Personal Productivity in the 21st Century
What does it mean to be productive? The “gurus” have given us a few ideas — it means to “get things done”, to be “highly effective”, to know who it was, exactly, who moved your cheese. What things, effective at what, and who is bringing cheese to work anyway are questions that these books don’t — and can’t — answer.
There’s something profoundly old-fashioned about much of our productivity literature today. I’ll admit — I’m quite a fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done, but there are aspects of his work and his philosophy that bug me, that hearken back to the Industrial Psychology of the early 20th century. Whenever he talks about “cranking widgets”, I can’t help but see in my mind Charlie Chaplin the Modern Times haplessly wielding a wrench against an ever-increasing onslaught of bolts that need tightening. And from there, I’m led inevitably to the famous image of Chaplin being dragged through the cogs and wheels of the machine — a fitting metaphor for how many people feel when they try to put all Allen’s ideas into practice.
The others — Covey, Drucker, and the flood of personal development books aimed at managers and executives that fill the business shelf at Borders — bring to mind the business world of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. I see Covey and my mind flips to Darren Stephens heading off to work at the ad agency, or men with hats whistling at the pretty girls in the secretarial pool in some madcap ’50s comedy. I see ZIg Ziglar’s books on the shelf (tons of them!) and imagine Willy Loman out there on the road, desperate for one more sale.
The productivity gurus of the last century seem to be describing a world where water coolers and coffee breaks still rule, where the non-smokers are the outcasts, where short-sleeved white shirts are matched with white, chest-length ties and topped off with neatly parted hair. They’re not describing worlds I’m familiar with — they’re not describing worlds I suspect most of us are familiar with.
The 21st Century Worker
While I’m sure there are still Old School corporate executives out there, and boiler room salesmen, and more than a few factory workers (though they’re rare in the US, where less than 10% of our working population is involved in production), the professional of today isn’t likely to be any of those. Work in the Western world has been redefined as knowledge work — the production of ideas, not goods. We’re paid to think, not make.
What does that mean in terms of productivity? In the 20th century, a worker’s productivity was measured in terms of how many widgets s/he cranked in a day, an hour — even a minute. Employers set up cameras and filmed workers at their machines, allowing them to time the steps taken to complete a task down to 1/28th of a second (most of the early development of film-making technology came from manufacturers, not artists). How do you measure the generation of ideas? How do you reduce thinking to a widget you can crank?
The answer, of course, is that you can’t. Which is why, I think, so many people balk at much of the advice offered by the likes of Allen, Covey, Drucker, and the lesser luminaries of the personal productivity world — and why creative people tend to be especially suspicious of their systems. It seems unnatural to, say, schedule a block of time when we can think uninterrupted — ideas tend not to respect our schedules very much.
It’s why, too, the idea of writing things down when they occur to us and following them up during our scheduled processing time also puts many people off — when we get a really good idea, we want to follow up on it now. Even if that means putting off whatever work’s in front of us.
Getting Creativity Done
There is a place in even the most creative person’s life for the kind of discipline offered by the systems of the productivity gurus. In fact, I’d say that a lot of us need those systems even more than the executives and managers that they’re aimed at. Getting places on time, forcing ourselves to handle our household necessities, keeping on top of our income and outlay — these are things that don’t come naturally to a lot of creative people, and following a productivity system can make that part of our lives a lot easier — which should in theory help us free up more time and energy for doing the creative stuff that gets us going.
But I think there’s also an empty space, a lacuna (a favorite word of mine that I almost never get to use!) that we need to deal with. How can we keep our schedules rigid enough that we know what we need to do when we need to do it, but flexible enough that we can focus on the things that feed our passion? How can we educate the people around us who see us sitting in our office (or den, or on a bench at the park) staring into space and think we’re goofing off, so that they understand that this still time is part of our work — the most important part of our work? How can we break free from the economic model that posits time as a spendable thing, and measures only successful outcomes — when we learn most from the failures?
