These conclusions seem to be focused on a very 19th century vision of "work", where productivity is just a function of efficiency and not, say, creativity or risk-taking.
I disagree, the article did provide examples that may have boxed you into such a narrow conclusion; delve deeper and you can see the fundamental attitude that is still relevant in a modern complex global economy. Creativity and risk-taking can drastically improve production, for this reason many corporations hire experts to create environments that spur and foster such culture. Methodologies might have changed, but the core concept has not.
I delved into some papers (and one author's body of work), and they seem quick to slap bizarre ideological interpretations on their results.
For example, I happily game-ified tedious BS jobs/classes by introducing elements of danger triggered by poor productivity. I thought the work was utterly pointless, and cheered whenever the corporation got hurt. But I needed some twisted motivation to show up and get through the damn day. And feel that my excellence was recorded somewhere.
The Kaur/Kramer/Mullainathan paper seemed to only use a barebones "endline survey," with easily-steered responses. Not in-depth interviews led by the subjects, which might've uncovered inconvenient info. (Or did I miss them?)
I also looked at economist Greg Clark's work. It's... weird... but at least his work is refreshingly honest about its political underpinnings. In a way others try to hide. And there's some interesting bits if you squint and remove the weirdnesses. For example, workers may take over a factory. But under a market economy, they may reasonably decide to oppress themselves by hiring a manager who sits in an air-conditioned room and is immune to the worsened workplace he develops.
Tl;DR: Management Anti-Patterns are rife in the industry because they appear to solve problems at first glance - and they do work because they reach a local maxima. See the six-sigma cults that are little more than cargo cultists running around with checklists.
Ultimately disappointing article ... discusses productivity in the purview of line-workers/data-entry type jobs, and clumsily tries to extrapolate to contemporary work environments/jobs that require more creativity and mental skill to perform :\",
Follow up study: women physically abused by their spouses claim to appreciate the treatment, agreeing that it helps them to "control their impulse to speak when it is not appropriate or wanted".
It is definitely satire, meant to highlight the fact that it is abhorrent to abuse people, or set up perverse incentives that may result in abuse, for non-performance, regardless of how the worker perceives the abuse. The fact that the workers in the study wanted the increased risk without any increase in compensation makes me sick to my stomach.
The fact that the workers in the study wanted the increased risk without any increase in compensation makes me sick to my stomach. The way it was described, they may have made less before, and by (in the au courant jargon of our day) "gamifying" it their earnings may have increased. For example if they typically entered 4800 fields a day, the extra "all or earn half" incentive of making it to 5K might actually spur them to more productivity, and hence more earnings.
That is what Clark meant when he used MBA-speak to describe the workers as having "hired" their employers.
This article comes across as describing a discovery while in fact so far it's merely an interesting hypothesis or even simply model, which might ultimately prove to be informative. Since the author is one of the people doing the work I don't know if this is accidental or intended.
I have come to exactly the opposite conclusions than the one proposed in this article. For me, not working when I don't feel like it, and really exploiting the times of high energy yields the most productivity.
If I force myself to trudge through moments of low energy, it saps all my energy. Moreover if I finish my alloted time of work, and then hit upon a high energy moment, it forces me choose between working even more and having any kind of leisure.
Of course, I think this has to do with the work one does. I'm in academia and the article discusses data entry. You don't really need creativity or initiative to do data handling.
Haha, this comment could nearly pass itself as parodic :)
But as a matter of fact, I do from time to time, although I don't really see it as a way of improving my productivity.
But I think you're onto something in the sense that often not feeling energetic of focused comes from the presence of parasite emotions or a sense of disorder. So it actually might help.
While your conclusions (for you doing your work) may have been different from the example in the article (for others, doing different work) the common factor seems to be that Productivity is a State of Mind, as proposed by the article. The state of mind siutable for you is the "high energy" one, elsewhere the "(perhaps resigned) acceptance" may yield better results (as in "if you cannot get out of it, better get into it" tip from The Happiness Project).
Productivity is based on a ton of different factors. For example aptitude, experience, confidence in the task at hand, expected value, expected time frame, state of mind, peer pressure, "fitting in" (being surrounded by people who are working), belief systems about what you "should" do, role playing.
The most horrible article I have read at NY Times so far.
