Ep#47: The Productivity Crisis: What We’re Getting Wrong and How to Fix It

Productivity is a hot topic in news headlines, boardrooms, and everyday conversations. In this episode, Dr Dani and Designer Peter unpack the productivity crisis. In this episode, you will

• Understand why productivity isn't just an individual performance problem 

• Learn the contributing factors that stall productivity 

• Discover practical strategies for unlocking productivity 

Transcript

Dr Dani: [00:00:00] Hello, Peter. 

Designer Peter: Hi, Dani. How are you? 

Dr Dani: I am good. How are you? 

Designer Peter: I'm fantastic. Thank you. Great to be here with you again. 

Dr Dani: Yes, I am excited for this episode. 

Designer Peter: Me too. Me too. As 

Dr Dani: I'm for every episode, I think our listeners are probably like, she's always excited. 

Designer Peter: This one has been brewing for a little while though.

We've talked about recording something on this subject. Yeah. For a while. And I think it's been brewing and I feel like it, it could go in a couple of different directions as ever, but I'll do my best not for, not turn into a rant episode for me not fully, but what are we gonna talk about, Dani, 

Dr Dani: Is it even our podcast, if Peter doesn't have a rant, 

Designer Peter: there's a difference between a rant and a ramble.

Dr Dani: Okay, so I usually ask you what are we talking about today, Peter? 

Designer Peter: Okay. I see what you did there. Today, Dani, we are going to talk about productivity. [00:01:00] 

Dr Dani: Yes. Sorry. My reaction is I know we were recording this episode today and then this morning, I do my usual going through the news articles and scrolling through linkedIn. 

And I don't know if the technology spies are listening or what. But there were about five things that popped up. So either this episode is very. Timely. 

Or my device is listening into our conversations. 

Designer Peter: Or of course, as you well know, Dani, or you just happen to be paying more attention to the word productivity.

And you're seeing it more than, yeah. Actually there. But one of those three things. 

Dr Dani: One of those three things, so lately if you've been watching the news or some of the business conversations that are happening, globally productivity is down. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Is basically 

 The headlines. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So I thought being design thinkers and social scientists that we, are, we should unpack what? One, let's [00:02:00] start with what do we mean by productivity and then explore. What are some of the root causes? How might we hack this productivity problem?

That's what I thought we could talk through today. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice. What's the headline problem that we're seeing in the news and then, maybe this is where they rant, we'll go for me, but what, is that actually a problem?

Or how might we reframe or redefine that problem? That's, yeah. And then, yeah, what, like you say, what are some, what are our thoughts or solutions and how, as design thinkers, how might we go about tackling the problem or problems? Okay, we 

Dr Dani: normally start with a definition. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Which definition of productivity are we gonna start with?

Dani, that's a loaded question there, but  

Dr Dani: So the basic definition of productivity is the ratio of output to input, right? Yeah. So what are you getting out of the time that you're putting in? So for [00:03:00] example, let's say my job was making t-shirts. 

And I spent eight hours a day making t-shirts. 

The output the productivity would be measured by looking at how many t-shirts have I made in a day.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So that's the very, very basic way of explaining what we mean when we say productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: How much are we getting out for what we're putting in? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice. That's that's really nice and simple. Really can't be any simpler than that. Where my mind went to was, excuse me, especially 'cause of the, news and governments businesses the economies around the world in particular because some of them are not as healthy as they have been in the past.

This idea of productivity is a headline and a lot of news at the moment. And it, the economic productivity that, gDP for example as a measure of productivity, and this is, I'll save it for later, but that's where my rant can [00:04:00] start to, to come in and that this idea that you know, humans that are part of a society and an economy that, that, can start to feel like our only purpose is to holding my hands up and doing inverted commas and air quotes for the listeners to be productive.

And yeah, I think there's a, there's an interesting conversation to be had around what does that really mean? And, if you take that to to its extreme, then where does it lead us? And is that actually the best measure we, we can actually have in the year 2025 when we're recording it in case you're listening to this later?

For, let's describe it as a successful, healthy, sustainable, human society, planet, et cetera. But we don't have to go down that that particular path. Dani, maybe this is to say that your simple definition is absolutely right and if we extend it into GDP on one in one directional along the spectrum, maybe kinda lifting it, taking it up and abstracting it, then I feel like that can be less [00:05:00] helpful.

Whereas if we extend it downwards or along the spectrum into, personal and individual productivity that's actually more, more recently in my life, I've discovered that there's a lot to be said and gained from paying attention to this idea of productivity and yeah, from an individual personal point of view, it can be extremely helpful to consider it and think 

Dr Dani: so.

From an organizational science perspective, we always look at things at the three different layers, right? And the three different layers is the individual. The team and the organization. But you can actually take that same framework outside of the organization into the broader context of the world and say individual organization, community, world, country or community, country, world, city, so basically, yeah, productivity happens at multiple levels.