Tomorrow, we’re posting an interview of Guy Kawasaki, a man I agree with totally about 50% of the time (and the other 50% of the time utterly disagree with). In the interview, Guy says “People should stop looking for grails and start looking for personal enlightenment.” What he means — or what I mean when I quote him — is that the idea that there needs to be a financial payoff to every idea, the idea that the “return” is more important than the “investment”, all too often keeps us from pouring ourselves into things that we don’t see any way to measure. And yet those are the things that are the things we should be most willing to invest ourselves in: family, friendship, beauty, truth, trust, community — enlightenment.
So what’s the answer? Where’s the “hack”? To be honest, I don’t know. I have infinitely more questions than solutions right now. But this month, I’ve asked our writers (including myself) to take on some of the issues I’m raising here. I’ve asked them to consider what’s missing in the productivity systems we have today, and what have we missed in them that’s especially valuable? Stay tuned throughout the month as we explore these issues, and feel free to bring up your own questions — and your own solutions — in the comments.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Dustin Wax
Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.
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Comments
Charlie Gilkey says on March 5th, 2008 at 11:13 am
This is a great post. I was going to put some comments here, but then it got up into length enough such that I’m going to trackback. Sometimes my trackbacks don’t hit lifehack, so drop by my page in a little bit if you’re interested. Keep up the great work.
Joe says on March 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Dustin, your favorite word is plural. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lacuna
I like where you’re going with this, by the way.
Eric says on March 5th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Wow.. this really is a great post. I can completely understand. I feel like when i don’t have that balance its very hard to stay in a positive attitude further hindering creativity skills. I personally think its harder to be productive in the way of ideas because you have to be productive and efficient in your physical life to clear up all free space in your mind and in turn letting in all the new ideas. I’d love to read more.
Dustin Wax says on March 5th, 2008 at 11:36 am
Joe: You are correct — a re-writing error that slipped through. Thanks!
Charlie: Will check it out.
Eric: More is coming. There are 2 dozen or so really talented, creative, and productive people writing at lifehack.org — with all that firepower, there *has to be* some wisdom. And I agree — when all the “other stuff” gets overwhelming, creativity suffers. But spending all our time getting all our ducks in a line can hinder creativity too — that’s the basic paradox of all this. Let’s try to figure it out!
Marleen says on March 5th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Perhaps our greatest problem with achieving personal productivity is that we’re addicted to the adrenaline of stress.
We free up time, manage ourselves only to find we still don’t have enough time. It’s not because our system doesn’t work or should be working better.
It’s because we all create our own “suffering”. We all lack the skills to “just let go” (which is what creative ideas need, hence the “planning” part in most systems and our lack of satisfaciton with whatever holy grail (system) you choose).
Like my collegue always says when I’m buzzing about: “nu-uh-uh:Zzzzeeennnnnnnn!” Try argueing with that. :-)
Dustin Wax says on March 5th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Marleen: There certainly is something to that “addiction to stress” thing, but I think it’s deeper than just stress. A part of this that I cut (to come back to later) is the whole Protestant Work Ethic thing, which says that “if you’re not working, you’re sinning” (I’ve just compressed hundreds of years of theology and philosophy into a slogan, so don’t expect precision). This is not a religious thing, though — the Protestant Work Ethic has become pervasive throughout Western cultures (and many non-Western ones). Stress, then, is a sign that we’re working,that we’re poured heart and soul into our work, that there’s no room for sin. For centuries, artists have been out on the edge of this — some were incredible workers, but the nature of their work itself (which isn’t directly useful) made even the most driven of artists seem suspicious. Today, though, *most of us* engage in work that isn’t directly useful — the world wouldn’t end if a next-gen iPod or a new album or another web 2.0 app didn’t come out — or if it did and it wasn’t marketed, distributed, sold, covered in the media, given awards, etc. All of those things are jobs that people do, but they’re again vaguely suspicious. They’re all creative work, thinking work rather than doing work or making work. And so, the stress, to convince us that it’s really work. *That’s* the thing we need to deal with — not how to better manage the stress.
