Today’s obsession with ways to increase your productivity may do as much harm as good

Last week, I wrote a piece for Lifehack.org entitled: “Do you REALLY need to get yet more things done?” In it, I raised some things that have been worrying me about the prevailing fashion for more and more books, magazine articles, and blogs devoted to the topic of increasing personal productivity.

My purpose was to question the supposed benefits of finding ways to pack more and more into every moment: to be more efficient, regardless of whether this makes your life more effective in a wider sense. I wondered whether the obsession with getting things done is part of a cure for time-impoverished lives; or one more symptom of people’s’ willingness to subordinate everything else to the ever-growing demands of their work. As I wrote in that article:

From where I stand, this looks to be almost the ultimate in self-inflicted madness: people stuck in a have-it-all, instant-gratification society demanding techniques for organizing the lives that they are systematically filling with the effort to have yet more, every minute of every day.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against helping others to be more organized or better able to juggle life’s necessary demands. But I am starting to wonder how many of those demands are really necessary; and whether the cure isn’t in danger of becoming more onerous than the disease.

The article generated some thoughtful and perceptive comments — and these stimulated me to try to deal with one or two additional aspects of the question in more depth.

Will greater productivity free up more time for what’s currently crowded out of my life by work demands?

This is a tempting thought: perhaps, by being more efficient and productive in the areas you must deal with (but don’t want to devote all your life to), you can win back some free time for family, pleasure, and personal pursuits.

Sadly, I don’t think it will work; at least, not for long.

Most of the unavoidable demands on our time come from our work and the expectations of our bosses. To believe that working more efficiently, and getting more done in the working day, will free up time outside of work, you have to assume that employers will be content with whatever you can give them in the time they actually pay you for.

In reality, the world of work is insatiably greedy. Give those in charge a minute and they’ll take an hour. The more you pack into the time you give them, the more greedily they will desire whatever time they don’t yet command.

This makes perfect sense for any employer. The more work they can get you to do for the same payment, the less your output costs them. Highly productive people are prized because they are cheaper per unit of work done. Add to those units by persuading (or virtually compelling) them to work longer without more payment, and you have an unbeatable recipe for boosting profits.

Once given, time cannot be taken back. Once the precedent is set, it’s ever harder to act differently. Those who take your time and effort as their right will always be keen to take more.

But no one has ever spoken to me in that way!

Such unquestioning obedience to the demands of the organization is rarely demanded openly. Instead, the belief is fostered that putting your work first is the only way to progress; that those who work hardest will benefit most; that there is such fierce competition for every benefit — promotion, salary increase, bonus — that anything less than complete commitment to work’s demands is tantamount to a career death sentence.

Maybe it’s even true — or at least is made to appear true, by swift and ruthless “punishment” of all who question it. Heresy is always feared by authoritarian organizations; it’s too risky because it leads to people questioning convenient assumptions and challenging false, but useful beliefs.

Somewhere, you have to say “no,” or risk becoming little more than a slave. The only way to set aside time for yourself is to do it — whatever it may cost you in hassle, lost opportunities, or a reputation for being “lazy” and “not a team player.”

Surely no one can risk refusing to do whatever is asked, given the impact on their career in our survival-of-the-most-productive environment?

The norms of behavior in organizations, like those in society as a whole, only seem to be firm and unchanging. In reality, they are no more than temporary fashions, tricked out to appear permanent and therefore unquestionable.

Currently, the fashion is for individualism. Competition is “in” because individualism is also “in.” Salaries are set individually. Employees are discouraged (often very strongly) from banding together and acting in concert. By rewarding a few “winners” well — even extravagantly — organizations seek to keep everyone at full stretch; each one striving to out-do imagined competitors. It’s ironic that today’s organizations actually cling to at least two logically incompatible fashions: fierce individual competition for advancement and job security, and the requirement for total loyalty to “the team.”

Not so very long ago, there was another fashion. Workers banded together to establish trades unions; often in the face of cruel and ruthless opposition from employers. Then, the belief amongst employees was that organizing to oppose unreasonable demands was the only way to give yourself dignity and frustrate continual pressure from “the bosses” to work more for less pay.

As a result, norms arose that limited the amount of work individuals could do. To be a “rate buster” was to condemn yourself to exclusion and persecution by your colleagues. No one was allowed to exceed the negotiated amount of work for the agreed pay, lest that opened the door to “the bosses” and their insatiable demands.

Individualism was punished; collectivism was “in.” How times change!

Surely the problem is culture-wide, and many of the forces are beyond our individual control?

Yes and maybe. We certainly live in a culture based on the assumption that progress itself requires belief in the inevitability of “survival of the fittest” and “survival of the most productive.” But that doesn’t make those any more than beliefs. Neither is a fact, much less a law of nature.

Packing more into the same time isn’t being more productive; it’s just working harder — and it’s subject quite quickly to the law of diminishing returns. Doing more by working longer, or focusing your efforts more closely, isn’t increasing your productivity; the extra output is only the result of working harder for longer. To be more productive means to do more with less effort, not more with more effort.

As for the demand for ever more work coming from forces beyond our individual control, that too seems to me to be questionable. You may not be able to change society’s norms, or what others believe, but you are (or ought to be) able to make your own choices.

If you subscribe to the conventional view of life success, you may well have to pay a high price in unstinting labor and devotion to the demands of your job. Just don’t claim that there is no alternative. Many people strive for outcomes based on society’s current norms because they have been taught to believe they are desirable — and never imagined any other option.

Only when they achieve what they sought — and find that it wasn’t worth the price they paid — do they question what society taught them. There is always an alternative, however much you have been conditioned to fear it — and whatever it might cost you in disapproval by at least part of society.

In fact, today’s society is probably more friendly to people who decide to “drop out” of the corporate rat race and create their own careers, outside of the norms of big business, than at any time in recent centuries. Instant, high-speed communications have made working from home commonplace. The demand for specialist skills, and the shift to knowledge work, has forced corporations to accept — even seek out — freelance experts of all kinds. The lone entrepreneur is even becoming something of a hero, favorably compared to the “stick in the mud” organization man or woman.

If we want to create a more civilized and less pressured world, change has to begin somewhere. If not in your life, then where? Besides, fashions usually reach their extreme point just before they change — or are swept away. It could be that we are almost at the turning point for this one.

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