The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Search results for: “productivity”

  • How Always Being Busy KILLS Productivity – And 5 Ways To Avoid It

    How Always Being Busy KILLS Productivity – And 5 Ways To Avoid It

    It feels like everybody is always busy at work these days.

    Many workplaces keep putting their employees under massive time pressure. This happens when:

    • Employees are routinely expected to increase their productivity year after year with little or no additional support, training or resources.
    • A company is growing and taking on new clients/projects without a matching increase in staff and resources.
    • An organization lays off staff but expects the reduced staff to the same amount of work.
    • Schedules are filled to near capacity with meetings and tasks before the work week even starts, leaving no time for ad-hoc or unexpected tasks.

    Companies think that these actions create a burning platform that pressures employees to work effectively and creatively towards the company’s goals, but in this webinar we will show that the truth is the opposite: Always being busy reduces employees’ cognitive resources and makes it much harder for them to do their jobs well.

    In this video we show exactly how damaging constant busyness is. Content includes:

    • The most relevant research behind busyness
    • How constantly being busy actually lowers productivity
    • 5 ways to avoid constant busyness
    • Great examples from some of the world’s happiest workplaces

    Watch the video here – you can also get my slides and additional links and materials.

     

  • The 5 New Rules Of Productivity

    The 5 New Rules Of Productivity

    Most workplaces COMPLETELY misunderstand productivity.

    They’re stuck in an industrial-age mindset that is outdated and actively harmful to employees.

    In this video I present my suggestion for The 5 New Rules Of Productivity.

    Let me know what you think!

  • How always being busy kills productivity – and 5 ways to avoid it

    How always being busy kills productivity – and 5 ways to avoid it

    “Your car is having trouble and will need repairs at a cost of around $1,500. How would you handle that situation?”

    Scientists from the University of Warwick led by professor Anandi Mani stopped customers at a New Jersey mall and asked them that question. Next the subjects took an IQ test and the results was stunning: For financially well-off participants, this question did not affect their IQ scores in any way. But people who were struggling financially underperformed by 13 IQ-points simply because their money worries had been brought to their attention.

    This experiment is described in the excellent book “Scarcity – Why Having Too Little Means So Much” by professor of economics Sendhil Mullainathan and professor of psychology Eldar Shafir, in which the two scientists clearly lay out the negative cognitive effects of scarcity.

    When we have too little of something that is important to us we become a little dumber, less disciplined and we make poor choices. This helps explain – among many other things – why poor people keep taking out pay-day loans, even when they should know better and even though those incredibly expensive  loans just put them deeper in the hole.

    And this is not only about lack of money; the book gives plenty of examples of how time scarcity has the same kind of effects, making us dumber and worse at managing what little time we do have effectively.

    So, knowing this, why is it that so many workplaces mercilessly keep putting their employees under massive time pressure? Why do leaders consistently create time scarcity?

    This happens when:

    • Employees are routinely expected to increase their productivity year after year with little or no additional support, training or resources.
    • A manager commits to their team doing more work with the same staff.
    • A company is growing and taking on new clients/projects without a commensurate increase in staff and resources.
    • An organization lays off staff but expects the reduced staff to the same amount of work.
    • Schedules are filled to capacity with meetings and tasks before the work week even starts, leaving no time for ad-hoc or unexpected tasks.

    Some leaders think that these situations create a burning platform that pressures employees to work effectively and creatively towards the company’s goals, but the truth is the opposite: Time scarcity reduces employees’ cognitive resources and makes it much harder for them to do their jobs well.

    And what’s worse, this can become self-reinforcing. Here’s an example: An organizations reduces headcount leading to increased time pressure and scarcity among those left. This weakens their cognitive capacity and productivity drops, leading to even more busyness and scarcity.

    Is this something you see happening in your workplace? Here are 5 things we can do about it.

    1: Take time pressure off employees

    Instead of giving employees hard-to-reach productivity goals and filling their work week to the brim (and beyond) we need to give them more realistic goals and leave some slack in their schedules so any ad-hoc task that comes along (as it inevitably will) does not topple the whole load.

    Most employees actually get more work done when they have productivity goals that are reasonable and within their capacity.

    Here’s a great example: The IT company Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor only lets employees work 40 hours a week and then only schedules 32 hours of work per employee per week. That way there is no time scarcity and always time for unexpected tasks. This is described in the excellent book “Joy Inc” by Menlo’s CEO Rich Sheridan.

    2: Celebrate good performance

    We also need to constantly praise and appreciate people and teams for the good work they do. This give employees a sense of accomplishment and purpose that goes a long way towards combatting time scarcity.