Amy says on March 5th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
This is a great article, and the first one I’ve ever read that validates my own process. I’ve always been very successful in my work as a professional fund raiser, but often had conflicts with management when I don’t “look busy” enough. I often find that the weeks when I have been the most “productive”, that is, had the most little things accomplished to show for my time, are the times when I feel like I’m spinning my wheels in terms of making truly meaningful progress.
Thank you for writing this!
Daryl Kulak says on March 5th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
This is the most important column ever posted on this blog.
You’re right – the productivity advice of today is outdated. It has a set of underlying assumptions that is dead wrong.
I think a major factor in this problem is that the authors make an assumption that people can be treated similarly to machines – data in, processing, results out. People aren’t machines, they are people. People are much more complex than machines, but also have much greater potential to innovate.
How can we capture this potential in people? What does productivity mean in the 21st century?
These are worthy questions, Dustin. Thanks for bringing them up.
Ivan says on March 5th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I enjoyed the whole article, but the part of “Getting Creativity Done” especially sticks out. Creativity, as you say, doesn’t always fit in with a neat schedule (almost never, in fact). But I am a believer in “forcing” creativity by just starting to write or draw or whatever your creative activity is. This first act usually evolves into something greater. I guess the key is to have some sort idea-collection tool at hand always. With that in mind,I have a “thinking-room” which I use to “force ideas out of myself, though not at a set schedule. I wrote a post about it here:
a href=”http://makegenius.com/7-steps-to-create-your-own-thinking-room/” title=”7 Steps to Create Your Own Thinking Room” target=”_blank”>7 Steps to Create Your Own Thinking Room
Leo says on March 5th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find that I can think better when I’m better organized. When I have less bugging me, and when I feel most in control, it frees me to think.
I’ve only recently started with GTD, but I’ve always had similar systems in place and I think personally that getting the mechanics of decision making out of the way in my daily or weekly reviews allows me to focus on the important things in life the rest of the time. To me, it’s a really empowering process and little bother at all.
Dustin Wax says on March 5th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Leo: I agree — like I said, I’m a fan and sort-of practitioner of GTD (I don’t do contexts, for example). But here’s the thing: I know for me (YMMV) when I really get into the flow of writing or building a website, the other stuff falls by the wayside. It’s not so much the time and effort that goes into maintaining the system as that it feels like I’m shoehorning my creative work into systems that are really designed for running corporations or churning out products. I’m not trying to get rid of systems like GTD; what I’m asking is, what *else* do we need to take into account or add (or subtract) from those systems to make them fit our work (and make our work fit those systems). Is there another model besides “cranking widgets”?
Charlie Gilkey says on March 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Dustin re: “is there another model besides “cranking widgets”?”:
I think we have the model, it’s just difficult to quantize it. The model I have in mind is something like “Did I add value to the knowledge currently available?” It’s quite inchoate at the moment, but there are a few ways we can evaluate that answer:
1) Did I increase the amount of knowledge we currently have?
2) Did I correct a problem with the knowledge we currently have?
3) Did I explore the open logical space and demarcate dead possibilities so that others either don’t follow or at least know what they’re getting into?
4) Did I come up with a novel or better way to understanding the knowledge we currently have?
There are lot of other ways to specify how we’ve added value, but maybe this way of thinking is a stab in the right direction? I’ll put it on my list of stuff to blog (think) about.
Tara Kelly (PassPack) says on March 5th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Couldn’t agree more.
Both my husband and I are creative types. We often joke about what we must look like to people walking past our window seeing us not “looking busy” 24/7.
It’s time to redefine work.
@Stephen | Productivity in Context says on March 5th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I like this article very much. In fact, I have a forum set up to discuss this very issue!
