Are You Really, Really Productive?

Productivity is normally measured as the ratio of total outputs produced by a certain quantity of inputs. Many organizations measure their operational and talent effectiveness and productivity using the output/input approach. However, what if, at least at the personal level, you could use another measure to determine whether you are really productive?

There are two metrics that I want to introduce as fundamental for optimal performance to achieve the highest levels of personal productivity: stress and flow.

Stress

Let’s begin by saying that not all stress is bad. More than one hundred years ago, psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson found that low or high levels of stress are conducive to poor performance. This phenomenon is now known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law and is an inverted U shape curve (see picture). As you can see, low levels of stress drive people to boredom, whereas high levels of stress are conducive to anxiety and frustration. In both cases, disengagement is common.

Why would we want to be more stressed in order to be more productive?

It sounds counterintuitive, but the reason is simple: stress is fundamental for survival. During our evolution we needed to be alert of what was going on and how to react to the changing conditions in our environment. When we are stressed, our brains release chemicals that allow us to be more alert, energetic and even increase our brain function and activity.

The inverted U shape curve of optimal levels of stress varies depending on the activity. For example, sometimes we need to be focused and fully concentrated in something, such a reading a book or solving a math problem. In that case, less stress will be better. In some other cases, for example in military and survival operations, optimal stress will keep people at their best level of performance.

That’s how stress can help you become more productive: by finding the optimal level of stress you need in your day to day work, you’ll be able to also determine when you are more productive and delivering at the highest performance. Remember that the level of stress intensity varies from activity to activity, and even person to person. The continuum below can help you pinpoint where you are and what you need to do to move.

The stress-approach to becoming more productive is not only counterintuitive, but it also contradicts the basic principle of output versus input efficiency. For example, while it’s true that in a manufacturing company you need to maximize the number of outputs per unit of inputs, thus becoming more efficient, this rule doesn’t apply to personal productivity.

Being “efficient” can drop us back to a state of low-stress and low-performance which will negatively impact our productivity. Similarly, and on the other extreme of the spectrum, working faster can be a synonym of machinery “efficiency” but not necessarily “personal productivity”. I'm not saying that efficiency is a bad thing, but just emphasizing that there's not necessarily a linear relation between personal productivity and efficiency.

Flow

The second measure for personal productivity is Flow.

Imagine that you have the capacity to become one with the activity or project you are doing. That there’s no gap between you and such task, but you achieve a level of total a connection that allows you to reach your highest level of productivity and performance. Such a state of mind makes you more aware, alert, productive and effective. And, in addition to that, you find full enjoyment and happiness in doing that activity. Is that possible?

Doctor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience”, described such mindset as a personal state as “Flow”. You may know it as “being in the zone”.

“Being in the zone” means that the activities at hand are challenging: whatever we do is not too easy to make us bored (low levels of stress), neither extremely difficult to make anxious or frustrated (high levels of stress).

A state of flow is one of constant personal challenge. You will never ever achieve flow doing something that is so easy, that it turns out to be boring and disengaging. A state of flow at work can only be achieved by doing those things that somewhat challenge us to constantly step up our skills and abilities. What happens if your job entails doing things that are just too easy and you quickly become disengaged?

If your job is monotonous, boring or easy, you need to spice it up and find the opportunities to increase the level of complexity of your tasks, or simply participate in something else to keep your level of stress at optimal levels and achieve flow. Otherwise, no matter if the productivity of the things you do (outputs versus inputs) is high, because your personal productivity will be low and that’s detrimental for your own personal and professional growth.

Many people run away from difficulties and challenges at work, but they don’t achieve flow neither their potential levels of highest productivity and performance. Instead, my advice is that you seek the challenge and the novelty of new tasks and projects. It doesn't matter if you don't have any idea on how to work them out. Trying and learning is a great way to achieve flow and total enjoyment and fulfillment.

In summary

Perhaps now you see that at a personal level and for the sake of our professional growth, the metric of outputs versus inputs is not enough to determine whether we are truly productive or not. We need more than that.

When it comes to personal productivity, we need to make sure that we try to take into account these two measures: stress and flow. At the personal level, productivity doesn’t always equate to doing things faster and with less resources. That’s a good approach for “things”, but not for people.

In the future, you might approach your tasks and projects by first thinking how you can ensure that you will be operating at the center of the stress continuum (at least, for most activities) and that the activity at hand is challenging enough to keep you fully engaged, “stressed” and productive. 

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