The Problem With Personal Productivity Is Productivity

And more thoughts on the language of business, the future of experiences, and leading beautifully

The pandemic has fueled the desire to question and redefine the fundamentals of business. One way to do so is to change the language, as Shannon Mullen O’Keefe proposes with her Business Lexicon for the Next Century. I particularly love these two re-definitions:

Work: Activity involving a person’s unique (and beautiful) abilities to meet what the world needs.

Profit: The decent amount of money left over after expenses are paid, stakeholders are cared for, and the wellbeing of each person on the team is accounted for.

Redefining the fundamentals can also mean rejecting long-held truths. I’m taking a critical look at the concept of (personal) productivity, in response to Cal Newport’s take-down of the Getting Things Done movement in The New Yorker and the concerns over Microsoft’s much discussed new Productivity Score that sneaks the surveillance economy into the homes of millions of workers.

When Microsoft proclaims that its Productivity Score “illuminates the essential insights to move your transformation from art to science,” it lays bare the myopic philosophy at the heart of all productivity tools. Ever since Frederick Taylor pioneered it, the idea of scientific management has proven to be detrimental to both productivity and wellbeing.

So, no, let’s not move from art to science please. Business is definitely not a science. It is an art that requires imagination and contemplation, not just pseudo-objective execution.

As the management thinker and author Margaret Heffernan points out, efficiency is good for the complicated but not for the complex, and it falls short of addressing a world that is increasingly unpredictable.

“Trying to standardize and measure all work may instill the illusion of control, but it too often demotivates people whose skill sets can meet unpredictable demands. It also robs people of their capacity to adapt and respond with creativity and commitment,” she writes.

By simply digitalizing scientific management, we narrow the playing-field and flatten the human experience at the very moment at which businesses should develop a vested interest in the exact opposite—for the sake of spurring innovation, ensuring psychological safety, and creating healthier and happier workplaces.

Personal productivity is dead, even though digital surveillance tools have brought it back into our homes through the backdoor. But perhaps it is time to throw the baby out with the bathwater and not only move beyond personal productivity but the whole concept of productivity itself?

There are several alternative paradigms we can explore: from “regenerativity”—the degree of external cost produced by one’s work and the amount of circular resources one creates for others and themselves rather than mere task-related output—to the idea of a “naturalized workplace” that views work as an emergent and fluid organic feature rather than something than can and must be predicted and managed in measurable units.

And perhaps we need a different language altogether: love and beauty instead of productivity and efficiency. What if work were a love language and leadership the ability to find the right words in response to someone else’s work and words? “Work is love made visible,” as the poet Khalil Gibran wrote, not love made measurable. Work is beautiful when it brings us closer together instead of just forcing us to collaborate. It is beautiful when it matches the true demands of the world with our own personal potential.

In this sense, beauty is not just an aesthetic but an ethical quality. We must produce more of it.

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Further reading, listening, and watching

What if every day was a pandemic day? Exponential View's Azeem Azhar ponders what would happen if we applied the same determination and collaborative spirit we have witnessed in the race to the COVID-19 vaccine to other major issues humanity is facing.

Meaning-making, modern rituals, and the various forms of ceremony—listen to this fascinating podcast conversation between Brené Brown and Priya Parker about the art of gathering in COVID times and beyond.

On the topic of events and what we learned about them in 2020, download the free “The Future of Experiences” report we produced with the House of Beautiful Business.

Along with the House, we also just published a first batch of highlights from our recent The Great Wave festival. Watch Anna Lee’s talk about destigmatizing female sexuality; our interview with pro-democracy Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong; our conversation with Tim O’Reilly about Big Tech and the next generation of Silicon Valley; psychologist Elaine Kasket in conversation with Leon founder and CEO John Vincent about winning without fighting; Working Families Party’s national director Maurice Mitchell talk about what punk taught him about reimagining politics, Fortune's Michal Lev-Ram in conversation with harvard economist Rebecca Henderson about reimagining capitalism, and Léa Steinacker in conversation with the writer Suleika Jaouad about illness and isolation—and hope.

In addition, check out the new Season Two episodes of the Next Visions podcast the House co-produces with Porsche Digital, featuring two beautiful minds in conversation with one other, starring Gianpiero Petriglieri and Carola Rackete about leadership and love; Liane Al Ghusain and Casper ter Kuile about the sacred and the profane; and Alex Evans and Anab Jain on the future of democracy and the power of narrative in politics, among others.

I was a guest at the Corporate Unplugged podcast hosted by Vesna Lucci and spoke about my time in Silicon Valley, the House of Beautiful Business, the tenets of a new post-pandemic economy, and what it really means to be human at work.

Finally, join the House of Beautiful Business and me on December 9 for this year’s final Living Room Session, “20-21: Turning the Page,” featuring a wide range of topics from essential work to female leadership, the state of the COVID-19 vaccine development, and the promise of deep tech with guests Susan Celia Swan, executive director, V-Day and One Billion Rising; Peter Albiez, country manager Germany, Pfizer; physicist and biotech entrepreneur Safi Bahcall, author of the bestseller Loonshots; and Ilayda Samilgil; Co-founder and CEO, Organic Robotics Corporation; among others.

See you there!

Tim