Nick Cernis had a post last week that I rebut here [http://hdbizblog.com/blog/2008/02/26/productivity-is-dead/]
and I would invite everyone to stop by http://forum.hdbizblog.com to talk about their ideas.
Thanks
compwiz says on March 5th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Look, I’ve said this a lot but I think it’s really helpful to create a To Do list…a daily one is the most helpful. You don’t have to necessarily update it in the morning… I normally like to add tasks as I think of them. I use this Daily To Do List site, but it doesn’t really matter what u use… I think it just should be a DAILY to do list, as opposed to simply a list.
Summy says on March 5th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
These are good thoughts. I’ll make it more complex how do you manage knowledge workers because even if you can get yourself to agree how do you get your employees to follow it.
That’s why I think enjoyment is so important to getting things done (even though GTD misses it). One simple way is to do more of what you want and don’t do what you don’t want.
Dustin Wax says on March 6th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Charlie: What you’re proposing is an academic model, it seems to me — those are essentially the questions you have to answer when defending a dissertation or proposal. It’s a good direction to thik in, although I can’t help but note the irony at a time when universities are mroe and more adopting a “university-as-business” model.
Compwiz: I’m a big advocate of todo lists, as many of my posts here attest. As i said, I don’t have a problem with productivity systems in general — I’d ahve a hard time writing for lifehack.org if I did! — but I’m wondering how to move past the 20th century productivity models, and in what direction we might go from GTD, etc.
Lisa Gates says on March 6th, 2008 at 2:44 am
What I read here in the comments is as amazing as the post. People are craving meaning in their doing.
guzel hikayeler says on March 6th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Thanks a lot..
Tim says on March 6th, 2008 at 6:14 am
It’s great that someone is saying “hang on a minute, is this system working?” It stresses me slightly to think that I might have to research a whole new system. We always think of our parents and grandparents as the ones who really had a bead on things and “got things done” which is why GTD is so popular. It promotes old techniques like notepads and pens and integrates them well into our new world of gadgets and light-speed communication and information overload. Lets keep checking our progress, but with an open mind.
Charlie Gilkey says on March 6th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Dustin: I’ve replied on my blog. See “Is the Internet killing Academia” in the trackbacks above. I don’t mean to spam this discussion, but I’m really interested in it. Let me know if there’s a better way to continue this discussion.
Dustin Wax says on March 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Charlie: No, that’s fine — it’s what the Internet is great for! I just read the post and there’s some interesting thoughts there — and that’s what I want, is to see people running with this stuff. Thanks!
Tim: I agree, to an extent, but the fact is that American workers (and I suspect workers in general) deal with a lot more than our parents and grandparents ever did. US worker productivity has *doubled* in my lifetime — we’re doing twice as much with the same amount of time. I don’t even know how much the information flow has increased — I remember having 5 channels to choose from, and now I have 500, plus the Internet, plus all the other channels of information flow in our society (books, magazines, radio, podcasting, etc.) We might not be *getting* 1,000 times or more the information our parents got, but we certainly have to *select* from a far greater pool of information than our parents or their parents ever did! SO I think we come up against the limitations of their systems, if they even had them, pretty soon.
Christian says on March 7th, 2008 at 10:52 am
There is an interesting little story to illustrate the point which you make here.
France has produced many astounding mathematicians, one of them, Laurent Lafforgue, was educated at the very elite École Normale Supérieure. After he graduated he went to work as a researcher for the CNRS, the public research body. He spent some twenty years there, never publishing a damn thing. A mathematician working on research and not publishing is basically someone who stares into space, and I guess he exemplefied the case of so many unaccountable public servants who don’t pull the weight when there are any good metrics to evaluate their performance with.
Only one day he did publish a paper. His paper was brilliant, so much that it won him the Fields medal, the equivalent to the Nobel prize for mathematicians.
So, it turns out he was working hard after all…
wokka says on March 7th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Interesting thoughts. Of course also creative work involves deadlines and the need to show some sort of results now and then, but catching ideas while they are fresh and interesting to us is also important.