And today it'd be really great to look at [00:06:00] productivity across different levels. I also think there is a question that is looming that it is not being talked about that's worth mentioning, but I don't think we should dwell on it too much. 'cause I think the philosophical question around productivity at the moment

is productivity the right measure in 2025? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Productivity really made sense. When most of us worked in factories, most of us made things that could be easily measured. But in our current world, the most of our work is much more complex than I put eight hours in and I get this out, 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's ET t-shirts in eight hours and that's easy to, you took the materials that make up t-shirts, you turned those into t-shirts and you got a bunch of t-shirts at the end. Yeah. Really easy to measure both the input, the time and the output. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But if you [00:07:00] have a team that is working on.

Let's say you have a team that's working on figuring out, okay, we've got this wonderful product and we need a strategy to launch it globally. 

How do you measure productivity for that? Because that team could spend eight hours on that and not have an output to show for it, because the output won't really be able to be measured until the product is launched.

But there is all of this knowledge work that has to happen, and that's the crux of the crux of the question is how do you measure productivity in a knowledge based economy? Because the output isn't directly related to the input. 

Designer Peter: Yeah the output is often intangible.

You can't actually look at, the pile of t-shirts you've made at the end of the day or, even and I'm sure that there's definitely answers to this, that let's say your [00:08:00] part of this team that's working on the global marketing strategy for the t-shirts, ultimately, the business' success lies on the number of T-shirts sold.

But their contribution to the number of T-shirts sold. Yeah. That's a complex question. Yeah. So you're right. The crux of this is in our the, post-industrial age that we're in, that so much of human endeavor is, knowledge based and is, the outputs nevermind the outcomes, but the outputs are intangible.

 Just taking that perspective alone then is productivity the right measure? Nevermind, the fact that productivity is just such a thin slice of I guess life. Yeah. In all its different dimensions 

Dr Dani: And I to provide another tangible example here. So we talked about contact centers on a lot or quite a few times on the podcast.

So if we were looking at it from a purely productivity perspective, the [00:09:00] measure would be how many calls would one contact center team member take in a day? Is that the right measure or is the measure how many people have you actually helped?

Because some problems might take Yeah. Two hours to resolve , some problems might take two minutes to resolve. Yeah. So is the person that's helping a customer through a situation that takes two hours less productive? Yeah. 

Yeah. 

That's the nuance that is missed when we talk about productivity.

Designer Peter: Yes. And exactly. That's exactly what that, example the nuance that's missed and the narrow kind of perspective and definition. When I see and hear politicians , talk about productivity and. Proclaim in their politicians way that what we need to do is fix productivity.

Then it concerns me that either or both they and the people that they are, who are hearing them taking their message about face [00:10:00] value are really talking about, we need to, for example, get call center people to answer more calls in a day or t-shirt makers to make more t-shirts in a day.

Whereas I think we have a slightly different broader perspective on that's not always the right answer and, yeah that's where my kinda ranty feeling about productivity can start to come in is look, we just take a step back and look at the the broader picture and the I remember listening to going to see a man called John said, and back in the UK this was getting on 20 years ago a systems thinking, you could call him a firebrand.

He spent a lot of his career agitating and the public service sector in, in Britain. Because a lot of the thinking at that time, the management thinking was go, trying to think, make things more productive and classically trying to get call center people to answer more calls because that was seen as more productive 'cause it could be measured and it was easily measured.

And then John said, and would, in his own way help them realize that wasn't the right measure because, the as you've suggested, people who call [00:11:00] in and get their call answered in the space of 30 seconds and they're off the phone within a minute they might call back another 10 times to have another 10, one minute conversations until a problem is fixed.

And what the company's actually doing is creating a problem for itself in the form of he called it term failure demand. It's a form of waste. But what he explained was that the cost i is in the flow. So it's in the end to end measure of things rather than the transaction. And again, when we hear, reach headlines and see productivity be measured in a kind of transactional way, a k how much input and how much output then, it can lead us into the trap of measuring things and looking at things in those individual transactions steps of a wider process.

And ev even in a, in, in, in a bigger system, so yeah, I think that it's really important to dig a broader view and consider the outcomes maybe as well as the outputs and the systems that you're that things are all part of. 

Dr Dani: This is the part, this is the broader, I don't wanna say philosophical because it's not, it is actually a [00:12:00] tangible conversation that I think needs to be had.

 It's something that needs to happen at a global level, this questioning of, and I'm not saying don't measure productivity, because then I'll get onto this because there is a, there's a big human motivation that's linked to productivity. It's redefining what we mean when we say productivity.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Where I'd like to really talk about is, or get into is talking about some of the, some of what the research says are the root causes of productivity. 

Designer Peter: Cool. Or yes. Okay. I was gonna say absence of our lack of productivity, but let's get into that. I think my I promise my rant is over.

I've got that off my chest now, Dani, the root 

Dr Dani: cause of a lack of productivity, because we're not looking out. Yes. So one, [00:13:00] when I start, when I was doing some research, particularly for this episode, what I found interesting is, 

When we talk about productivity, a lot of what's mentioned is at the individual level. 

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: We talk about how do we get individuals to be more productive. There's very little conversation about how could our systems or ecosystems or our organizational systems, how can they enable more productivity.

