https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2021/07/31/where-has-productivity-gone/ John D. Cook Skip to content * MATH + PROBABILITY + NUMERICAL ANALYSIS + SIGNAL PROCESSING + SEE ALL ... * STATS + EXPERT TESTIMONY + RANDOMIZATION + CLINICAL TRIALS + SEE ALL ... * PRIVACY + HIPAA + CCPA + DIFFERENTIAL PRIVACY * WRITING + BLOG + TWITTER + ARTICLES + NEWSLETTER + TECH NOTES + SUBSCRIBE * ABOUT + CLIENTS + ENDORSEMENTS + TEAM + SERVICES (832) 422-8646 Contact Where has all the productivity gone? Posted on 31 July 2021 by John Balaji Srinivasan asks in a Twitter thread why we're not far more productive given the technology available. Here I collect the five possible explanations he mentions. 1. The Great Distraction. All the productivity we gained has been frittered away on equal-and-opposite distractions like social media, games, etc. 2. The Great Dissipation. The productivity has been dissipated on things like forms, compliance, process, etc. 3. The Great Divergence. The productivity is here, it's just only harnessed by the indistractable few. 4. The Great Dilemma. The productivity has been burned in bizarre ways that require line-by-line "profiling" of everything. 5. The Great Dumbness. The productivity is here, we've just made dumb decisions in the West while others have harnessed it. If I had to choose one of the five, I'd lean toward The Great Dissipation, inventing new tasks to absorb new capacity. This is what happened with the introduction of household appliances. Instead of spending less time doing laundry, for example, we do laundry more often. Maybe we're seeing that technological bottlenecks were not as important as we thought. For example, it's easier to write a novel using Microsoft Word than using a manual typewriter, but not that much easier. MS Word makes the physical work easier, but most of the effort is mental. (And while moving from Smith Corona 1950 to Word 95 is a big improvement, moving from Word 95 to Word 365 isn't.) Technology calls our bluff. Improvements in technology show us that technology wasn't the obstacle that we thought it was. Categories : Creativity Bookmark the permalink Post navigation Previous PostAlt tags on tweet images 6 thoughts on "Where has all the productivity gone?" 1. Maarten Meijer 31 July 2021 at 08:42 The Great Divide: When management and shareholders objectives were more aligned, worker and shareholder objective alignment was forgotten. Productivity comes from workers, not managers. Productivity-> more pay works, productivity-> head count reduction does not. 2. Ross 31 July 2021 at 08:50 "... The productivity has been dissipated on things like forms, compliance, process, etc.." Dissipation. My experience as well. While more toys (distraction) and other divergence is real, it's the parasitic administrivia at all levels that takes a toll. Working in IT used to be pretty damn cool -- intersection of Engineering and tinkering and modeling and crafting. I'm sure that's still out there for some, but the field is awash with process marketers and agilespeak and high finance and software stack "new toy" advertisers, it's become less fun, more of a technological puppet show. 3. Johnathan Corgan 31 July 2021 at 09:55 It's a Red Queen effect-efficiency improvements eventually just speed up the treadmill. 4. Alex 31 July 2021 at 10:06 My experience has been a combination of "The Great Dissipation" and "The Great Dilemma." The meta-artifacts required to be productive stifle the actual productive output. If I was asked to organize a filing cabinet, I'm asked to create estimates/tickets/documentation...which require a separate filing cabinet, until my work revolves more around organizing the latter than actually making progress on the original task. 5. John 31 July 2021 at 10:10 @Ross: I'm largely free from administrivia since I have my own small business, but occasionally I get sucked in to a client's bureaucracy. I did some work as a sub- sub- subcontractor to the US government once, and I'd say the ratio of overhead to productive work was about 20 to 1. 6. BobC 31 July 2021 at 10:20 Meetings. So. Many. Meetings. The meetings get to be so frequent that it becomes impossible to prepare for them, not just to come up to speed, but to be ready to contribute. Which results in endless, wandering meetings with insignificant gains. The loss of productivity is astounding. At one employer I simply stopped attending meetings which failed to meet some simple criteria: 1. A clearly stated goal (purpose). 2. An achievable goal (deliverables). 3. Adequate notice (for preparation). 4. Considerate scheduling (for rest of work day). 5. Appropriate duration (short and sweet rocks). 6. Required preparation (reading list, etc.). That last one is most important: A meeting needing no preparation doesn't need to happen! There are important exceptions, such as for social reasons: Awards (and other recognition), major announcements, and general team cohesion. Such social meetings should be marked by also including a meal, to ensure informality and collegiality. My most hated meeting "excuse" is for "status updates". To me, that's a glaring mark of incompetent management. Unless, of course, such meetings **primarily** serve to aid team cohesion, to get folks together and get each of them talking, to introduce new team members. I like scrums and standups: Quick and to the point, setting shared short-term goals, raising issues, letting everyone know what everyone else is working on. The times I was (briefly) in management, I used a simple meeting rubric: When considering calling a meeting, I'd first add up the work-hour costs and balanced it against the value of the goal. Generally, I would realize I needed either a smaller meeting, or a bigger goal. 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