Everything Wrong With Modern Productivity (+ A Hopeful Way Forward)

00:00:00.000 | The plight of the modern knowledge worker is we don't

00:00:03.300 | have a good definition of productivity. So we think we do

00:00:06.780 | right? I mean, it's something like, yeah, I know what it means

00:00:08.540 | to be productive or not productive. But we don't

00:00:10.440 | actually have a great definition and knowledge work of what that

00:00:12.720 | means, because knowledge work is not well set up for the

00:00:16.100 | classical definitions of what it means to be productive, right?

00:00:19.380 | So in a factory, I can measure Model T's produced per labor

00:00:24.300 | hour input, and it's a number, right? And then if you change

00:00:26.820 | something about how you build the Model T's, and that number

00:00:28.820 | goes up, you say this way is better, this is more productive,

00:00:31.300 | that came out of agriculture, bushels yielded per acre of land

00:00:35.660 | if you planted your crops a different way, and that number

00:00:37.740 | went up, like, oh, this is a better way of doing it.

00:00:39.660 | Knowledge work emerges as a major sector in mid 20th

00:00:43.260 | century, right? The term is coined 1959. How do we define

00:00:46.740 | productivity here? Well, those did not exactly apply anymore,

00:00:50.060 | because individual knowledge workers weren't producing one

00:00:52.860 | thing, they were doing many things. And maybe what I'm doing

00:00:55.260 | is different than what you are doing. These are the projects I

00:00:57.740 | happen to have taken on, you've taken on these projects, the

00:01:00.380 | systems by which we were doing our work also are no longer

00:01:03.100 | transparent. So in knowledge work, how you organize yourself

00:01:06.940 | or manage your work is personal, which is a big change, actually,

00:01:10.460 | in the history of economic activity, but it's personal

00:01:12.940 | productivity. So there's nothing to even improve in an obvious

00:01:16.220 | way. So we couldn't use standard definitions of productivity. So

00:01:19.780 | what do we do instead? We said, let's use visible activity as a

00:01:24.900 | proxy for doing useful effort, which is just a veneer of

00:01:28.460 | productivity, the appearance of productivity, the pseudo

00:01:31.260 | productivity. Exactly, right. So like, at least we'll do this. So

00:01:35.980 | if I see you doing stuff, that's better than you not doing stuff.

00:01:39.940 | And if we need to be more productive, let's work longer

00:01:41.940 | hours, you know, come in early, stay late. That's what we had as

00:01:45.620 | our definition of productivity. Now, I'm a technocritic, right?

00:01:47.980 | I'm a computer scientist. So I'm always interested in how

00:01:49.980 | technology interacts with these social economic systems. My

00:01:53.820 | contention is this really went off the rails when we had the

00:01:56.540 | front office IT revolution. So now we have computers, and we

00:01:59.900 | have networks, and we have laptops, and then we get

00:02:01.740 | wireless internet. Now, suddenly, you can demonstrate

00:02:04.980 | visible activity at any point, wherever you are. The fine

00:02:10.420 | grainness of these demonstrations is much smaller,

00:02:12.740 | right? It's now not just I see you in your office, it's I have

00:02:15.660 | to actually be answering specific messages, and work can

00:02:18.820 | follow you wherever you go. Also, the low friction nature of

00:02:21.940 | digital communications made potential work really skyrocket.

00:02:25.300 | So workload per worker really went up, because it was just

00:02:27.860 | much easier now for things to be put on your plate. If I can just

00:02:31.580 | send you an email, like, hey, can you handle this? That's much

00:02:34.260 | lower friction, much less social capital costs and having to

00:02:36.660 | actually come to your office and ask you to do something. So

00:02:39.140 | workloads also spiraled. Pseudo productivity did not play well

00:02:42.260 | in that environment. So if I could demonstrate busyness at

00:02:45.260 | any point in my life, and there was a never ending queue of

00:02:47.660 | work, this was going to create a crisis. Because now, every

00:02:51.740 | moment at the office or not at home, home office, now in the

00:02:55.220 | home office on the soccer field, wherever you are, you're

00:02:57.940 | constantly now in the psychological battle internally

00:03:00.660 | speaking between do I demonstrate more productivity or

00:03:02.940 | not, this is what I think started to burn people out. It's

00:03:05.940 | what began to create a burnout crisis and knowledge work that

00:03:09.220 | you really don't see pick up until the early 2000s. Right?