Designer Peter: There's a great quote from w Edwards Deming who's seen as one, one of the originators of continuous improvement he said or it's attributed to him a bad system will be a good person every time.

So yeah, it's all very well improving our own personal productivity, but we need to understand our context and understand the system that we're living and o working and operating within. And if it's if its conditions are contradictory to us [00:14:00] being personally productive, then we're wasting our time.

Dr Dani: And what I've found in my research across multiple organizations now and across different parts of the globe is organizations are made up with very capable people 

That get very frustrated and. Then we complain about the lack of productivity. So a lot of these information that I'm gonna talk about here come from exit interviews.

'cause that's been a pretty chunky part of research I've done, or data that I've looked into and 

Designer Peter: yeah. There 

Dr Dani: is this prevailing thing where people decide to leave an organization because they feel like I am not having any impact here. They hired me because they thought that I could do X, Y, Z, and I could help them do these things.

I've been here x number of years. And I haven't been able to [00:15:00] progress anything. And yeah, and I'm paraphrasing here, but this is the common theme of what I'm hearing across the hundreds of exit interviews that I've analyzed and 

What they allude to is things like organizational processes, decision making processes, how things are funded, they all seem to have this effect of slowing down productivity.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Sounds familiar. 

Dr Dani: And now as I'm looking at that data that book Sludge, which I have a copy of here. Oh 

Designer Peter: yeah. 

Dr Dani: Cast Stein. It's almost with an arms 

Designer Peter: length 

Dr Dani: sludge. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: What stops us from getting things done and what to do about it. As I'm looking at this interview, exit interview data, and people are talking about it, I'm checking off what he talks about in the book [00:16:00] about.

Why are organizations very quick to go, right? How do we make our people more productive, but we don't talk about how do we make our organizational systems and processes more productive? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. It is there's a jump to a jumping to, to, I guess a conclusion or a point of view that it's the individual's fault that they're not being productive versus maybe a more enlightened, or actually ha a more productive organization has realized that the first step is not to look at the individual.

The first step is to look at the the environment or the system that they create for, that the organization creates for the individual. To work in. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So if you've got an organizational process where you've got a, you've come up with an idea of how to make something better, and then that idea has to go through seven layers of approvals.

You have great ideas, you have great potential, but the environment is stifling that. [00:17:00] 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Because very few, if any people still have that fire in their belly when they're asking for permission to do something for the seventh time or waiting for it to travel up through seven different layers of the organization before coming back and being told, yes you can, or, yes you can, but do this, or No, you can't.

So yeah, there's something. Humans we're, I don't think we're evolved for that kind of situation are we, or 

Dr Dani: One of the fundamental things about humans, and this is what I said about, productivity is an interesting thing it's something we can just take out of the equation because, so you've heard of progress principle?

Designer Peter: Absolutely. I love the progress principle. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Which basically says that we are intrinsically motivated when we make progress on something think about those days where you end your day [00:18:00] having accomplished something, whether it's I don't know.

Like right now I'm focused on writing a book and yesterday I, and I have had this goal of writing. 3000 words a day. And yesterday I wrote 3,500 words a day. 

And it just, I wrapped my day just feeling amazing. 

So this is where, what I'm saying about, we have an humans have an interesting relationship with productivity because we want to be productive, we want to make progress on things.

Yeah. And when we do, it's a self-reinforcing cycle because the more progress we make, the more we want to make progress. Which means that the inverse is also true. So I've come up with a great idea. I've gone to my boss about it. My boss is gonna go to her boss about it, and her boss is gonna go to her boss about it.

And it is going up this chain. And I'm sitting here waiting to hear about can I move [00:19:00] forward with this idea? And so at an individual level, I am not. Making progress. And what happens is I get demotivated, the individual starts to disengage, get demotivated. And what happens over time then is why am I even gonna bother bringing an idea to my boss?

Because it's just gonna go out into the ether. And so I'm just gonna come in, sit here and do what I normally do. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. I'm not gonna contribute be engaged think about how to solve a particular problem to make it better for everyone else, not be productive. In other words. Yeah. The, just coming back to the progress principle.

Yeah. I love the Progress principle. It's a, an amazing book from a wee while ago, but it's still, time stands Teresa Amabile. And her partner, Steven Kramer, are the authors of that book. So using small wins to [00:20:00] ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work, I just thought give a proper reference to that for our listeners who want to go and dig into that.

Really powerful stuff. Thanks for bringing it up. It's interesting, Dani, something for me to continue working on is this word productivity and just getting over myself, my hangup about this economic productivity and seeing politicians on news and on all the unintended harmful consequences of that.

And realize that actually there's a lot that I really have taken from and enjoy, such as the progress principle and w Edwards Deming the, like you said, help us at an individual level, but if we pay attention, can actually help us at this organizational level, which is where, if you start getting the organization, the team, and the individual, perspectives and lenses all lined up. Then we start to see some magic happen in organizations. 