Pushing workers to work harder and faster by motivating them with punishment is not about productivity at all. Alienating workers, saying that they "wanted" punishment and backing up all these "business" rhetoric with science is just sick.
I wonder what "state of mind" the author was in when producing this article. Did he also hired the Ivy League College he is working in to help with his "self-control" issues?
And providing workers with a "wellness program" just because it "reduces health costs" was the most chilling part.
We are all human beings, not quantities or rats in a maze.
> Pushing workers to work harder and faster by motivating them with punishment is not about productivity at all.
I don't like this idea either.
Unfortunately, this kind of "motivation" is state of the art in many jobs. It kind of reminds me of Brandson's "take as much holiday as you like". That sounds positive at first but also motivates people to not take holidays at all because of the fear of being less productive than their co-workers.
it's state of the art in society.
that is, because someone long ago discovered it working and society isn't pushed to try out better means, because the bad effects aren't overall noticably punishing enough for the pusher, ironically, and because negative feedback is a cheap basic part of the constant learning process. It's pretty productive, because it's focused on the product.
The average business fails to provide staff the autonomy they need to be productive. Articles like this don't help one bit.
I need a couple of hours of peace/alone time every day to focus on the important parts of my work. I'm lucky enough that my work is ok with me going to the local coffee shop for hours at a time. Most workplaces aren't. They claim to care about results but take such a short term view.
Don't evaluate me on my daily performance or the number of story points I have completed this sprint. Look at my performance month to month and year to year.
Of course some places have such high turnover (20%+) that they can't evaluate on a year to year because people aren't around for long enough but they have bigger issues.
interesting read but not really substantial, given that the theories are inconclusive. the observer effect is something i'd be more willing to believe, e.g. the relay assembly women might just increase productivity to be sufficient enough for all the changes to stop already, to be polite or being reminded of productivity being actually important.
I agree this article is bad on many levels. But I also think it catches one important point.
People who are pursuing a goal, that they themselves have committed to will be more productive
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 65.8 ms ] threadFor example, I happily game-ified tedious BS jobs/classes by introducing elements of danger triggered by poor productivity. I thought the work was utterly pointless, and cheered whenever the corporation got hurt. But I needed some twisted motivation to show up and get through the damn day. And feel that my excellence was recorded somewhere.
The Kaur/Kramer/Mullainathan paper seemed to only use a barebones "endline survey," with easily-steered responses. Not in-depth interviews led by the subjects, which might've uncovered inconvenient info. (Or did I miss them?)
I also looked at economist Greg Clark's work. It's... weird... but at least his work is refreshingly honest about its political underpinnings. In a way others try to hide. And there's some interesting bits if you squint and remove the weirdnesses. For example, workers may take over a factory. But under a market economy, they may reasonably decide to oppress themselves by hiring a manager who sits in an air-conditioned room and is immune to the worsened workplace he develops.
That is what Clark meant when he used MBA-speak to describe the workers as having "hired" their employers.
This article comes across as describing a discovery while in fact so far it's merely an interesting hypothesis or even simply model, which might ultimately prove to be informative. Since the author is one of the people doing the work I don't know if this is accidental or intended.
If I force myself to trudge through moments of low energy, it saps all my energy. Moreover if I finish my alloted time of work, and then hit upon a high energy moment, it forces me choose between working even more and having any kind of leisure.
Of course, I think this has to do with the work one does. I'm in academia and the article discusses data entry. You don't really need creativity or initiative to do data handling.
But as a matter of fact, I do from time to time, although I don't really see it as a way of improving my productivity.
But I think you're onto something in the sense that often not feeling energetic of focused comes from the presence of parasite emotions or a sense of disorder. So it actually might help.
I don't like this idea either. Unfortunately, this kind of "motivation" is state of the art in many jobs. It kind of reminds me of Brandson's "take as much holiday as you like". That sounds positive at first but also motivates people to not take holidays at all because of the fear of being less productive than their co-workers.
I need a couple of hours of peace/alone time every day to focus on the important parts of my work. I'm lucky enough that my work is ok with me going to the local coffee shop for hours at a time. Most workplaces aren't. They claim to care about results but take such a short term view.
Don't evaluate me on my daily performance or the number of story points I have completed this sprint. Look at my performance month to month and year to year.
Of course some places have such high turnover (20%+) that they can't evaluate on a year to year because people aren't around for long enough but they have bigger issues.
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect