How to be more productive by working less

Recommendation
The conventional picture of productivity hasn’t changed in hundreds of years: nose
to the grindstone; early to bed, early to rise; work more, produce more. But what if
this way of thinking doesn’t help you produce more, or even worse, is
counterproductive? Internet entrepreneur and blogger Mark Manson questioned
the gospel of productivity and discovered that most of the time – thanks to the law
of diminishing returns – less is more. His conclusions could revolutionize your day
planner. But readers beware: Manson’s profane style of writing would make the
most hardened of truck drivers blush. Nonetheless, getAbstract recommends this
article to anyone who’s ever wondered if work has to be so difficult.

In this summary, you will learn

 Why centuries of thinking about what makes people productive is wrong,
 Why intellectual or creative work gives diminishing returns on time
investments, and
 How to use breaks and vacations to improve your productivity.

Take-Aways
 Different kinds of work have different productivity curves – the returns they
yield relative to the investment of time.
 Most creative or intellectual work produces diminishing or even negative
returns after a few hours of effort.
 When you work past the point of diminishing returns, you reduce your
productivity and can even create more work for yourself.
 A “leverage point” is an activity that makes everything else you do more
effective.
 A vacation or break can function as a leverage point.

Putting in 12-hour days, taking work home, skipping vacations and bringing your
laptop to the beach when you do take time off – the conventional concept of
productive work means long hours of self-sacrificing devotion. To get more done,
you have to put in the hours. That’s what productivity gurus have been saying for
centuries.
Only it isn’t necessarily so. The gospel of getting things done says that the more you
work, the more you produce. This is a doctrine of linear returns – twice the work
yields twice the product, ten times the work produces ten times the product – but
it’s true only for repetitive, rote tasks. If you’re mindlessly entering data on a
spreadsheet, for instance, you can probably enter twice as much data in four hours
as in two. Linear returns govern tedium.

“The only work that is linear is really basic, repetitive stuff, like hauling bales of
hay or packing boxes.
But when the thinking brain is involved, a different returns curve kicks in. For
intellectual or creative work – whether you’re writing a book, designing art,
running a blog or building relationships – the returns on effort start to fall after the
first burst of productivity. After a point, every hour of work generates less product
than the hour before. Basically, your brain gets tired. The returns curve is no longer
linear; it’s diminishing.

“Micromanaging the hell out of your employees won’t only not make them more
productive; they’ll come to hate you and be even less motivated to produce results
for you in the future.”
When you work past the point of diminishing returns, the effort becomes
progressively less productive. You can even reach a point of negative returns, when
the effect of putting in more time is that you’re only making more work for yourself.
By operating in the most rewarding part of the productivity curve, before returns
start to diminish – that is, by working fewer hours – you can accomplish more.

A vacation or a break from work can boost overall productivity, too. It can function
as a “leverage point” – an activity that makes everything else you do more effective.
On a vacation or a break, you give your brain a rest and allow it to come back to
work renewed, more effective and able to see fresh perspectives, about, for
example, the way you use your time.
“The only work that is linear is really basic, repetitive stuff, like hauling
bales of hay or packing boxes.
“Micromanaging the hell out of your employees won’t only not make
them more productive; they’ll come to hate you and be even less
motivated to produce results for you in the future.”