Dr Dani: The lift in productivity isn't going to come from telling people to be more productive. It isn't going to come from sending people off to a workshop or a, a class on [00:21:00] being more productive.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. It's gonna come from, as an organization looking at what's the sludge we've created within our organization that prevents productivity from happening.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Because if we can actually get people moving it, it's like the law of physics. Whe Yeah. When, objects in motion, stay in motion. Yeah. Yeah. If we can create an environment where every day individuals feel I'm actually doing something here. 

Designer Peter: Yeah.

Yeah. 

Dr Dani: If you can solve for that and again, it's twofold. It's not just looking at the individual, it's not just looking at the organizations, it's looking at both. That's where you're gonna see the uplift in productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. It's yeah, that kind of finger pointing or standing over people and saying, just be more productive or, taking mechanical functional kind of perspective on [00:22:00] human productivity.

It's just not fit for purpose in the, the post-industrial age.

 The other side of the productivity conversation, is that we could be really busy all the time, but we could still be unproductive because we're busy doing stuff that doesn't actually contribute to, yeah, our end outcome or output.

It's not valuable activity. It would be waste and we can waste even more time, energy, that is, reduces our productivity not increases our productivity.  

Dr Dani: Let's unpack that a little bit. We have to acknowledge that being busy is not the same as being productive. Being busy just means you're doing a lot of things. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, 

Dr Dani: my dog spent a lot of time chasing their own tail, so they're very busy. 

Literally. So they're very busy dogs, but they're not really productive dogs.

They're also puppies. So this is what they [00:23:00] do. If busyness equated to productivity, , those productivity charts would be just sky high, right? Because being busy is a badge of honor. And we're always trying to one up each other on how busy we are.

But busy is not the same thing as productive. There is a socially acceptable norm that when we see people being busy, we assume they are productive. We assume they're working on something important. That what they're doing matters. Yeah. I'm not saying it doesn't matter, but there is an assumption.

What matters here though is to be productive, you have to be the right kind of busy productivity requires you to be doing the right things at the right time, at the right effort level. And what we are very deficient in is we don't reflect, and I know I've [00:24:00] talked about this on the podcast before, but reflection is a very important part of being productive because.

What reflection does is you go what did I actually spend yesterday doing? Did that contribute to something? Because if I if I spent all day yesterday sending emails and responding to emails and jumping from meeting to meeting, I was busy. My calendar was full of meetings.

But what is the outcome of that? What work has been progressed because of that? So reflection is a thing we need to do to be productive. The problem there though, is we cannot reflect if we don't have clarity on the thing we're trying to achieve. 

Designer Peter: And this is 

Dr Dani: another thing that I have learned in my organizational research is that most employees don't have clarity [00:25:00] on.

What the goal is. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Okay. Wow. What is the 

Dr Dani: thing I'm trying to contribute to?  

They can tell you their job title. They can tell you the team that they sit on. But most employees, and they acknowledge this, they will tell me, I actually have no idea what the purpose, what is the purpose?

What are we trying to achieve here? 

Productivity requires having a clear understanding of what is the outcome we're looking for. Notice I said outcome and not output. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. A and also a as per your, the earlier part of that, what you were saying there, it's not how many hours am I busy for?

How much activity am I actually doing? It's what's the outcome? What am I contributing [00:26:00] to the outcome? 

Dr Dani: So I'll share this example to shed a little bit of, I always like to use real life examples to bring some of the concepts I'm talking about to life. Several years ago I was working for an organization and I had a very clear picture of what I was hired to do. And oftentimes because I was focused on that outcome, it meant that I would decline a lot of meetings.

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: . I can 

Designer Peter: imagine where this is going, but keep going. 

Dr Dani: , I got called out and basically I was told, you are not showing up to meetings. We need you to show up to meetings, Uhhuh. So I pulled up my calendar, and I said, okay, these are all the meetings that I get invited to.

Yeah. This is when you hired me. You told me this is [00:27:00] the outcome you want me to create. If I go to all of these meetings, I don't have time to work on this. So have you hired me to go to meetings or have you hired me? To deliver this outcome. Yeah. And even though it was very clear about this in the conversation.

The conversation ended with, okay, we probably need to rethink about what meetings you're going to. 

Designer Peter: Okay. But 

Dr Dani: after the conversation though, I still kept getting called out for not coming to meetings. Huh. I find this very fascinating because you've now acknowledged, we've given you a very specific task to complete, and we are adding things to 

Designer Peter: your 

Dr Dani: plate to get in the way of that. Okay. We understand that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Oh, by the way, can you come to this meeting? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And I'm sharing this story because I don't think I'm alone in this. I think hearing this, lots of our listeners, and even probably [00:28:00] you, Pete, you're like, yeah this, 

Designer Peter: yeah.

These are things 

Dr Dani: that have 

Designer Peter: Very familiar and actually I imagine it's al almost the, the default. It's almost I would imagine it's almost, most people will be going, yeah, that sounds very familiar. It's a form of organizational madness, isn't it? Everybody? It's one of these things that everybody knows it's going on, everybody acknowledges it's a problem, but it's still happens.

