We’ve got productivity backwards

ByJowi Witt

The core idea behind productivity is well-meaning. It is to make our work more productive. That we are able to produce more.

I think the core driver is to do a job better.
We want to achieve bigger things and so we constantly seek to improve — from riding a horse to driving a carriage to driving a car is an improvement in speed and comfort.

The driving question is to improve what we are doing.

A farmer does a job better when he can produce more bushels per acre – more tons per hectare.
A factory worker does a better job when there are more bottles produced in an hour.
For an author it might be the task to write more books per year.

Yet this is where we start to raise some questions:
​Is it really just the amount of books published?

That’s when I had the thought of the equation of success.​
I introduced it before as:

Striving for excellence.​
Striving for excellence is the journey to success.

So the equation is:

Quantity × Quality × Time = Success

Improving on the parts is striving for excellence, because we are trying to excel in clarity & quality over time.

Now when we look at modern productivity, we optimize often for more efficient ways to do something. So we only focus on quantity.
We don’t really measure quality.
And we also forget the measure of time.

That’s where we have productivity backwards.

A masterpiece will be developed over time.
When we try to do as much as possible, we burn out.
​Machines can be replaced. Human health — not so much.

So don’t forget the whole person.

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