What If Productivity Is Making Us Worse?

Jul 28

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Maybe it is just me getting older, but I have found myself of late questioning everything. (Thanks, midlife crisis.)

One thing in particular has been on my mind a lot. I used to be one of those people who looked upon public sector institutions with scorn for their inefficiency and bureaucracy. I would think, no wonder nothing ever gets done or changes. Do these people even want to work?! Ronald Reagan famously said, “But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.” And that may be true, but at what cost?

Working in the public sector has forced me to confront an uncomfortable possibility: some of what I once dismissed as inefficiency may actually be the visible result of an institution designed to value things other than speed and profit.

Which brings me to the heart of it:

What if the relentless pursuit of productivity is actually making us worse, not better?

Put down your pitchforks. I am not trying to dismantle the establishment or upend the absolute utopia we have created in the capitalist bastion that is our current workplace ecosystem (he says not at all, ironically and with a hint of exasperation).

But honestly, what has this relentless pursuit of efficiency, productivity, and profit wrought?

This is not another article about the destructive nature of profit above all else. That happened in this article There Is Something Wrong, and It Starts With Us😇

No, what I have been thinking about lately is this premise that we are meant to be relentlessly productive and that those who are not are somehow “less than”. It is wild to me that we just assume that being hyperproductive (even at the expense of our well-being) is something to strive for. Even worse, it is treated as an expectation. And then we act surprised when burnout, exhaustion, and disengagement become common features of working life.

To be clear, I am not against productivity. I am against treating maximum productivity as the baseline condition of a worthwhile human being.

Then, instead of questioning the premise we are operating from, we start treating people like replaceable parts in the machine of profit, rather than asking whether we are asking the wrong question.

Should organizations treat people like drill bits used to achieve a goal and replace them once they stop being as effective?
Or should we treat people like humans and understand that we shouldn’t be at 100% optimal all the time?

If we believe the only goal of a business is to maximize profit, it should not surprise us when people begin to believe their own value is determined by how much they can produce.

What Does the Data Say?

Science does not identify a single universal number of productive hours a person can sustain each day. Capacity depends heavily on the type and intensity of the work, as well as the worker’s skill, sleep, health, motivation, autonomy, interruptions, and working conditions.

The clearest conclusion is that remaining at work for eight hours is not the same as producing eight hours of uninterrupted, high-intensity cognitive performance. Human output fluctuates, and the more demanding the work, the more recovery matters.

Humans are capable of extraordinary productivity. What we are not capable of is sustaining maximum effort indefinitely without consequences.

Research on working hours has repeatedly shown that output and time do not increase in a straight line. At first, working more hours may produce more. Eventually, however, each additional hour produces less than the one before it. We remain at work, but our attention declines, mistakes increase, decisions become harder, and tasks take longer. More time spent working does not mean more valuable work gets done.

That's because human performance depends on recovery. Years ago, I was talking with a friend about working out. He was concerned that I was not taking rest days. He said, “Wes, working out is the builder. But rest is the architect.”

Effort creates fatigue. Under healthy conditions, rest allows our mental and physical systems to return to baseline. But when high effort is followed by more effort (another deadline, another late night, another crisis), the strain begins to accumulate. Recovery is not laziness or the absence of productivity. It is part of the biological process that makes sustained performance possible.

The consequences are not abstract. The World Health Organization and International Labour Organization found that working 55 hours or more per week was associated with a 35% greater risk of stroke and a 17% greater risk of dying from ischemic heart disease compared with working 35 to 40 hours. Long working hours were associated with an estimated 745,000 deaths worldwide in 2016.

Even when the consequences are less severe, the contradiction remains. The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety cost the global economy approximately $1 trillion in lost productivity each year.

Read that again.

Depression and anxiety cost the global economy approximately $1 trillion in lost productivity each year.

In our pursuit of maximum productivity, we may be creating the conditions that make people less productive.

Science does not tell us that work is harmful, ambition is misguided, or that organizations should stop caring about results.

It tells us something far less radical:

Human beings have limits. Performance fluctuates. Effort requires recovery. And systems that consistently demand more than people can sustainably provide eventually pay for it through exhaustion, errors, absence, turnover, illness, and lost output.

Which brings us back to the question.

Once we accept that human performance naturally fluctuates, what does it say about our organizations when we treat every decline in output as a defect in the person?

What Does the Heart Say?

The relentless pursuit of profit above all else is taking a real toll. It is harming us physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. Workplaces are obviously places where goods and services are produced, but they should also be places where people can experience some sense of accomplishment without the constant “What have you done for me lately?” pressure to do more and more and more.

Too often, the people absorbing the pressure are not the people receiving a proportional share of the value their effort creates. And, unironically, the people benefiting most are often the same people preaching the merits of hard work and promising that success awaits anyone willing to grind long enough. Meanwhile, they continue getting more successful while everyone else keeps grinding.

Where does this pressure come from?
Why must everything be delivered faster?
Why do we accept speed as inherently virtuous, even when it comes at the expense of thoughtfulness, health, relationships, and life outside of work?

We seem to have tacitly accepted that if we are not maximizing production 24/7/365, something terrible will happen. Yet few of us stop to ask what that terrible thing actually is.

Would the company be less profitable? Maybe. However, the relentless pursuit of maximizing profit has not consistently translated into greater security or prosperity for the people doing the work. In many cases, the pressure has increased while the rewards have remained concentrated elsewhere.

Look, this is a complicated issue with lots of facets.

I guess my point in writing this is to get you curious.

Why do we believe that an eight-hour workday is a good idea?
Why a 40-hour work week?
Where did that logic come from?
Why is the goal of every project to get it done quickly? What if instead of speed, we focused on thoughtfulness?

People want to do good work. I believe that wholeheartedly. I have said it for decades, I wrote it in my book, and I still believe it today: there is not a person on this planet who wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, “Today, I want to suck at my job.”

That person does not exist!

Some people have been so disenfranchised, abused, underappreciated, and exploited by systems that view them simply as tools for producing profit, however profit is defined, that they have become apathetic about their work. (Read: disengaged.)

But that is not necessarily a character flaw. Often, it is the predictable result of a system that prioritizes efficiency over well-being and profits over people.

Perhaps some of what looks inefficient through the narrow lens of speed is actually an organization making room for deliberation, accountability, participation, continuity, and human limits.

I do a lot of work in the public sector now, and the team around me is amazing: hardworking, thoughtful, productive, and deeply committed to the people we serve. Could we become more efficient? Of course. Could we deliver more? Probably.

But our customers are happy, and, just as importantly, our people are not being ground into dust to make that happen.

Maybe that is not inefficiency.

Maybe it is what sustainable performance looks like.

Maybe the question was never whether we could squeeze more from people.

Maybe the question was how much of their humanity we were willing to sacrifice to get it.