    Some workplaces do the opposite though: First giving people unrealistic goals and then hitting them over the head for not reaching those goals.

    3: Leave time for learning and development

    Every single employee must have time to get better. To learn new professional and personal skills. To reflect on what is working well and what can be improved in the workplace.

    This becomes near-impossible under time scarcity, preventing employees from getting better at their jobs.

    The IT company Next Jump in New York give each employee significant time every week to develop their skills with a mentor, in weekly meetings or on their own. That way employees always have time for growth and development, which they deem essential to their success. Here’s a great article on how they do it.

    4: Maintain good workplace relationships

    One of the first things to go in a workplace facing time scarcity is the workplace relationships.

    When we are very busy it becomes exponentially harder to care about other people, to help and support co-workers and to maintain a habit of helping each other.  Needless to say, this just makes the effects of busyness that much worse.

    Instead we need to make sure that there is always time to create and maintain relationships between employees. There should always be time for a coffee break and a chat with a co-worker. No one should eat lunch alone at their desk. Even something as simple as saying a cheerful “good morning” to your team mates in the morning can make a positive difference – and can be neglected and forgotten under time scarcity.

     

    5: Avoid permanent overwork

    Some companies try to solve this by making people work more hours. Don’t!

    First of all – overwork can kill you:

    … those working a 55-hour week face 33% increased risk of stroke than those working a 35- to 40-hour week.

    And to make matters worse, all those extra hours don’t even mean you get more work done:

    [Overwork] … doesn’t seem to result in more output.

    So overwork is killing employees while not improving business results. Can we stop it already?

    It’s a topic I’ve talked about a lot on this blog.

    The upshot

    Simply put, many workplaces put employees in a situation of near-permanent time scarcity, thinking this will pressure them to work harder. The truth is the opposite: It makes them more stressed, more sick, less happy and less productive.

    Instead, we should do our very best to reduce time pressures because that way, the organization will be more successful.

    Your take

    Do you see any of this happening in your workplace? Is time a scarce resource and how does it affect you?

    Write a comment, we’d love to hear your take.

    Related posts

     

     

  • New research: Overwork kills productivity AND employees

    Yikes – overwork can kill you:

    … those working a 55-hour week face 33% increased risk of stroke than those working a 35- to 40-hour week.

    And to make matters worse, all those extra hours don’t even mean you get more work done:

    [Overwork] … doesn’t seem to result in more output.

    So overwork is killing employees while not improving business results. Can we stop it already?

    It’s a topic I’ve talked about a lot on this blog.

  • This is how you improve happiness AND productivity at the same time

    Yesterday I spoke to 200 people at Umbraco Codegarden 2010, an annual IT developer conference for web developers who use the open source CMS system Umbraco.

    Niels Hartvig, the founder of Umbraco, has a clear vision that focuses on both a good platform (so that the actual product is great) but equally on creating a great community, so that people want to be actively engaged in sharing knowledge, developing code and helping each other.

    I kicked the conference off with a high-energy presentation on happiness at work and how these 250 coders, consultants and evangelists can create a happy community and it was very well received.

    Then Niels gave his keynote in which he also celebrated the people who have gone above and beyond in their work on Umbraco.

    Before I went on, Niels told me that here was one person in particular, that they wanted to celebrate for his excellent work and energy. So this is what they gave him:

    They bough him a really fancy espresso machine and had his name and award engraved on it. Not only did it make him happy, it will also keep him caffeinated and highly productive :o) The only problem is that the damn thing weights 18 kilos (35 pounds) and Shannon will have to lug it home to Australia.

    This is an excellent way to celebrate a person in front of 250 of his peers because it’s fun, personalized, quirky and relevant – all the hallmarks of a good reward.

    Have you ever been rewarded in a similar way? How does your organization reward people who go the extra mile? Please write a comment – I’d love to know your take.

  • The top 5 new rules of productivity

    We all want to increase productivity and get more done with our working hours.

    There’s just one problem: Most people’s view of productivity comes from the industrial age. This leads to some fundamental misconceptions about work, including these:

    • If you work more hours, you get more work done.
    • Adding more people to a project means you can finish sooner.
    • Productivity is more or less constant and can be reliably predicted and scheduled.

    For knowledge workers, i.e. anyone who works with information rather than physically producing stuff, these beliefs are not only wrong, they’re actively harmful.

    So here is my suggestion for 5 new rules of productivity for knowledge workers.

    1: Productivity varies wildly from day to day. This is normal.

    In an industrial setting, production and output can be planned in advance barring accidents or equipment failure. Basically you know that if the plant operates for X hours tomorrow you’ll produce Y widgets.

    For knowledge workers you can’t possibly know in advance whether tomorrow will be a day where you:

    • Reach a brilliant insight that saves you and your team weeks of work.
    • Work tirelessly and productively for 12 hours.

    Or the day where you:

    • Spend 8 hours gazing dejectedly into your screen.
    • Introduce a mistake that will take days to find and fix.

    This variation is normal – if a little frustrating. It also means that you shouldn’t judge your productivity by the output on any given day but rather by your average productivity over many days.

    I have never seen this more clearly than when I was writing my first book. Some days I’d sit myself down in front of my laptop and find myself unable to string two words together. Some mornings I banged out most of a chapter in a few hours. Writing is a creative process. I can do it when I’m in the mood. Trying to write when I’m not, is a frustrating exercise in futility. On the days where I couldn’t write, I’d go do something else. Probably wakeboarding :)

    The result: I wrote the book in record time (a couple of months all told), the book turned out really well AND I enjoyed the writing process immensely.

    Three things you can do about this:

    1. Don’t make project plans based only on your maximum productivity days. Not every day will be like that. Base your schedules on your average productivity.
    2. Don’t beat yourself up on the low-productivity days. It’s normal, it’s part of the flow and these days have value too. I like to think that on these days, my subconscious mind is working on some really hairy complicated problem for which the solution will suddenly appear fully formed in my mind.
    3. If you do have a day where you get very little done, why not go home early and relax or get some private chores done?

    2: Working more hours means getting less done

    Whenever we fall behind, it’s tempting to start working overtime to catch up. Don’t! Instead, commit this graph to memory:

    Regular overwork decreases productivityIt comes from this excellent presentation on productivity. Read it!

    Here’s another data point:

    In 1991, a client asked me to conduct a study on the effects of work hours on productivity and errors…

    My findings were quite simply that mistakes and errors rose by about 10% after an eight-hour day and 28% after a 10-hour day…

    I also found that productivity decreased by half after the eighth hour of work. In other words, half of all overtime costs were wasted since it was taking twice as long to complete projects. After the study was done, a concerted effort was made to increase staffing.

    (Source)

    This may be counter-intuitive but it’s important to grasp: For knowledge workers there is no simple relationship between hours worked and output!

    Three things you can do about this:

    1. Don’t work permanent overtime. In fact, some studies indicate that knowledge workers are the most productive when they work 35 hours a week.
    2. Take breaks during the work day and make sure to take vacations.
    3. Experiment to find out what schedule works best for you. Five eight-hour days? Four longer days and a long weekend?

    3: Working harder means getting less done

    In an industrial environment, you can most often work harder and get more done. An increase in effort means an increase in productivity.

    For knowledge workers, the opposite is true. You can’t force creativity, eloquence, good writing, clear thinking or fast learning – in fact, working harder tends to create the opposite effect and you achieve much less.

    Three things you can do about this:

    1. Take the pressure off yourself and your team. Even if you make a mistake or miss a deadline the world probably isn’t going to end. Less pressure means higher productivity.
    2. Schedule a work load equivalent to only 80% of your work week. Trust me, you won’t be wasting your remaining 20% – but you will be more relaxed and more creative.
    3. In the words of Fred Gratzon: “If it feels like work, you’re doing it wrong”. If you find that most of what you do is a struggle, this is a sure sign that you are not at your most creative and productive.

    4: Procrastination can be good for you

    In an industrial setting, any time away from the production line is unproductive time – therefore all procrastination is bad. Search for procrastination on google and you’ll find a massive number of articles on how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done.

    They will tell you that there is only one reliable way to get stuff done:

    1. Check todo-list for next item
    2. Complete item no matter what it is
    3. Go to step 1

    They’ll tell you that if only you had enough willpower, backbone, self-control and discipline, this is how you would work too.

    Well guess what: Knowledge workers don’t work that way. Sometimes you’re in the mood for task X and doing X is ridiculously easy and a lot of fun. Sometimes doing X feels worse than walking barefoot over burning-hot, acid-covered, broken glass and forcing yourself to do it anyway is a frustrating exercise in futility.

    Sometimes procrastinating is exactly the right thing to do at a particular moment. This is largely ignored by the procrastination-is-a-sign-of-weakness, the-devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands crowd.