It's just a strange, I don't know, quirk of our humanness that we can't get over this. 

Dr Dani: But in that specific example, what it also creates is this impression that it's more important for me to go to all the meetings and show my face in all the meetings than actually getting the work done.

And then we go, yeah. And it's, and it felt like my compensation, my ability to move up in the organization, all of these things that, are gonna benefit me isn't in me actually delivering the thing that [00:29:00] I was hired to do. It's actually in me , showing my face. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah.

That's very strange, isn't it? Yeah, it's a bit like I don't know, a, an athlete, a tennis player, a footballer being expected to go to the press conferences and not actually play the game. It's no, you can, you're not, stay off the pitch. We need you to front up to this publicity shoots or the press conference. 

 I wonder if that's something to do with in this the fourth industrial age where so much of our work is intangible, unlike an athlete, it's obvious that they need to be on the bike or on the tennis court or, playing the game with their teammates.

Whereas in our knowledge economy, because what of what we're the outputs are often intangible and also more important to the stages to get to those outputs are quite in intangible less concrete. And we, that's why we're in this kind of meeting trap that we don't [00:30:00] see what we need to see.

Dr Dani: Yes, absolutely. Because if I was sitting there making t-shirts, you can look up from your office and go Dani's at her desk making t-shirts. 

But in our modern world Dani might not be sitting at a desk the same location as you, so you can't lift up and look. But even if I was, you can't look up and go, right?

Dani is right now spending time on X task. You can't, you can't sit, you can't look at me sitting at my computer and visually be able to assess my level of productivity. Unless I'm sitting on a computer watching TikTok. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But even that, maybe I'm watching TikTok 'cause I'm trying to get an idea, or I'm trying to learn how to do something.

Yeah. In our world at the moment, it's much more difficult. For managers and leaders to understand what everybody is working on. So I think the solution to that is, let me call all these meetings [00:31:00] so I could see you. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I hear, and this will be familiar to you as well, is that I spend most of my days going to meetings to give an update on the work that I'm meant to be doing, but I haven't had a chance to do because I've been going to meetings to talk about the work that I should be doing that I don't have to do because I keep going to these meetings.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah yeah, it's again, madness. I think another contributing factor, another root cause, both in per each of these levels, actually personal team, organizational even, in, national level. Et cetera is doing too much, trying to do too much. So if I think of the organizations I've worked in, and the reason for a lot of those meetings is like you say, updates.

And if you're a particular role in an organization, you're expected to do, let's say deliver six initiatives in a particular quarter. You're gonna go to all the meetings relating to that, those six initiatives. That's your kind of week on without making, actually making any progress on any of those six initiatives.

And the same is true [00:32:00] if in your own personal life, if you try to do too much, then you end up not doing anything 'cause you're trying to spin the wheels, catching up with everything on your to-do list where they're making progress. 

Dr Dani: This makes another key thing we need to focus on if we want to be more productive.

And it is ruthless prioritization. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And in, I know in other episodes I've talked about this framework I use called now next, later. And the reason I using now, next, later is it doesn't put any date parameters in it. It is literally, these are the things I'm working on now. And when I am done with that, I'm gonna work on this.

And then when I am done with that, I'm gonna look at what's in the later bucket, so everything , it's essentially it's a Kanban board. But what it does is it keeps you focused. And I always advise people , for your, in, for you as an individual , you should not have more than three things in your now bucket.

If you are working on more than three big things in your now bucket, you are [00:33:00] not being productive. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And big things, right? Like we all know that some part of our day is. Going to be devoted to admin work. At some point in the day, I do have to check my emails and make sure I'm responding to people.

At some point in the day, I may have to have a meeting or talk to somebody. At some point in the day, I'm going to need to take a break because I am human and I have human needs. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So when I say three big things is three big initiatives, three big projects, three big things that you're working on, 

Designer Peter: the old rocks analogy, your jar that you're gonna put three big stones into, then some pebbles, then some sand. If you do it that way around, you'll you'll get everything or get more be more productive. Yes. And just picking up on something you said and taking on a little tangent or in taking a break and we have talked before and in our other episode or many about this idea [00:34:00] of taking a break or resting or do things that on the surface seem to be not directly contributing to your productivity.

Like they're not actually directly working on something. That, to me is part of the, at least part of the productivity equation. I use that to the phrase rest is part of training. Going back to the athlete analogy, as a, as an athlete you become better or you become stronger when you're resting.

When you're not directly exercising, your muscles recover and repair and get stronger. And I think definitely that we can use that analogy in our knowledge work. Our brains definitely benefit from. Switching off, taking a break, doing something different, and not focusing on the hard problem we're trying to solve or the, piece of creative work that we're doing.

Yeah, 

Dr Dani: this is another false belief about productivity is that the longer we work, the more productive we are. And that is just, there is so much research that disproves that yet it is it's the [00:35:00] false belief that just won't die. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Because working more does not make us more productive.

