thing in common — to maximize productivity. While this sounds great and I am very good at what I do, I have started to become a bit cynical about it.
People focus on the tools, the methodologies, and the systems. If you chase productivity focused on these things you will do more wasting of time than optimizing it.
Why do we chase productivity? We hope that we can do less and output more, but what do we do with that time? Do we work on something meaningful, do we step away from our desks, or do we squeeze in more productivity? Even worse, do we waste time on more tools and systems? I write these words, not to make you feel bad, but rather from experience.
As someone that knows the tools, systems, and methodologies — I have found myself wanting to optimize everything. Recently, I have learned that we need to optimize less and make processes a bit messier. Why? Because impactful work doesn’t come from checking boxes or hitting milestones. It comes from messy scribbles, misplaced commas, and structureless thought. Over-optimization takes away from that.
When the term productivity is applied to more classic production, such as manufacturing, the current definition makes sense. But for people, specifically knowledge work, it doesn’t. Being productive in this situation should be the deeper work, not the shallow.
Productivity is a process, not a goal.
How do you do this? Yes, build a system. If you don’t know how to, use an off-the-shelf one or hire someone like me. Then, don’t focus on it. Do the work. The time that it takes you is not that important, what you get out of it is. If you feel like something is taking a while, note it down, but don’t try to optimize it. Not until you have come across this same issue about half a dozen times. Some of the work will have structure and some of it won’t. That is ok, it doesn’t always need to line up.
When you are feeling unproductive or your boss is spouting your company’s productivity goals, don’t take them too seriously. We are humans, not robots. Productivity for us is not strictly the ratio between input and output. So stop trying to build your perfect system, shave off a few minutes, and automating your life. Productivity is a good practice to chase, but it is near impossible to catch.