    Three things you can do about this:

    1. Procrastinate without guilt. Do not beat yourself up for procrastinating. Everybody does it once in a while. It doesn’t make you a lazy bastard or a bad person. If you leave a task for later, but spend all your time obsessing about the task you’re not doing, it does nothing good for you.
    2. Take responsibility, so that when you choose to procrastinate, you make sure to update your deadlines and commitments. Let people know, that your project will not be finished on time and give them a new deadline.
    3. Remember that “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted” (according to John Lennon).

    5: Happiness is the ultimate productivity enhancer

    The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

    I’m not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there – it’s not that it’s bad or deficient. It’s just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesn’t make you happy, you’re trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

    Three things you can do about this:

    1. Get happy in the job you have. There are many things you can do to improve your work situation – provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you.
    2. Remember to appreciate what is already good about your job. Often we forget, and overfocus on all the annoyances, problems and jerks. This is a natural tendency called negativity bias, but it also tends to keep us unhappy because we forget what works.
    3. If all else fails, find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, don’t wait – move on now!

    The upshot

    The industrial age view of productivity has serious limitations when applied to knowledge workers – but it remains the dominant view and still informs much of our thinking and many of our choices at work. Let’s change this!

    This is not without it’s challenges. The old view of productivity may no longer apply, but it does give managers an illusion of control and predictability. The new rules are… messy. Less predictable. They rely less on charts and graphs – and more on how people feel on any given day.

    It ultimately comes down to this: Do we want to stick with a model that is comforting and predictable but wrong or are we ready to face what REALLY works?

    Your take

    What about you? When are you the most productive? What is your optimal number of working hours per week? What stimulates or destroys your productivity? Please write a comment, I’d love to know your take.

    Related posts

  • Go see The Rules of Productivity presentation. Now!

    Rules of Productivity

    Thanks for all the great comments on my last post on The Cult of Overwork.

    It’s clear from the comments that:

    1. The Cult of Overwork is alive and well. Waaaay too many businesses still equate number of hours worked with productivity.
    2. This is hurting people!

    In one comment, Jorge Bernal linked to a great presentation titled The Rules of Productivity, which you absolutely must read. Not only is it clear and concise, it also cemented my belief that overwork is generally bad for productivity. With graphs! I love graphs!

    A few of my favorite takeaways from the presentation:

    • Crunch weeks deliver a brief increase in productivity but you need recovery time right after or productivity plummets.
    • When overwork becomes the norm, people think they’re more productive. They aren’t.
    • Knowledge workers should only work 35 hours/week.
    • There is plenty of empirical data from research into productivity.
    • One of the main proponents of the 40-hour work week was Kellogg’s. Not out of idealism but because it increased productivity for them.
    • Graphs!

    Go check out The Rules of Productivity presentation. Now :o)

  • Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster

    Productivity

    Lisa was falling behind at work. Every morning she woke up nervous about the workday ahead of her. Every evening she went home thinking of all the tasks she hadn’t gotten around to.

    Lisa is a 35-year old engineer and project manager at a Danish IT company. With business booming, keeping up had become a struggle – she felt she had to run really fast, to just to stay in place.

    With her in-box overflowing and people all around her clamoring for assistance on their projects, she started to look at various productivity tools and systems and quickly settled on the one she’d use. As is typical for Lisa, once she’s decided to do something, she does it, and with new ways of tracking time, improved todo-lists and prioritizing her work, she did notice that she was getting more work done.

    But she still felt, that she could be more productive. While she was thinking about her next step, it struck her: Some of what she did, she hated doing.

    While she generally enjoyed her job, especially helping people plan their projects and advising them on the best ways to move forward, some of her tasks were administrative in nature. Tracking progress, updating various statics, generating reports, etc… . They didn’t take up that much of her time – but they were a lot less fun. Let’s face it: to Lisa, they were boring as hell.

    She talked to her boss about it, and they decided to give those tasks to a project secretary. This freed up a little time for Lisa, but mostly it allowed her to work on those parts of her job that she really liked. Consequently Lisa became a lot happier at work – and THAT’S when her productivity sky-rocketed. Now she had the energy to connect with her people and the creativity to think up and implement new ideas. Instead of feeling stressed and harried, she was optimistic and positive.

    While her productivity system had definitely helped her get more done, the productivity boost she got from being happy at work was many times bigger. Lisa is now working way less hours – and getting much more done. And most importantly, she’s enjoying work a lot more!

    If you want to get more done at work, the productivity gurus out there will tell you that it’s all about having the right system. You need to prioritize your tasks, you must keep detailed logs of how you spend your time, todo-lists are of course essential, you must learn to structure your calendar and much, much more.

