How to overcome the productivity paradox

In the past, I used to urge my children to turn off the TV while doing their homework, believing a lack of distraction would help them finish faster and they would actually learn the subject.?

But times have changed. Today, everything is now often done on devices that house apps for entertainment,?social interaction, in school or work.??The apps on these devices provide constant notifications, messages, or distractions.???

These devices rarely get turned off, blurring the boundaries between work and play. Unlike the days when a morning and evening commute provided a time to think deeply about a topic.?Many times over the years, I had a breakthrough while commuting. Today, many of us work from home and lose that time, and if we do commute, it’s not a screen-free break. Today we can take calls on the go and keep the momentum flowing.??

Historically, technology has allowed society to do more with less, be quicker, more productive, and more connected. With the continued boom of generative AI, we’re seeing the potential of technology reshaping our landscape even further.?

But despite the promise of technology giving us back more time, research has shown that a productivity paradox exists - in the economic sense.?

As the lines between work, home, and play become increasingly blurred, it begs the question: Are we effectively utilizing the extra time technology affords us? Is there potential for optimizing how we harness the benefits of increased productivity? Research indicates there’s room for improvement.?

Technology equips us with tools to perform remarkable feats, yet just as each user has a unique perspective on what enhances their user experience, how individuals use additional time is entirely within their control.

Work hard, play hard becomes just hard.?

It’s easy to see that the lines between work, home and play have become obscure. The notion of ‘work hard, play hard’ has morphed into ‘just hard.’??We are spending more and more time on devices but not gaining the results we would expect.?The more tasks, projects, and side hustles you can effectively bounce between in the space of a day, the more hard-working you may seem.??However, we are constantly dealing with distractions.?In the time I spent writing this paragraph, I received over ten notifications. What does this mean?

A degree of separation is needed to negate the effects of burnout and fatigue in this always-connected, ‘always-on’ culture that has been cultivated over the last several years.?

Connectivity doesn’t always mean productivity.

We are seeing the emergence of terms such as ‘Toggle Tax,’ coined by Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani, and Rajath B. Das in a report shared in 2022 to describe the cost of switching between apps within a workday. There’s also ‘email bias ’ describing the overestimation of how quickly people feel they should respond to non-urgent work emails sent outside of regular business hours.

These things significantly impact workplace satisfaction, effectiveness, and the more ephemeral metrics of empathy, teamwork and culture that we know are vital to strong organizations. Some countries even have legislative actions to protect employees' right to not respond to their superiors outside of work hours.?

The solution could come (as we have learned from innovation ) from a solid ecosystem of techniques, systems and accountability from colleagues, workplaces and family members alike. We must invest in actions that boost satisfaction and productivity in work and home environments. Technology can play a part in helping to manage this process through such things as productivity apps and timers and from the simple action of placing our devices in focus mode, removing the disturbance from notifications and scrolling.?

Technology can act as a co-worker or companion whose entire role is keeping you organized, connected and uninterrupted. But the implementation of technology in that sense still requires self-discipline - we still have to judge when it’s time to turn off the screen.

The productivity paradox

I recently shared McKinsey’s earlier research showing productivity growth had slowed in advanced markets. The reason outlined was three-fold: a weak 1990s productivity boom, the financial crisis after effect and digitization resulting in low productivity growth in select markets.

Since then, the labor market recovery from the pandemic in 2020 saw labor productivity grow by more than twice the long term average . A significant portion of this remarkable surge was made possible by the power of technology.?

The larger, knowledge-intensive companies, known for their inherent productivity, swiftly transitioned to remote work, ensuring uninterrupted operations through digital tools like video conferencing and collaboration solutions. This shift saved valuable commuting time and emphasized the importance of well-being in the process .?

However, this surge stalled in 2021. For all the productivity gains promised by digitization, we’re yet to see it materialize at scale. Digital transformation remains an area of focus - the general consensus being digital transformation is not an easy feat and is, in fact, an ongoing process that will evolve year-by-year as digital technology does.

As such, one reason we’re not seeing a clear impact on productivity figures is the time needed for technological and business readiness, creating lag effects before the full potential can be realized. Sectors like ICT, media, financial services, and professional services have been very focused on digitization for years, the pandemic resulted in rapid transformation in other sectors, such as education and healthcare. The costs associated with managing digital transformations and the revenue losses incurred by incumbents during the transition are additional barriers to sector productivity.?

Despite these challenges, it's not all bleak. Researchers like Erik Brynjolfsson and Georgios Petropoulos have highlighted, over time, the digitization process creates a productivity “J-curve” in which initial benefits may only be small (or even negative) - but long-term value is substantial for organizations that sustain the journey. They argue that technology alone rarely delivers significant benefits, necessitating complementary investments in intangibles such as training, retaining and attracting the right talent, complete ecosystems of support, and organizational models that embrace change and committed leadership.

The evolution of technology has been rapid, though compressed and accelerated in the last three years. While we have yet to fully realize the macroeconomic potential of technology-fueled productivity gains, there lies a genuine opportunity in how we individually seize the time bestowed upon us through smarter technological efficiency. How we prioritize our time is matched to our intrinsic values - undoubtedly, technology provides us with a platform to elevate both our professional and personal lives if we can only harness it in smarter ways.