A new look at productivity, or what is wrong with our work

Content of productivity is excellent virus

The main destination of thousands of daily published articles on productivity - is "food" for office workers. They allow them to prokrastinirovat without guilt. After reading about the work - it is also a job, is not it?

Internet littered with hacks productivity: blog posts, article lists, tweets, a content marketing. All this thanks to the lives of millions of people clicks leading to exaggerated headlines and firmly believes that the right now they will learn five incredible productivity techniques that magically change the hated routine. Thanks to this content productivity has excellent traffic and allows resources to be nice to earn from advertising.

This pattern is so reflective that the media of productivity never get tired to use it.

Industry reduces productivity to the level of "tips and tricks"

As well as tips about saving money by themselves do not lead to wealth and productivity of the collectors of the recommendations are not going to work better.

Productivity in the spirit of "tips and tricks" simplified and linear. Taken separately tips and tricks can add half a percent efficiency, but does not change the situation drastically. Attach to the work of one or the other hack - it's like a little to adjust the sails when the boat is heeled and is located on the edge of the waterfall.

Productivity - a multifaceted phenomenon. It is a system! Therefore, it has such things as systemic effects, system integration, praxeology (the study of human activities), and others. In terms of CTR taken separately "hacks productive" work. But they are useless from the point of view of the system approach.

Of course, all these tips and tricks are true (at least partially). The problem is that they are interpreted subjectively and used out of context. But in fact it is not our fault. We can not go beyond the "tips and tricks" for this reason.

We perceive subjectively productivity

One of the things that we discovered thanks to the revolution in the ability to collect and analyze data from websites and applications is that intuitive assumptions about the patterns of human behavior, as a rule, wrong. Our forecasts are impregnated with conscious and unconscious biases. When we choose, we try and use productivity tool for yourself, we ignore the systematic determination of the results.

It seems that employers and employees have concluded a tacit collective agreement, under which is not accepted to ask questions regarding the measurement of productivity parameters. We do not want to define objective indicators of success, because our daily activities, as a rule, do not correspond with what is written in our job descriptions. We do not want to accurately measure the time spent on the job, as is necessary to really work, not just a pants sit in the office. But most of all we are afraid to find out the factors that really affect productivity. Because it would reveal just how dysfunctional it became the modern workplace.

As long as the productivity of the industry is not objective system will be developed, which will work at the individual level of each employee, it will remain the realm of speculation and guesswork.

We measure the efficiency of an authoritarian and top-down

Recently overflowed avalanche of releases from the network of companies offering products and services to measure employee productivity. So, Workday offers a set of tools to keep track of everything at once: from the mid-length E-mail and social media activity and ending with the time spent in the toilet.

In this case, all services aimed such as improving the efficiency of labor, have one common trait disturbing. They are designed to guide both for personnel control mechanisms. A couple of instruments for microanalysis and micro-management workforce.

Therefore, the essence of all the services of such services ranges from dubious ability to track online activity of employees to the utopian idea - to determine which of the workers eat the bread for nothing, who does not perform plan and so on.

Constant surveillance of the employees and their comprehensive "metrics" are contrary to everything we know about the motivation and enjoyment of work. In my opinion, soon the discontent of workers about such "productivity measurement" will be loud. What is the alternative? Evaluate the productivity is not a top-down and bottom-up. Moreover, this process should be based on the education and training of employees, their mutual support of each other. In other words, the workers themselves should measure and evaluate their progress.

Productivity is seen as a privilege

Why productivity is based on the model of "top-down"? In my opinion, historical roots in coaching. An entire generation of top managers develop their performance based on talk tete-a-tete with a personal trainer.

Take a look at today's coaches cost of services in terms of productivity: the average rate - $ 150-300 per hour, corporate trainers Services start at $ 5000 per day (starting at $ 10,000, if the coach has published the book). It is not surprising that the development of personal effectiveness model is not available to ordinary employees.

But this is not the only reason why many workers are unproductive. Among others:

• Lack of alternative ways of productivity studies (valid model where knowledge transferred directly to the client from the coach).
• The lack of alternative ways of reporting and motivation (coach and spurs, and monitors the customer, because, after all, the more he spends time with them, the higher the salary).
• The lack of certification systems (where they teach at the productivity of a coach?).
• All methods of increasing productivity (the typical career of a coach line productivity: counseling book → → corporate coaching; all the while zealous struggle for its methodology, its intellectual property).

Earlier concern for productivity was the prerogative of the senior management. But times have changed. We live in a world of alternative employment, more and more people are starting their businesses, become freelancers and become independent contractors. And all these people want to work better (from that directly depends on their income), want to be more productive.

That is why the popularity of applications acquire, alter behavior, such as Lift. They can solve the four above-mentioned problems:

• become an alternative learning environment;
• become a new platform receiving the content;
• become a network for mutual accountability and support of colleagues;
• become a trainer himself, controlling and podstogivaya themselves with progress metrics.

Industry productivity ignores technology

In one of the courses I teach people step by step, how to configure the computer to have finally earned methodology GTD. In 10 thousand people marched last year this course. The most popular positive feedback at the same time has become such:

Finally I figured out how to apply GTD in the real world.

Many of these people in the past have tried to increase the personal effectiveness of the method by David Allen. The problem is that most of the tools, imprisoned under the GTD, not so intuitive and easy to use, to be used in large quantities. As a rule, they are developed by techies for techies. And, unfortunately, often overlooked in the Silicon Valley, that even the slightest inconvenience, insignificant barrier may turn away people not only from the use of a specific application, but also the techniques in general. People tend to equate the individual programs and entire system.

The problem is compounded by the large corporations. They hire professional coaches will present their ideas as the quintessential productivity, without worrying about the details of its implementation. These parts are borne by the IT-department, which, in turn, is very far from the "great ideas of productivity," they are trying to implement in their companies.

All this is difficult for many to use and really useful gadgets to enhance the productivity of the program.

productivity inhumane

Many see productivity as a goal in itself. "What's wrong with being better, faster, more efficiently?" - you ask. Nothing. But here lies the biggest problem with productivity.

Excessive focus on the improvement of the activity can be dangerous. Continuous optimization of life, paradoxically, makes it impossible to enjoy it. Today perfectionism - one of the underrated factors that increase the risk of suicide. Increasingly, there are stories about how people "I burned out at work"Exhausting physical and mental resources.

The time will come, and will reconsider the productivity value of mankind. We have to move from the impersonal statistics to a more holistic ideas of well-being, satisfaction and happiness. The transition from a focus on "increasing sales" to a simpler life and social entrepreneurship is already noticeable. I hope that over time, the importance of understanding the variety of life and work will go into "productive ecosystems."

Einstein attributed the phrase:

You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. / It is impossible to solve the problem on the same level at which it originated.

I think many of the problems that we face in the stagnant productivity, you can decide not to increase number of technologies and modernization of work processes, and deep reassessment of the human desire to philosophy success.