Still Trying to Get More Done

Greg Kletsel Psssst. Yes, you. I know you’re busy, but stop what you’re doing and read this instead. I’ve got some tips that are going to change your life. Not chiseled abs or better sex—we’ll leave those to Men’s Health and Cosmopolitan. This is about setting yourself on a path toward that professional-class nirvana getting more done. You deserve a break, and there’s no more virtuous form of procrastination than reading about new ways to accomplish work faster—a body of clickbait that’s become known as “productivity porn.” This is not a new genre: Americans have been lapping up time-management counsel since Benjamin Franklin started writing it. But such advice has never been more valuable than in the modern era, when a growing slice of the workforce is measured not by a time clock but by what its members actually produce. That explains the popularity of websites like Lifehacker and of productivity gurus such as David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. This year has brought two new titles, and as with diet books, it’s fair to ask: Is there really anything fresh to say about prioritizing, not being a slave to e-mail, and minimizing distractions? That may not matter, since our appetite for such advice is limitless. To the old adage that you can never be too rich or too thin, add: You can never be too productive. Chris Bailey, a twentysomething Canadian, is a quirky and energetic guide through the productivity porn thicket. Bailey read Getting Things Done as a teenager and became obsessed with finding ways to complete tasks in less time and with less effort. After graduating from college, he turned down two job offers to spend a year experimenting with (and blogging about) productivity hacks. His online stunts—which included binge-watching 296 TED talks in a single week—led to a publicity bonanza and a book contract. The result is The Productivity Project. Bailey deserves credit for the range of efficiency tricks he test-drove. In one experiment he limited his iPhone usage to 60 minutes a day. (Smartphones are modernity’s paramount distraction.) In another he alternated 90-hour and 20-hour workweeks, closely tracking his accomplishments against time spent goofing off. (His finding: Longer hours killed his productivity, and shorter hours forced him to prioritize.) To limit his time on e-mail—a gigantic time suck—he started checking it just three times a week. (He created a second, top-secret e-mail address for the handful of people who might need him urgently and checked it daily.) To reduce time devoted to hygiene and nutrition, he experimented with limited bathing and eating only Soylent, a meal-replacement beverage. To create a truly distraction-free environment, he worked (and lived) for 10 days in a windowless basement room, interacting with no one. During another period, he scheduled daily three-hour naps. Books based on the my-year- of-doing-crazy-activity-X concept often feel gimmicky and padded, and Bailey’s book is longer than it needs to be. (It’s a cruel irony that I found myself checking my phone frequently while reading this book about how not to check your phone too frequently.) But give Bailey credit for not belaboring his own productivity experiments; instead, his chapters are filled with solid research and prescriptive tips. The sections on procrastination (which happens most often when tasks are boring, too difficult, or lacking in meaning) are especially enlightening, as is the discussion of why focus and energy are as significant as time management. “Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from this experiment,” he writes, “was just how important it is to deeply care about your productivity goals, about why you want to become more productive.” Charles Duhigg has special bona fides in the field: He manages time adeptly enough to be a Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter during the day while writing books at night. (Before entering journalism, he earned an MBA and worked in private equity.) His new book is Smarter Faster Better, and like his previous one, The Power of Habit, it jumps quickly between settings—a Marine Corps boot camp, a nursing home, Google’s HR operation, Saturday Night Live, and Pixar’s studios—to illustrate its concepts. The discursive narrative technique, most often associated with Malcolm Gladwell, has a propulsive quality: Duhigg’s storytelling makes you want to keep reading. Duhigg defines productivity expansively, looking at research on topics such as motivation, goal setting, decision making, and helping teams function better. Some of the research he cites will be familiar to HBR readers, but it’s packaged in original stories—a PhD who becomes a professional poker champion, how autopilot lulled an Air France crew into a fatal crash—that make it entertaining. Smarter Faster Better feels less cohesive than Duhigg’s other book: It has no strong central thesis, and the connection between some chapters and personal productivity feels tenuous. But one could argue that it offers a C-suite guide to the topic, focused less on how individuals can increase output and more on presenting organizational principles and systems that make people work together with greater efficiency. For many of us, though, productivity will remain not a systems problem but a minute-to-minute struggle: Should I check Twitter or do my work, even if it seems dull, pointless, or too challenging? Instead of focusing on tips and tricks, it might be worth asking: If you’re finding it really hard to be productive, are you doing the right work in the first place? It’s also worth keeping in mind that your goal with productivity porn shouldn’t be to transform yourself into a hyperefficient automaton who can take on ever larger piles of work. Rather, it should be to find a way to break free from the office more quickly and get to the outside world—where real living is done.

Still Trying to Get More Done

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