One of my personal rules for living a good life: break the routine in at least one way every day. Do at least something small that is unplanned and unexpected. I find that having a reasonably regular life and some good habits helps me to be creative, just because I need a routine to break. If everything is just floating there is no basis to improvise from.
Rusty says on March 7th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
What’s ‘new’? Not much in the time management/personal productivity field. Read ‘The Management of Time’ by James McKay written in 1959. There is nothing ‘new’ in this field… just clever ways of saying/doing old things.
As one reviewer at Amazon.com says, “Though written nearly 40 years ago, the strategies outlined in this book still ring true. Problems with time management are indeed timeless, as are the solutions. This book actually presents a “fresh” look at time management, void of the psychobabble that so infects such works today.”
mirc says on March 16th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Successful website
BetsyW says on March 29th, 2008 at 10:20 am
What a great discussion! The imposition of traditional output standards almost always impedes creative flow. Take basic corporate expectations regarding arrival and departure in the traditional office setting, which are modeled on a last-century diametric, as an example.
While some progress has been made to challenge these expectations, I think a pull-back is currently happening as payors react to the economic stress, or even the perception of economic stress (media-fueled). Going back to traditional models is seen as reverting to business fundamentals, yet the fundamentals themselves most surely have evolved.
Take sales (please?). The process has totally changed in the space of my experience (25+ years) from adversarial and formulaic to highly collaborative between seller and client. Yet, what happens when economic stressors present themselves? Managers demand more accountability via the use of call reports, projections, meetings, etc. The creative freedom available to successful salespeople, which most apply to cultivating relationships, diminishes.
Just as marketers argue in favor of ramping up activities in a slowing or threatening economy, so should managers and owners consider and then advocate ramping up the freedom available for creativity. Eliminating the artifice and constraint inherent in these outdated models requires a high degree of trust in those hired, though. Fear tends to kick trust to the curb.
Arthur Battram says on March 31st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Joe says on:
“Dustin, your favorite word is plural. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=lacuna
“
Sorry Joe but lacuna is definitely singular – kinda like ’sheep’. Its a latin word that only sounds plural because you are misled by data and datum, plural and singular. My latin is v rusty, but it is because they are from a different declension or dimension or something.
that very same link clearly says:
n. pl. la·cu·nae (-nē) or la·cu·nas
Dustin Wax says on April 2nd, 2008 at 9:40 am
Arthur — I went back and changed it after Joe pointed it out. The original post said “lacunae”, because I had changed the sentence in revision and forgot to change the plural to singular.
Chuck Holt says on April 21st, 2008 at 8:41 am
I am glad to read this article. I have been thinking a great deal (is that work or free time?) about the whole issue of less being more. In fact, we read that margins is blocking free time in our lives so that we can have time to rest. I would like to re-define margins to mean resting but saving room for work. Its not that I’m lazy but i think that less is more and the more i rest, think, dream, etc.. the more productive i will be?
BillinDetroit says on April 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I tend to regard productivity ’systems’ with skepticism, mostly because they are something else to learn that don’t directly add to my expertise in a field. Time spent organizing my work into useful units has value only if it actually results in getting more done better (3 extra tons of junk output is of no added value). And the time spent learning the techniques is a time deficit that the technique has to pay back first. All too often, it doesn’t. Probably this is because that time payback is too long for me to see it happening.
Although I can’t see writing / buying such a book, I think that the lifehack / productivity (yadda yadda) books, blogs, etc. would serve better purpose if they carried titles such as “One Thing You Can Do to Gain 5 Minutes of Peace Each and Every Day for the Rest of Your LIFE!”.
I have time to learn GTD. What I don’t have time to do is to reshape my perceptions of existence to match the GTD view. GTD, as I understand it, won’t work for me. I need a single step that will get 15 minutes work accomplished in a given 15 minute span … that’s all.