 The reason that we, that we have a hard time breaking up with that fallacy is that if we were making. Widgets, right? So back to the t-shirt factory and I'm, and yeah, if I was just sitting there and I was doing a repetitive task over and over and over and over and over again, more hours will equal more productivity because it's a repetitive task.

But much of our work today is not repetitive tasks. And that's what makes our work more intangible, more complicated, harder to measure, harder , for leaders to observe which drives micromanagement behavior because it's not repetitive knowledge work generally isn't repetitive. Some elements of it are, but most of it isn't.

And. With knowledge work, more time on task does not [00:36:00] increase productivity. And I would argue that it decreases productivity because the more tired our brain is, like our brain is gonna take a break when it takes a break, whether we give it the break or not.

Nice. 

I've had these moments where I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, I am just gonna sit here and figure this out, and I'm noticing that my brain is wandering looking, 

Dr Dani: and that's how I know, look, I gotta get up and take a break because I could sit here and my mind is gonna do this, or I can get up and do something, give my brain a rest, and then I can come back to it.

Designer Peter: Another kinda legacy hangover if you like, from the. Earlier industrial ages when a lot of work was manufacturing, it was physically laboring. And even going back to the t-shirts and the manufacturing actually I think, you will be able to perform a repetitive physical task and keep up the kind of pace for a certain [00:37:00] amount of time.

And then actually I think you'll end, most humans would end up getting slower and sore or less productive, making more mistakes because we, our bodies are made up of our mind and our body. So a robot might be able to keep up the continuous production rate, but humans will eventually start to drop off. 

Dr Dani: I even questioned that because at some point that robots gonna need some maintenance.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Even robots even robots need a rest and maintenance. So why do we expect humans to to not yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Okay. So yeah we're getting a few good root causes here and pitfalls and traps that we accidentally fall into and some blind spots that we definitely need to consider.

One of my I like to think about and explore and talk about this the relationship between the word productivity and the word creativity [00:38:00] because, full disclosure, I used to see them as not quite opposites, but definitely intention to each other.

Whereas now I think I'm seeing them as more, completely related, to be creative, you need to be productive. In, in, in our knowledge economy, our fourth industrial age, where so much of what we as humans can contribute you need to be creative to be productive.

If I can offer that as a what do you think of that to be? 

Dr Dani: My first thought is, I think Peter and productivity need to go get some therapy. 

Designer Peter: You're sensing that, are you? No, I been there. I'm getting through it.

I'm finding some common ground that we can, best buddies. 

Dr Dani: I, and I'm of course I am also teasing you a little bit 'cause I think we all have these concepts that we just have an allergic reaction to. Productivity and creativity are, they're like [00:39:00] an infinity loop. 

Designer Peter: Nice. 

Dr Dani: Because being so creativity leads to productivity. Productivity leads to creativity. So it, so in my mind, that's how that works. But for that loop to work, it has to exist in the right environment because this is what happens.

You've had this creative moment, you've seen something. I hate to talk about creativity, having it as a burst. 'cause it doesn't. But let's say you've had some conversations and you've collected, you, you're hearing a pattern and you go and your brain goes, oh, what if we were to try this?

That is a moment of creativity. And then you go to your manager and you say, Hey, you know how we're always talking about this problem. I had an idea. What about this now? If your manager goes to you, hang on, let me run this through the 1800 approval processes we have to go through to get this idea going.[00:40:00] 

That loop breaks. 'cause you're waiting. You're waiting. Waiting. Yeah. But if your manager goes to you. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Actually that, let's give it a try. Let's experiment. Maybe we can try that on a small scale. Let's see what happens, and then we can socialize that and get a formal approval.

If it works, then you're enabling that creativity to move into the productivity. We like to separate these things and bucket these things. It's not like creativity lives here and productivity lives here. It's also, by the way, I know we tend to talk about our brains as like these distinct parts.

But they're interconnected. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it reflects our, how our brains are made. I, yeah, going back to that productivity I think in the past I've conflated or because of what I've seen or been pointed towards productivity with busyness.

And I think that's where my kind of need for conversation [00:41:00] and therapy about it comes from. Yeah. So the productivity and cre, and like similarly I guess creative, one, one dimension of creativity is having ideas. But the, probably the more important I dimension of creativity is actually bringing those ideas out into the world.

 By definition if for let's say the thing we want to create, coming back to the original definition of productivity or output instead of t-shirts, is I don't know, music or paintings or drawing things are classically, most people think of as creative. Then we need to be productive to make those things actually re real in, in the world. 

Dr Dani: You're given the space to progress the creativity and that progression and creativity creates productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. 

Dr Dani: We've talked today about this idea of organizations having layers and this idea of sludge slowing things down and 

For the [00:42:00] extremist thinkers out there, I'm not saying that we don't need to have any controls in an organization, we absolutely do. What I'm saying is we need to look at our, 'cause the, there are some places that we purposefully want to have some sludge to. Sludge is very effective when we're trying to do things like protecting people's data.

That slowing down of sending that email to make sure it's going to the right person is an absolute great use of sludge. What I'm calling for is 

Are the things that we have in place in our organization, is it purposeful or is it there because it's always been there? And if we remove those Yeah.