00:03:13.780 | If you look at time management books from the 1990s, look at

00:03:17.620 | you know, first things first by Stephen Covey, all optimism, all

00:03:21.100 | figure out your values, and you can carefully plan your day to

00:03:26.420 | actualize all of your best interests, like rah, rah, very

00:03:29.620 | positive. You get to 2004. David Allen's getting things done. And

00:03:34.100 | now it's how do we even find like some moments of Zen like

00:03:37.700 | peace among the onslaught? There's no everything is gone,

00:03:40.420 | except for how do we survive the onslaught? So by the 2000s,

00:03:43.860 | digital technology was cracking pseudo productivity. And so I

00:03:48.220 | think this is what began to rapidly burn out knowledge

00:03:51.460 | workers, that combination,

00:03:52.580 | and didn't necessarily translate into actual productivity or

00:03:57.100 | moving the ball forward on whatever the mission of the job

00:03:59.980 | or the corporation is,

00:04:01.180 | well, I think it made it more apparent because you began to

00:04:03.820 | get once you have these tools, these absurd situations like

00:04:06.660 | early in the pandemic, for example, a lot of people found

00:04:09.860 | themselves in a situation that eight hours of zoom, right zoom

00:04:13.340 | after zoom after zoom after the entire day was spent talking

00:04:15.900 | about work with no time actually spent not actually doing any

00:04:18.620 | work, which is so absurd that it's like a like a Kafka play or

00:04:22.260 | something like this is some metaphor for the the nihilistic

00:04:25.020 | reality of life, but it was what people were actually doing. So

00:04:28.100 | it became hard to ignore. And that's why I think the pandemic

00:04:30.900 | was the tipping point. Finally, for a lot of people, a lot of

00:04:33.860 | knowledge workers, they got it got so absurd and overloaded so

00:04:37.900 | much time spent talking about work so little time actually

00:04:40.740 | doing work that people began looking in the mirror and

00:04:43.900 | saying, what am I even doing here?

00:04:45.820 | Yeah, the idea that this membrane that separates work

00:04:49.460 | from home was initially permeable seemed like a good

00:04:53.980 | thing until it became so permeable as to be non existent

00:04:58.300 | whatsoever, where there's no boundary or distinction or

00:05:01.900 | differentiation between when you're working and when you're

00:05:04.340 | not. And then you layer on top of that, this expectation of

00:05:08.380 | always being available, with the expectation that you are going

00:05:12.980 | to immediately respond to everything that's incoming. And

00:05:16.420 | it's not just email, it's got its email, it's slack, it's DMs,

00:05:19.860 | it's LinkedIn, it's, you know, the number of inputs that people

00:05:23.860 | have and ways in which people can get in touch with you is

00:05:26.980 | overwhelming. So even yesterday, I came into the studio, I was

00:05:31.100 | like, I'm gonna get ready to talk to Cal. You know, I've been

00:05:34.980 | away for a while, I should probably check in on the, you

00:05:37.460 | know, inbox, checked email, checked, you know, checked my

00:05:42.100 | WhatsApp, responded to a whole bunch of texts. And by the time

00:05:45.340 | I was done with that, it starts over again, because there's a

00:05:48.500 | whole new tranche of replies to then get into. And then I looked

00:05:52.660 | up and it was, I got to the studio at, I don't know, 830 or

00:05:56.340 | something like that, it was three o'clock. It was like, I

00:05:58.220 | hadn't even begun to wrap my head around, like, what I wanted

00:06:01.540 | to talk to you about yet.

00:06:02.580 | Yeah, what did you create?

00:06:03.380 | Insanity. And then you spend your whole day in defense mode,

00:06:07.500 | you're not intentional about, you know, being on the offense,

00:06:11.140 | tackling the things that are most important. And then you

00:06:14.100 | leave feeling dispirited, and feeling like you didn't actually

00:06:17.940 | accomplish anything and questioning and maybe, you know,

00:06:21.180 | you and you're, are you? You're not really.

00:06:23.180 | Yeah, well, this was this is the idea of the book, right? Is why

00:06:26.620 | do we do that? Well, we don't have another workable definition

00:06:29.340 | of productivity. So for a lot of people, it's like, this is all I

00:06:32.540 | had. This is all my, my organization recognizes is

00:06:36.060 | activity, right? And this is the way you're active. In 2024, as

00:06:40.300 | you're on email, you're doing this, I don't know what else to

00:06:42.260 | if I'm not doing this, then how does anyone know I'm doing

00:06:44.340 | productive work. So the solution to all this is let's have better

00:06:47.660 | definitions of productivity. Let's have alternative ways of

00:06:51.780 | thinking about what it what it could mean to be productive,

00:06:54.340 | because I had written about, you know, I wrote a book about

00:06:56.540 | email, and how damaging it was, and how this culture was making

00:06:59.780 | everyone stupid, or it is a terrible idea. It's like turning

00:07:02.540 | the lights off in a car factory to save money on your electric

00:07:05.060 | bill. It's like you are, but people are putting the steering

00:07:07.540 | wheels, you know, on the roof, because they can't see anything.

