We all want to increase productivity and get more done with our working hours.

There’s just one problem: Most people’s view of productivity comes from the industrial age. This leads to some fundamental misconceptions about work, including these:

If you work more hours, you get more work done.

Adding more people to a project means you can finish sooner.

Productivity is more or less constant and can be reliably predicted and scheduled.

For knowledge workers, i.e. anyone who works with information rather than physically producing stuff, these beliefs are not only wrong, they’re actively harmful.

So here is my suggestion for 5 new rules of productivity for knowledge workers.

1: Productivity varies wildly from day to day. This is normal.

In an industrial setting, production and output can be planned in advance barring accidents or equipment failure. Basically you know that if the plant operates for X hours tomorrow you’ll produce Y widgets.

For knowledge workers you can’t possibly know in advance whether tomorrow will be a day where you:

Reach a brilliant insight that saves you and your team weeks of work.

Work tirelessly and productively for 12 hours.

Or the day where you:

Spend 8 hours gazing dejectedly into your screen.

Introduce a mistake that will take days to find and fix.

This variation is normal – if a little frustrating. It also means that you shouldn’t judge your productivity by the output on any given day but rather by your average productivity over many days.

I have never seen this more clearly than when I was writing my first book. Some days I’d sit myself down in front of my laptop and find myself unable to string two words together. Some mornings I banged out most of a chapter in a few hours. Writing is a creative process. I can do it when Im in the mood. Trying to write when Im not, is a frustrating exercise in futility. On the days where I couldn’t write, I’d go do something else. Probably wakeboarding :)

The result: I wrote the book in record time (a couple of months all told), the book turned out really well AND I enjoyed the writing process immensely.

Three things you can do about this:

Don’t make project plans based only on your maximum productivity days. Not every day will be like that. Base your schedules on your average productivity. Don’t beat yourself up on the low-productivity days. It’s normal, it’s part of the flow and these days have value too. I like to think that on these days, my subconscious mind is working on some really hairy complicated problem for which the solution will suddenly appear fully formed in my mind. If you do have a day where you get very little done, why not go home early and relax or get some private chores done?

2: Working more hours means getting less done

Whenever we fall behind, it’s tempting to start working overtime to catch up. Don’t! Instead, commit this graph to memory:

It comes from this excellent presentation on productivity. Read it!

Here’s another data point:

In 1991, a client asked me to conduct a study on the effects of work hours on productivity and errors My findings were quite simply that mistakes and errors rose by about 10% after an eight-hour day and 28% after a 10-hour day I also found that productivity decreased by half after the eighth hour of work. In other words, half of all overtime costs were wasted since it was taking twice as long to complete projects. After the study was done, a concerted effort was made to increase staffing. (Source)

This may be counter-intuitive but it’s important to grasp: For knowledge workers there is no simple relationship between hours worked and output!

Three things you can do about this:

Don’t work permanent overtime. In fact, some studies indicate that knowledge workers are the most productive when they work 35 hours a week. Take breaks during the work day and make sure to take vacations. Experiment to find out what schedule works best for you. Five eight-hour days? Four longer days and a long weekend?

3: Working harder means getting less done

In an industrial environment, you can most often work harder and get more done. An increase in effort means an increase in productivity.

For knowledge workers, the opposite is true. You can’t force creativity, eloquence, good writing, clear thinking or fast learning – in fact, working harder tends to create the opposite effect and you achieve much less.

Three things you can do about this:

Take the pressure off yourself and your team. Even if you make a mistake or miss a deadline the world probably isn’t going to end. Less pressure means higher productivity. Schedule a work load equivalent to only 80% of your work week. Trust me, you won’t be wasting your remaining 20% – but you will be more relaxed and more creative. In the words of Fred Gratzon: “If it feels like work, you’re doing it wrong”. If you find that most of what you do is a struggle, this is a sure sign that you are not at your most creative and productive.

4: Procrastination can be good for you

In an industrial setting, any time away from the production line is unproductive time – therefore all procrastination is bad. Search for procrastination on google and youll find a massive number of articles on how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done.

They will tell you that there is only one reliable way to get stuff done:

Check todo-list for next item Complete item no matter what it is Go to step 1

Theyll tell you that if only you had enough willpower, backbone, self-control and discipline, this is how you would work too.

Well guess what: Knowledge workers dont work that way. Sometimes youre in the mood for task X and doing X is ridiculously easy and a lot of fun. Sometimes doing X feels worse than walking barefoot over burning-hot, acid-covered, broken glass and forcing yourself to do it anyway is a frustrating exercise in futility.

Sometimes procrastinating is exactly the right thing to do at a particular moment. This is largely ignored by the procrastination-is-a-sign-of-weakness, the-devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands crowd.

Three things you can do about this:

Procrastinate without guilt. Do not beat yourself up for procrastinating. Everybody does it once in a while. It doesnt make you a lazy bastard or a bad person. If you leave a task for later, but spend all your time obsessing about the task youre not doing, it does nothing good for you. Take responsibility, so that when you choose to procrastinate, you make sure to update your deadlines and commitments. Let people know, that your project will not be finished on time and give them a new deadline. Remember that “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted” (according to John Lennon).

5: Happiness is the ultimate productivity enhancer

The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

Im not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there  its not that its bad or deficient. Its just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesnt make you happy, youre trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

Three things you can do about this:

Get happy in the job you have. There are many things you can do to improve your work situation  provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you. Remember to appreciate what is already good about your job. Often we forget, and overfocus on all the annoyances, problems and jerks. This is a natural tendency called negativity bias, but it also tends to keep us unhappy because we forget what works. If all else fails, find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, dont wait  move on now!

The upshot

The industrial age view of productivity has serious limitations when applied to knowledge workers – but it remains the dominant view and still informs much of our thinking and many of our choices at work. Let’s change this!

This is not without it’s challenges. The old view of productivity may no longer apply, but it does give managers an illusion of control and predictability. The new rules are… messy. Less predictable. They rely less on charts and graphs – and more on how people feel on any given day.

It ultimately comes down to this: Do we want to stick with a model that is comforting and predictable but wrong or are we ready to face what REALLY works?

Your take

What about you? When are you the most productive? What is your optimal number of working hours per week? What stimulates or destroys your productivity? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.

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