Nov 3
Why you aren’t as productive as you may think
As we watched everything in our world change in 2020, we gained a new perspective on work, home, and even life. The old way of pushing harder, longer, and with less not only became intolerable, it was impossible as the country shut down and everyone was forced to slow down.
Before the pandemic, we were accustomed to equating productivity with being busy, checking off “to do’s” from our lists and unintentionally looking at our jobs as 40, 60, even 80 hour-long activities. We’ve exchanged showing up as human beings for existing as human doings. The cost of our cultural obsession with busyness has had a diminishing return on our work and a damaging impact on our relationships for decades. The Effects of Work & Life Imbalance details some of the adverse impacts; and yet, despite the evidence, we haven’t re-evaluated the way we calculate productivity.
Productivity is defined as the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. But when I hear clients brag about having a productive day and managers praise their most productive employees, their focus is on quantity and immediate impact rather than quality and long-term benefit. With that thinking, is a company truly productive if employees continue “to do” at the cost of energetic, spiritual, and physical exhaustion? Or when success is based on momentary wins (putting out fires) rather than long-term results?
Businesses stand at a crossroads today. We can continue to do business the way we’ve always done it, or we can embrace these changing times and re-tool how we work, how we think about our employees, and re-evaluate our thoughts of what being productive really means.
What changes when your definition of productivity is directly connected to your employee’s experience, and your success is based on their long-term results? How would your bottom line improve if you encouraged your teams to consider exercise, reflection, meditation, reading, journaling, and weekly planning as productive time? In what ways would your company expand and improve if you encouraged employees to carve out 1 hour a day to focus on long-term planning and growth?
As we enter a new economy, “doing” as a way to measure productivity may keep your company alive but it will prevent you from being able to thrive. NOW is the perfect time to reimagine productivity, help employees find balance, create your ideal culture, and increase profits.
Laura Treonze, serves as Chief Life Strategist with LMT Consulting, which helps executives and teams create massive success through self-awareness. Her life-changing approach has transformed individuals and families and has redefined the way non-profits and corporations “do” business.
