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The End of Productivity
The problem with ‘productivity’ is that it is concerned with managing and increasing output: producing widgets, quarterly reports, the next release of the software, yet another research report, and meanwhile, always aspiring to do more with less. Less waste, less idle time on the assembly line, and fewer workers. The end game is to speed up the mac... See more
Stowe Boyd • The Problem of Productivity
Concrete productivity metrics of the type that shaped the industrial sector will never properly fit in the more amorphous knowledge work setting. (Nor should we want them to fit, as this quantitative approach to labor ushers in its own stark inhumanities.) In the absence of this clarity, however, pseudo-productivity can seem like the only viable de
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims... See more