MOVING THE PRODUCTIVITY PEDAL AMID UNCERTAINTY

If we move away from the concept of productivity as output alone, and start to consider it as the achievement of results that match our purpose, we will find ourselves productive not just in the workplace, but in life as a whole

- Ravi Venkatesan

Productivity is an enormously important idea. However, we focus all too seldom on the productivity of what matters most - your life.

What is productivity? Mostly, we use the word as a sort of efficiency metric. It is an industrial era term used to measure and improve conversion efficiency. So, what is the output per unit of input? Output per person, or things per hour, per unit of material or energy. It is a very important and good way to measure the efficiency of machines or an industrial system. But it is not a good way to measure the outcomes created by knowledge workers or information workers, which we all increasingly are, and is certainly not a great way to measure your life.

Let us consider the knowledge work aspect. I recently released my new book called “What The Heck Do I Do With My Life? How to Flourish in Our Turbulent Times”. This book took me nearly six years to write, not because I was busy or lazy, but because it was a challenging creative effort. Do you measure the productivity of a writer by the number of books, or by the impact of those books? Do you measure the productivity of software developers or coders by the number of lines of error-free code they generate in a day, or by what that code achieves? The original version of WhatsApp had just 30,000 lines of code, and look at the impact that it has had.

If it is that hard to measure the productivity of creative effort, how do you measure the productivity of what we do with our life?