Could we increase productivity, but do it in a way that we're not breaking regulations, we're not putting people in harm's way. We're not increasing the risk to our customers and employees, but it's being mindful of where we have some sludge and [00:43:00] Yeah. Yeah. Where we remove that sludge because doing so will 

Designer Peter: Yeah.

Dr Dani: Help us be more productive. 

Designer Peter: Exactly. And how do we, the same things that, we unintentionally do that hinder either our own personal and our team and our organizational productivity, the, almost the exact opposite. So that happens because it's counter to our natural human behavior and our psychology how we behave as humans, that if we flip that round, the same thing can actually make us more productive.

They just seem they're counterintuitive because of, what appears to have worked previously. Doesn't work anymore. I'm just coming back to the progress principle to make some of that a little bit concrete for, the progress principle. Comes along with a set of kind of tools that we can look at our own productivity, our team productivity, progress.

Did we make progress in something is meaningful to us today, [00:44:00] tomorrow. And one of the research that Teresa Amabile did was work diaries. Like the research, some, the research you do, it's similar to the exit interviews. And they got people across many different sort of organizations across many different parts of the world to record how they were feeling at work.

And what they realized was that, yeah, this idea of making progress on meaningful work is the number one motivator. The number one thing that motivates people to, to keep going. Not, reward and recognition, not. Promotion, none of that. It's they're on the list, but the number one is making progress and meaningful work.

So as a leader, manager, as a organization, if we pay attention to that, then we can actually unlock what seems to be a magic source of motivation, inspiration, and therefore progress, therefore productivity and the opposite. So if people did not make me progress and meaningful work, then it, slowed things down.

They called the they called the things that contribute to progress catalysts and the things that [00:45:00] contributed to what they called setbacks as inhibitors, and the, I won't go to them all, but one of the key ones was. Changing plans. So management, let's call it that. So leadership or managers, let's say we, we're about to we're making progress on something as a team, but some decisions made somewhere else.

And we're told to stop working on that thing, even though we're about to launch, say, a new product or make an improvement and about to go live. Similar to, sending ideas up and down the layers of the organization. If management put the brakes on something or decided that the thing wouldn't be launched, then that had a huge and disproportionate effect on people's.

Again, to borrow a phrase from Teresa Amabile, their inner work life. So every, the whole team's relationship and perspective on their work, the organization how good they felt, how good, how engaged they felt was, really set back significantly. Yeah, 

Dr Dani: so there was [00:46:00] one of the most memorable exit interview moments I had.

This organization was having a significant increase , in resignation. So I was, they bought me to do exit interviews. And I started to notice this pattern of, everybody was touching on this one project. After a couple, I asked, in the next one, tell me about X project.

And what this person said to me was there was a team of us. That have been working on this now for a year. , we did the customer research. And we really took a human-centered approach to building this thing. And we're so close to the finish line and they've decided they're not gonna do it.

And I feel like they killed my baby. Those are the words. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. This is it. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The other thing that they said is, they killed my baby. And they didn't even tell me why.[00:47:00] 

Designer Peter: Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

That's it. That is exactly it. 

Dr Dani: Maybe there was a really good reason that they had to stop that launch, but maybe share that with the team. 'cause you've just killed their baby and this is where we tend to struggle with. . We often, there's this saying like, oh, it's not personal, it's business. Which I think is utter bullshit. Because our work is personal. We take time away from our families.

Yeah. Parents leave their children. To go do this thing for a certain amount of time a day. It is absolutely personal. Yeah. And we go do these things for a certain number of hours per day because we have to put a roof over our head. We have to put food on the table. We have to, make sure that those children that we leave eight hours a day are provided [00:48:00] for.

So it's absolutely personal. So when you kill a project at work, it is personal. And if you want people to be motivated and engaged and be productive, it has to be personal for them. 

 I like to frame it in the other way, because I think we, at the moment, we're very enamored by the robots, right? Like this whole AI thing. We're very enamored by and I'm not dismissing it.

It is absolutely amazing what AI can do today and , as time goes on, it's just gonna blow our minds more and more. 

But in that we're starting to lose the honest of humans. Humans are incredibly capable creative beings.  

 True productivity is going to come when we can figure out how do we use.[00:49:00] 

Technology in a way that helps humans be their best, right? So how do we use technology in a way that technology is doing the things that it can do best so that the humans can do what they can do best? 

Designer Peter: A hundred percent agree with that. And maybe, and so I've been thinking about that recently and I've listened to some interesting conversations about ai including one, actually it was a, an interview Adam granted with Sam, our open AI friend 

Dr Dani: Alman.

Designer Peter: Sam Alman. Yeah, Sam Alman. And they they had a really great dialogue, conversation about ai and Sam Altman was, quite enthusiastic about, . The actual intelligence increasing and increasing. I'm, I've always thought that, in a lot of non-productive situations in the workplace, the one of, again, one of the root causes is where we've got computers [00:50:00] trying to get computers to do things that humans are better at and vice versa. Getting people to copy and paste information from one screen and paste it into another, and that's their job kind of day in, day out.

