The relentless rise of pseudo-productivity
Visible activity and physical exhaustion are not useful measures of valuable work.
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
—William Shakespeare, from Macbeth
How do you know if you or your team are doing good work? This sounds like a basic question, but the conventional answers are often counter-productive. In manufacturing, agriculture, or other industries with standardized outputs, you can sometimes gauge productivity through ratios – output per labor hour, yield per acre, production time per widget, as examples. But in cognitive or expressive work, the same approach can lead to disaster.
Slow Productivity author Cal Newport (2024) has a name for this flawed evaluation of “knowledge work” – pseudo-productivity – which he defines as:
The use of visible activity as the primary means of approximating actual productive effort.
A manager/workplace with a pseudo-productivity mindset cares mostly about observed activity – coming early, leaving late, skipping lunches, typing furiously, responding quickly to rapid-fire email/text/Slack messages at all hours of the day and night. Seinfeld sit-com character George Costanza hacked these assumptions by “looking annoyed” rather than meaningfully contributing to his employer’s success.
The problem with pseudo-productivity is that it can make actual productive work impossible. “Looking busy” demands constant context-switching, frequent interruptions, desk-bound workdays, and high volumes of low-impact “busywork.” Meaningful and valuable cognitive or expressive effort often demand the opposite.
Worse yet, pseudo-productivity can foster a culture where exhaustion and overwhelm are badges of honor rather than indicators of concern – especially when the mission statement is completely out of scope with the people and resources at hand.
So, what’s the alternative? A first step is to notice and interrogate your own assumptions about what productive work looks like, and how you hold yourself and your team accountable. Are you expecting or contributing to a constant flow of chatter over email or text? Are your best opportunities for deep thinking crowded out with meetings? Do you feel suspicious or uneasy when a colleague looks rested and calm, or when you feel that way yourself?
In other words, are you using visible activity or its consequence as a measure of productive effort? And if so, do those measures meaningfully contribute to your organization’s mission or purpose?
Newport’s alternative to pseudo-productivity is “slow productivity” which he defines as:
A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner, based on the following three principles:
1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.
But there are many alternatives available and evolving in the world of work. Find a definition and a bundle of practices that move you forward rather than make you crazy.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: People Operations
People Operations involves designing and driving systems and practices that attract, engage, retain, and develop people within the enterprise (also called human resources).
Framework of the Week: Critical Response Process
Critical Response Process, devised by choreographer Liz Lerman, offers a method for giving and getting feedback on creative work, avoiding the challenges and flaws of unstructured critique.
Photo by Soheb Zaidi on Unsplash
Sources
Newport, Cal. 2024. Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Portfolio.