00:07:09.460 | And that's what email was, to me, it's convenient, but it's

00:07:11.620 | destroying these companies. But why didn't people make changes,

00:07:15.100 | even if they recognize this is very damaging to people's

00:07:19.260 | psychological sustainability, we're not actually producing

00:07:21.540 | anything valuable. It's because they said, Well, what else do we

00:07:24.460 | do? Like, how else do I? How else do I know if my, you know,

00:07:28.980 | employees are working? Like, what would productivity mean? If

00:07:31.940 | it's not accessibility? And I thought, well, we can answer

00:07:34.300 | that.

00:07:34.660 | So let's answer it. How do you let's begin the process of

00:07:38.900 | answering that.

00:07:39.580 | So slow productivity is much more based on producing stuff

00:07:43.780 | that's good. And it's much less based on activity. So it's

00:07:46.740 | results oriented more than it is activity focused. It has three

00:07:51.260 | big ideas. The first is to do fewer things, which terrifies a

00:07:55.940 | lot of people, but it shouldn't. The second is to work at a

00:07:58.700 | natural pace. So this idea which is possible in a world of

00:08:02.140 | pseudoproductivity, that you're going to just be full intensity,

00:08:05.220 | nine to five, week after week, month after month, year after

00:08:08.580 | year with no variation. Like you can you can pull that off if

00:08:11.820 | what you're doing is just lots of email. You can't pull that

00:08:14.460 | off if you're doing serious cognitive work. So we need more

00:08:17.020 | of a natural varied pace. And then finally obsess over

00:08:19.820 | quality. So counterbalance that or support that with an

00:08:23.540 | obsession over the quality of what you produce. I think that

00:08:27.020 | combination is engineered to be much more sustainable, it

00:08:30.220 | matches the human condition much better. So you can you can

00:08:33.100 | pursue that definition of productivity without by default

00:08:36.180 | burning out. And I think it's actually effective, it's going

00:08:38.940 | to produce a lot of valuable things and your, your company,

00:08:42.020 | your career, these things are going to do well.

00:08:44.020 | I want to get into each of the three. But I think before we do

00:08:47.620 | that, it should be pointed out that to engage with those three

00:08:52.100 | tenants requires at least some agency in your job, or a person

00:08:58.260 | at the top who understands this and is trying to create that

00:09:01.660 | culture beneath him or her.

00:09:03.460 | So I tried to design the ideas in this book that if you're a

00:09:06.380 | knowledge worker, even with no buy in, you can still act to

00:09:10.180 | some degree in all three principles. This was the lesson

00:09:12.900 | I learned with my last book, which was much more organized on

00:09:16.460 | what can organizations do, in this case, like the cure the

00:09:19.740 | email problem, turns out organizations just aren't willing

00:09:21.900 | to do it, or if they're willing to do it, it's too complicated,

00:09:24.180 | it's too hard. And so what I'm really focusing on here is how

00:09:26.940 | can we put these ideas into play, even if you have to do it

00:09:30.700 | without the direct consent or blessing of someone above you.

00:09:34.860 | So how does that work if your boss has a different

00:09:37.060 | expectation?

00:09:37.980 | So that's what we get into, like, okay, quick, get concrete.

00:09:40.700 | So alright, so early on principle number one, do fewer

00:09:42.940 | things, right? What that actually means is do fewer

00:09:45.580 | things at once. So my argument is, if you have fewer things on

00:09:49.460 | your plate at any one time, from a mental health perspective,

00:09:52.940 | it's way more sustainable, you get rid of that deranging effect

00:09:55.900 | of just I'm all I'm doing is talking about work. It also

00:09:58.700 | actually increases the rate at which things are finished.