That that's not really doing either of those things, but this, the whole idea of ai a and the reality of ai. Adding to your the statement of, let's get computers to do computer things best and humans to do the things that humans do best. Maybe the other word to is enjoy 

let's keep something for ourselves. Let's not AI do all the things that we really enjoy doing and that we're good at doing. Let's not outsource our all of our lives and turn in, oh, we, we could get dark and gloomy about it, but let, yeah. It's enjoy is the word I would use for, AI according to Sam Altman, it will know that when it's enjoying doing something.

So let's ask it, what do you enjoy doing? And let's ask ourselves as humans, what do we enjoy doing? What's meaningful and purposeful 

Dr Dani: that should be what technology enables, right? Technology should enable us to spend more time [00:51:00] doing the things that we enjoy. And I bring this back to the washing machine, right? Because technically the washing machine, before the washing machine, we had to put in the effort to hand wash our clothes. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And now that there is a washing machine, the machine does the work that should create more time for us to do something we enjoy. Now that hasn't worked out that way, but maybe we can learn Yeah. From the failures of that. Yeah. And not repeat it with ai. 

Designer Peter: Yes. 

Dr Dani: But you're also touching on something that is important to to also recognize, 

Another ingredient that is needed for productivity is good mental health.

Yeah. People who are stressed.  

Struggling with depression, struggling with anxiety. That does not bode well for productivity. [00:52:00] So are we creating the environments? Where people can have good mental health? Or are we creating environments where people are stressed and anxious and, 'cause that doesn't bode well for productivity.

Yeah. So I think we tend to think about things like mental health is I've seen a couple of job ads now talking about access to mental healthcare as a benefit. Wow. Which kind of, I'm like it, to me it's like a hygiene factor. But anyway. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Good mental health isn't a nice to have.

It's actually very integral to productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. It's the starting point. 

Dr Dani: All right. So I feel like we've had a nice meaty, meandering conversation. Should we do a little bit of a recap before we get to takeaways? 

Designer Peter: Yeah, let's do that.

Let's do that. 

Dr Dani: [00:53:00] So we started by exploring the definition. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: We had a little debate around does our measure of productivity need to be modernized? So we're still measuring productivity as if we all worked in factories making widgets, and what does a good measure of productivity look like in the knowledge economy?

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Then we had a twisty, windy conversation about enablers of. Productivity and sabotages of productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Or obstacles or detractors or, yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. Yeah. So just to mention a few of the things we talked about when we're thinking about productivity or lack of productivity, we have to think about both at the organizational level and the individual.

And examine the organizational context to see have what sludge is preventing [00:54:00] productivity. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Then we talked about some of the myths around, we believe that working more hours is going to lead to more productivity. We talked about things like the importance of reflection, ruthless prioritizing, and the need for a clear understanding of the outcome we're working towards as being key to driving productivity.

We talked about busyness does not equal productivity.  

Have I missed anything? 

Designer Peter: We touched on, the progress principle. We came to that a couple of times. We also talked about yeah. Just the, this idea of, a bad system will beat a good person every time. If you, yourself or other people, if we're not being as productive as you could be, then, start with what's the environment and system rather, and then work your way towards the individual rather than the other way around.

Dr Dani: Yeah. We talked about the relationship between creativity and productivity, that they're not at odds with each [00:55:00] other. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: We talked about the leader's responsibility. 

Yeah, I think that, yeah, that sums it up. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice summary, Dani. 

Dr Dani: So what are you taking away? 

Designer Peter: My takeaway is thanks for I. Thanks, the conversation that was always helpful for me to talk about productivity and on, on my journey. And just the reminder that you, my initial allergic reaction to this word productivity is probably based on the busy rather than the actual productive.

And also thanks for the reminder that the progress principle, one of my favorite books, pieces of research and toolkits is directly related to this. So my takeaway is actually, I'm gonna say that there's great there's a personal progress, diary that you can do that, you can reflections at the end of the day.

You can go what did I make progress on today? And if I did, then why was that? If I didn't, why was that? And that you can use that as a, an end of day reflection journaling technique. And it can help you [00:56:00] identify where you've got enablers and where you've got some blockers.

So yeah, I'm gonna gonna have a little bit of a refresh of that and use that as a structure to kinda experiment, play around with that for a week or two and see what patterns start to emerge. So thanks for that reminder. Nice. What what takeaway do you had? 

Dr Dani: I love a good self experiment. 

My takeaways.  

Actually I have one takeaway and it, ironically ours are related. It's actually to go back and read the book, the Progress principle. Okay. 'cause it's a very relevant book at the moment. I know it's a few years old, but perhaps looking more into the progress principle is a key to unlocking the more global view of productivity or the lack thereof.

Yes. Alright. I think that does it for us for this episode. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Thanks 

Dr Dani: everyone for listening. 

Designer Peter: Thanks for [00:57:00] listening. Thanks Dani. 

Dr Dani: Bye.