The Productivity Myth; Why Quarantine and Self-Isolation Can Help us to Re-evaluate Our Goals
“But to be well and use strength to get more out of life is, surely, the greatest fun in the world.”
When the coronavirus lockdown was first announced I immediately reached for my laptop and wrote a ‘Master to-do list’: a two-page document, consisting of fun projects like, ‘self-publish a poetry collection’, and ‘take a variety of online courses’. I spent hours making detailed timetables, and more lengthy lists; I filled my weeks with an increasingly daunting set of obligations. My actions were driven by this inane need to be productive.
The day before the lockdown announcement I ventured to school to gather a few folders, the last remnants of seven months-worth of full-speed productivity. I, like many others, was distraught due to the loss of the regular school-day structure that I had become so accustomed to. The knowledge that no matter how hard we could try, the school environment could not be replicated, only worsened my already deteriorating mood.
Today, after having reached the peak of ‘productivity’, I realised that I had actually reached the nadir of my physical and emotional wellbeing. For many, productivity has been a requirement in order to feel fulfilled and accomplished, rather than an active choice made to achieve one’s goals. Our traditional understanding of ‘productivity’ is centred around continual self-optimisation and the reconfiguring of our routine in order to sustain our ever-increasing workloads. This definition is no longer applicable to our lives, and even after our eventual return to work, we should not reinstate it.
This urge to overachieve, even in times of global crisis, is reflective of our always-on work culture. This is suggested by the journalist Nick Martin in a recent article for ‘The New Republic,’ where he wrote that this mindset mirrors “the idea that every nanosecond of our lives must be commodified and pointed toward profit and self-improvement” [1]. Anne Helen Petersen, a journalist and the author of the forthcoming book: Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, seconded this idea. She claimed that “We’re so used to making every moment of ours productive in some capacity. Like, I’m on a walk, I should listen to this information podcast that makes me more informed or a better person” [2]. In line with this, Dr. Petersen also stated that the need to optimize every minute of our day is especially prevalent in millennials: “I think for millennials, our brains are particularly broken in terms of productivity. Either you give up or feel bad about it all the time” [2].
As a student, the latter perfectly describes my mindset. On top of the ever-surmounting online workload, the shared pressure to create anything and everything, ranging from books to small businesses, has meant that productivity anxiety is on the rise. As if social distancing is not enough to contend with, many students now feel an overriding sense of guilt from their ‘failure’ to turn adversity into art.
But is this doctrine of productivity, which orders us to continually maximise our exposure to information, actually effective? Despite our obsession with moving faster and doing more, productivity growth rates have stalled significantly in the last decade. According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, Americans are only getting about 1.4% more productive annually, which is the lowest growth rate in 30 years, and the second lowest since the mid-20th century [3]. According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK experienced the fastest fall in its productivity rates in five years in the April-to-June quarter of 2019. The ONS added: "This sustained period of declining labour productivity represents a continuation of the UK's 'productivity puzzle’” [4].
We’re producing more productivity tools than ever, but we have less and less to show for it. It turns out a ‘do more, faster’ mindset isn’t actually how people want to work- in fact, 61% of people say that they want to “slow down to get things right” [5]. This simple notion appears to be the solution to the ‘productivity puzzle’, which has been so detrimental to many people’s mental and physical wellbeing.
Slowing down.
So, how should we redefine our personal definition of ‘productivity’, and in doing so, re-evaluate our goals?
Productivity is currently defined as ‘the effectiveness of productive effort measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input’ [6]. This is a highly transactional definition, yet it does capture the term successfully as we are constantly concerned with getting the most ‘output’ out of the least ‘input’. This forces us to measure the success of our work quantitatively rather than qualitatively. Such an approach has led to an employee and student burnout crisis, which has had severe ramifications on both individual and organizational performance.
The scale of the crisis reflects this. For example, a recent Gallup study consisting of almost 7,500 full-time employees found that 23% of employees felt ‘burned out’ at work very often or always, whilst an additional 44% reported feeling ‘burned out’ sometimes. The organizational cost of this is substantial because burned-out employees are 63% more likely to take a sick day and 2.6 times more likely to actively seek a different job. Furthermore, the employees that stay typically have 13% lower confidence in their job performance and are half as likely to discuss how to approach performance goals with their manager [7]. This ultimately means that some employees aren’t working as efficiently as possible, which can affect a company’s profit badly.
In order to re-evaluate our approach to work, we must alter the way we define productivity to include how conducive our work is to our mental and physical wellbeing. Ways in which you can do this include:
Working collaboratively: Being willing to delegate responsibilities to other team members is an important step towards managing a workload for maximum efficiency.
Defining your working hours: Setting a clear workday will help you to distinguish between your time for personal development and professional development.
Taking breaks at regular intervals: When structuring your workday, it is really important that you take breaks from the screen and get active. Many people recommend the Pomodoro Technique, where you take a five-minute break every 25 minutes.
Rest: Outside of these working hours, prioritising time for rest and relaxation is a great way of establishing a boundary between professional productivity and personal development. This should be done in a way which accommodates individual goals independent from work, such as reading for pleasure, watching an interesting TV series, journaling, or meditating and digesting your day.
In light of this, we should redefine the indices of ‘productivity’ to take into account its long-term benefits, as opposed to prioritising short-term goals. As Virginia Woolf wrote in A Writer’s Diary, orientating our goals towards our level of ‘well[ness]’ and ‘strength’ will not only help us to get the most out of life but will also be an enjoyable and positive experience [8].
References
[1] N. Martin, The New Republic, “Against Productivity in a Pandemic”, 17 March 2020. [Online]. Available: https://newrepublic.com/article/156929/work-home-productivity-coronavirus-pandemic. [Accessed 24 May 2020].
[2] T. Lorenz, The New York Times, “Stop Trying to Be Productive”, 1 April 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/style/productivity-coronavirus.htmlaction=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage. [Accessed 24 May 2020].
[3] S. Sprague, "Below trend: the U.S. productivity slowdown since the Great Recession," Beyond the Numbers: Productivity, vol. 6, no. 2, 2017.
[4] M. Dunn, "Labour productivity, UK: April to June 2019," Office for National Statistics, 8 October 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/labourproductivity/bulletins/labourproductivity/apriltojune2019. [Accessed 24 May 2020].
[5] B. Taylor, Dropbox, “Survey: How Modern Teams Actually Want to Work”, 27 March 2019. [Online]. Available: https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/how-modern-teams-want-to-work. [Accessed 24 May 2020].
[6] Lexico, "Lexico," Oxford, [Online]. Available: https://www.lexico.com/definition/productivity. [Accessed 24 May 2020].
[7] B. Wigert and S. Agrawal, Gallup, “Employee Burnout, Part 1: The 5 Main Causes”, 12 July 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/237059/employee-burnout-part-main-causes.aspx. [Accessed 25 May 2020].
[8] V. Woolf, "A Writer's Diary," Musaicum Books, London, 2017.