00:10:01.380 | Because the issue with having too many things on your plate at

00:10:04.620 | the same time is that each of your commitments brings with it

00:10:07.700 | its own administrative overhead. So everything you've agreed to

00:10:11.820 | has its own little overhead tax, like emails, you have to send

00:10:15.140 | about it or meetings you have to go to. So if you have too many

00:10:17.980 | things on your plate at once, you say yes, too many times, you

00:10:20.940 | now have a huge pile of this overhead tax coming to every

00:10:23.820 | day. So more and more of your day is spent servicing the

00:10:26.460 | things in your list without actually working on it. This not

00:10:29.420 | only takes up direct time, it also fragments your day more and

00:10:32.340 | more. So your ability to actually make uninterrupted

00:10:34.380 | progress that also begins to degrade. So now the pace at

00:10:37.660 | which you're able to finish anything slows down. So yes, you

00:10:40.180 | said yes to more things. But the rate at which anything is

00:10:43.260 | getting done is actually slower. So if you can somehow

00:10:45.740 | bootstrap your way and have ideas about how to do this, but

00:10:48.260 | bootstrap your way, and then taking on fewer things at once,

00:10:51.660 | pretty soon you're gonna be rewarded for this. Because not

00:10:54.500 | only does it make your life better, but your boss or

00:10:56.220 | whoever, your clients will be like, "Hey, look at this. We're

00:10:59.300 | getting things done. This is great. Now you're a rainmaker

00:11:01.540 | over here." And so you can, if you can bootstrap that, it's

00:11:05.340 | actually gonna be pretty easy to keep going because you're gonna

00:11:08.100 | be better at what you do.

00:11:09.140 | What would be an example of how you would bootstrap that? You

00:11:13.100 | said you had some ideas about how would like in a very

00:11:15.460 | concrete context.

00:11:16.420 | Yeah. So like, okay, here's the, this started as a thought

00:11:19.220 | experiment, actually, but people are trying it. So I'm now

00:11:21.420 | proposing this as an actual thing to do. Imagine you have a

00:11:25.020 | shared document at the top. All right, here's the projects I'm

00:11:28.460 | currently working on, like actively making progress and

00:11:31.020 | dividing line. Here's the queue of projects that I'm going to

00:11:34.500 | work on next in the order I'm going to work on them. So now

00:11:37.580 | someone comes to you and says, "Hey, like, I need you to work

00:11:40.700 | on, you know, the Johnson memo." And you say, "Great, just go to

00:11:44.340 | here's my shared work document, just, you know, throw it on

00:11:46.860 | there, make sure I point or anything I need to know, or if

00:11:48.860 | you want me to follow up with you, just let me know to do

00:11:50.340 | that." Now they have to confront the reality of your workload.

00:11:53.380 | And they say, "Oh, like Rich is working on these three things.

00:11:56.380 | There's seven other things in this queue. And a couple things

00:11:59.060 | are going to happen there. Either A, they're going to say,

00:12:00.900 | 'Actually, you know what, never mind, because, you know,

00:12:03.020 | actually, you have a lot going on. It's not some vague sense of

00:12:06.500 | you saying I'm busy, I can see what you're doing, or their

00:12:09.020 | expectations will be reset. Okay, if I give this to you, it

00:12:12.420 | might be a month till I hear back because I can see what this

00:12:14.540 | whole queue is." And it allows people to understand you're only

00:12:18.420 | actively working on a few things at a time. And you can even tell

00:12:21.460 | them, "Feel free to keep checking in on here, you can

00:12:24.180 | watch your project move its way up the queue. And you'll see

00:12:27.260 | when it jumps into my active projects list, at which point

00:12:29.980 | like it would make sense to actually bother me about things."

00:12:32.060 | This was supposed to be a thought experiment, because it's

00:12:34.420 | a little bit contrived, right? People are trying it.

00:12:37.700 | They're doing it.

00:12:38.340 | They're doing it.

00:12:38.860 | But isn't the exception or reality check here, because the

00:12:43.500 | person who's calling you or emailing you and saying, "I want

00:12:46.100 | you to do this thing," is going to be higher up in the hierarchy

00:12:48.860 | of the organization. And they're going to say, they may look at

00:12:51.780 | that and they say, "Okay, but like, I need you to stop what

00:12:55.300 | you're doing and do my thing first. It takes priority."

00:12:58.100 | Yeah.

00:12:58.460 | Because they're answering to somebody else. And all they care

00:13:01.620 | about is making sure that the thing gets done so that they can

00:13:04.140 | report to the person above them.

00:13:05.580 | Yeah. So, in this thought experiment, you say, "Okay." You

00:13:07.940 | add it to the top, you bump something out, and you tell that

00:13:10.580 | person.

00:13:11.060 | You got to talk to the other person that I'm supposed to be

00:13:13.980 | doing this thing for?

00:13:15.020 | Yeah, yours got bumped out, but it's at the top of the list.

00:13:17.260 | It'll go back in. So, you know who actually does this very

00:13:20.500 | successfully? Software developers. So, they figured out

00:13:23.540 | a long time ago, "Okay, it doesn't work well to have all

00:13:27.420 | these different features and stuff we need to add to a

00:13:29.220 | product just existing on various people's plates." Like, just

00:13:31.980 | like, "Hey, also add this feature, also add this feature,

00:13:34.180 | also add this feature."