    But that’s not where you should start. You should start by liking what you do.

    The single most efficient way to increase your productivity is to be happy at work. No system, tool or methodology in the world can beat the productivity boost you get from really, really enjoying your work.

    I’m not knocking all the traditional productivity advice out there – it’s not that it’s bad or deficient. It’s just that when you apply it in a job that basically doesn’t make you happy, you’re trying to fix something at a surface level when the problem goes much deeper.

    Here are the 10 most important reasons why happiness at work is the #1 productivity booster.

    1: Happy people work better with others
    Happy people are a lot more fun to be around and consequently have better relations at work. This translates into:

    • Better teamwork with your colleagues
    • Better employee relations if you’re a manager
    • More satisfied customers if you’re in a service job
    • Improved sales if you’re a sales person

    2: Happy people are more creative
    If your productivity depends on being able to come up with new ideas, you need to be happy at work. Check out the research of Teresa Amabile for proof. She says:

    If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.

    There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.

    3: Happy people fix problems instead of complaining about them
    When you don’t like your job, every molehill looks like a mountain. It becomes difficult to fix any problem without agonizing over it or complaining about it first. When you’re happy at work and you run into a snafu – you just fix it.

    4: Happy people have more energy
    Happy people have more energy and are therefore more efficient at everything they do.

    5: Happy people are more optimistic
    Happy people have a more positive, optimistic outlook, and as research shows (particularly Martin Seligman’s work in positive psychology), optimists are way more successful and productive. It’s the old saying “Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re probably right” all over again.

    6: Happy people are way more motivated
    Low motivation means low productivity, and the only sustainable, reliable way to be motivated at work is to be happy and like what you do. I wrote about this in a previous post called Why “motivation by pizza” doesn’t work.

    7: Happy people get sick less often
    Getting sick is a productivity killer and if you don’t like your job you’re more prone to contract a long list of diseases including ulcers, cancer and diabetes. You’re also more prone to workplace stress and burnout.

    One study assessed the impact of job strain on the health of 21,290 female nurses in the US and found that the women most at risk of ill health were those who didn’t like their jobs. The impact on their health was a great as that associated with smoking and sedentary lifestyles (source).

    8: Happy people learn faster
    When you’re happy and relaxed, you’re much more open to learning new things at work and thereby increasing your productivity.

    9: Happy people worry less about making mistakes – and consequently make fewer mistakes
    When you’re happy at work the occasional mistake doesn’t bother you much. You pick yourself up, learn from it and move on. You also don’t mind admitting to others that you screwed up – you simply take responsibility, apologize and fix it. This relaxed attitude means that less mistakes are made, and that you’re more likely to learn from them.

    10: Happy people make better decisions
    Unhappy people operate in permanent crisis mode. Their focus narrows, they lose sight of the big picture, their survival instincts kick in and they’re more likely to make short-term, here-and-now choices. Conversely, happy people make better, more informed decisions and are better able to prioritize their work.

    The upshot

    Think back to a situation where you felt that you were at peak performance. A situation where your output was among the highest and best it’s ever been. I’m willing to bet that you were working at something that made you happy. Something that you loved doing.

    There’s a clear link between happiness at work and productivity. This only leaves the question of causation: Does being productive make us happy or does being happy make us productive? The answer is, of course, yes! The link goes both ways.

    Productivity

    But the link is strongest from happiness to productivity – which means that it if you want to be more productive, the very best thing you can do is focus on being happy with what you do?

    So how do you get to be happy at work? There are two ways, really:

    1. Get happy in the job you have. There are about a million things you can do to improve your work situation – provided you choose to do something, rather than wait for someone else to come along and do it for you.
    2. Find a new job where you can be happy. If your current job is not fixable, don’t wait – move on now!

    Related:

  • Physical activity increases office productivity

    Felcher and Sons increased their productivity by 46% when they put a linebacker in their offices.

    Extremely funny!

  • How To Keep Remote Workers Happy And Productive

    How do we make remote work work? What are the most effective ways to ensure that employees can still do great work and connect with each other even though they’re not in the office in person all the time?

    And how do we convince company leadership that remote work is good for business in a time where many companies are forcing people back to the office?

    I talk about that in this video, including:

    • Great examples from happy remote workplaces from around the world
    • The most relevant research around remote work and employee happiness and productivity
    • How to define and preserve the company culture when people are not in the office full time
    • 5 innovative tips that make remote work work

    You can find my links and source for the video here.

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