00:13:35.260 | The idea of the stack.

00:13:36.500 | Yeah, that does not work. And so, what do software developers

00:13:39.140 | tend to do instead? These agile methodologies that all seem to

00:13:42.380 | share a similar workload distribution strategy, which is

00:13:45.380 | we will collect the stuff that needs to be done as a team

00:13:48.860 | centrally, not assigned to anyone yet, but not lost either.

00:13:52.460 | Here it is. Like, we have it as index cards on a bulletin board.

00:13:56.460 | These are all things that need to be done. And if someone comes

00:13:59.060 | up with something else that needs to be done, let's get it

00:14:01.180 | right up there so we won't forget it. Over here, we can have

00:14:04.700 | a column for each of our developers. We put what they're

00:14:07.460 | working on in their column. And as soon as they're done with it,

00:14:10.380 | we'll move that thing to done, and we can pull something new

00:14:13.580 | onto their plate. And then they'll work on that thing until

00:14:15.580 | it's done. So, it gives the people who are coming up with

00:14:18.740 | the idea. So, someone calls the development team from the

00:14:20.980 | marketing, whatever, department. "Hey, our clients really want

00:14:23.740 | this. Like, get this in our program." They can know their

00:14:27.340 | work they're requesting did not disappear. There it is. It's on

00:14:29.740 | the board. It's on the queue. They're going to make a

00:14:32.460 | decision every time someone frees up a slot. But it's pull

00:14:35.340 | not push. I pull something new onto my plate when I'm ready,

00:14:38.900 | not you push everything onto my plate, and then I have to

00:14:41.860 | somehow deal with it. It works fantastically well for software

00:14:45.660 | development. I think we should explicitly be doing this in more

00:14:48.900 | knowledge work jobs. I'm talking literally index cards on a

00:14:51.420 | thing. Here's the one thing I'm working on. We're probably not

00:14:54.060 | going to get there anytime soon. But you can internally more or

00:14:56.820 | less simulate this by saying, "Here's what I'm working on." So,

00:14:59.540 | if you don't want to create that document, which is you got the

00:15:02.940 | right type of boss to get away from that, you can also do this

00:15:05.900 | more internally. So, you can say, "Okay, when someone asks me

00:15:08.460 | to do something, I find a time on my calendar to do it. I have

00:15:11.860 | to go and find and protect the time, right?" It's not only a

00:15:14.460 | time management tactic. You know you'll have time for it when the

00:15:16.860 | time comes. It's a reality check on your schedule. And you can

00:15:20.620 | earn a reputation pretty quickly as, "I'm very careful about my

00:15:24.180 | time." Like, "Okay, we know that about Callie. He's very careful

00:15:26.460 | about his time. We ask him to do something." Instead of giving

00:15:30.100 | the immediate yes or no, instead of saying yes or no in the room,

00:15:33.020 | you say, "Yeah, great. Let me go do... I keep very careful track

00:15:37.180 | of my time. Let me go find where the time would be for this. And

00:15:39.260 | I'll get back to you as soon as I do that and let you know when

00:15:42.100 | this might be able to fit." Then you go and you do that. You get

00:15:45.140 | back to them later. And you might be able to realistically

00:15:47.100 | say, "If I don't move something else, the next time I can find

00:15:50.260 | 15 hours, it's going to be six weeks from now." You earn the

00:15:54.980 | right to do this if people trust that, "Yeah, he's organized by

00:15:58.820 | his time. He's not lying." And you have more leeway.

00:16:03.940 | The trust piece is important because there's probably people

00:16:06.940 | who are trying to dodge work or just trying to do the least

00:16:09.340 | amount that they're going to be required to. But I think that

00:16:13.300 | central portal of shared information through a document

00:16:17.820 | or whatever else gives people the ability to see everything as

00:16:21.740 | it actually is and also obviates a lot of asynchronous

00:16:25.860 | communication around it because you can just look at that and

00:16:28.980 | there's no need for emailing back and forth about schedules,

00:16:32.220 | etc.

00:16:32.780 | Yeah, I mean, the asynchronous communication is the killer. Not

00:16:35.900 | the idea of asynchronous communication, but volume of it.

00:16:38.340 | Hey, if you like this video, I think you'll really like this

00:16:41.260 | one as well. Check it out.

Everything Wrong With Modern Productivity (+ A Hopeful Way Forward) | Cal Newport

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