Productivity BS: How Science Busts 6 Productivity Myths. Read Before You Make New Year’s Resolutions

We’re addicted to productivity boosting. Like literally: developers in Silicon Valley take small amounts of LSD to keep their imagination active and efficiency high. But also we, ordinary, LSD-deprived mortals have our little sins, such as compulsive searching for new productivity hacks.

But such search is a road to nowhere. Luke Muehlnauser has walked it and read 340 self-help books, so you don’t have to waste your time on it, and he discovered that 95% of them is just bullshit: unproven tips and vague advice. Self-help books are designed to sell, not to help. Sorry.

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The recommendations you will find there are contradictory: you’re supposed to be patient and aggressive at the same time, you should listen to the feedback and don’t take no for an answer. It’s a psychological fast food to be consumed quickly and without any critical analysis. It brings temporary relief, not a real change.

You disagree? So let’s take a closer look at some of the most common productivity tips, repeated thoughtlessly in myriads of posts and books.

1. Win the morning

Myth: Start your day at 5 A.M. with meditation, workout or a good book. Prepare your mind and body for the day full of challenges.

Why it doesn’t work: Numerous research bust the myth that rising early boosts your productivity, creativity or health (Russell Foster, Canadian Medical Association Journal). It’s all about finding the right time for you to work, what depends on many conditions: from your temper and habits to your job or family situations. Whether you do it at dawn or at dusk doesn’t make a difference, provided that you have enough energy to focus.

2. Make to-do lists

Myth: after you woke up at that crazy time, meditated, exercised and reflected mindfully on your work, you go the step two: making to-do lists, all types of lists, things to do today, that week, that month, before you turn 40., in your lifetime… Lists can be tricky. That great GTD tool can backfire if you create them unrealistically, overestimating your power, and it turns into a vicious cycle of wishful thinking and frustration.

Why it doesn’t work:
– A tight schedule on which you rely too much can hurt you. Sometimes unpredicted events happen, completing a task takes longer than expected, you have a bad day… You must be able to operate eve if your agenda collapses. To-do lists can reduce your flexibility;
– You grow obsessed with lists and spend more time on crafting new ones than on accomplishing the tasks listed. And you mistake putting something on the list with doing it;
– Not every aspect of your job can be translated into a bullet on the list. It’s a simplistic view! Partly it’s a good thing because it helps you divide big tasks into smaller chunks so that you can tackle it, but adopting such perspective blinds you to other dimensions of the job (like its quality – can you list that?)

Lists provide us a sense of security: they organize and clarify things. They make us feel in charge. But at the same time lists can make you oversimplify things and narrow your perspective. Not to mention a risk of transposing to-do lists attitude onto other, non-professional areas of your life (Steven Poole).

3. There is an app for that

Myth: iTunes and GooglePlay are full of apps that track your activity, control distractions and block Facebook access temporarily. In theory, such apps should turn us into creative robots, zen masters of focus and ultra-productive machines. But it doesn’t happen, does it?

Why it doesn’t work:
You integrate a calendar with a tracker with an app. You carry on a bunch of crayons to do your kanban properly. You want the app to run on all your devices. All that organizing and synchronizing starts to consume way too much time. Once you master one tool, you find a new one on Life Hacker. So you have to give it a try. Not to mention that you learn how to cheat on your trackers. You outsmart them, so your stats are kept high while you can indulge yourself a bit. Wait a minute…
The problem is that the tools start to overshadow the aim they serve. In the effect an attempt to boost productivity ends up as a harm to your efficiency: you escape from work into seemingly creative and useful activities. When you search and skim through new pieces on productivity and work hacking, it’s the same mechanism: procrastination. Well, reading about self-development and imagining the changes you’re going to introduce is more pleasant that Excel, isn’t it?

4. Focus on one thing

Myth: Find one thing you’re good at and focus on it, self-help books tell. Most of us do too much, so we can’t devote enough time and management to become outstanding in any of these. Also switching between the tasks drains our energy. Concentrate on what you love and let go your side projects.

Why it doesn’t work:
From a business point of view it’s safer to have a couple of options. You never know what will turn out to be the most successful of your enterprises. Sometimes a side project can become the primary source of your revenue.
Moreover, involving in various activities broadens your scope of competencies. Not to mention that you don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Feeling guilty about developing your business after hours or writing your book late at night, when you finish your daily job? Relax. Even the best entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Sam Walton or Richard Branson worked on multiple projects at the same time.

So where did “focus on one thing” fetish came from? Vishen Lakhiani searched for an answer and found out that he was way more productive (and happier!) when engaged in a couple of ventures at the same time. He concluded that we tend to mistake “focus on one thing” approach with the state of flow, as defined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi:

Flow is a moment of creative frenzy: absorbed by the task, excited and enthusiastic. That’s the state of mind in which we hit on the best idea and are the most creative. But that state is not reserved for those focused on one thing.

5. Multitasking lowers your efficiency

Myth: You can’t work on a couple of tasks at once. Actually, your attention shifts from one object to another and each switch costs you energy and generates stress. (Walter Kirn, American Psychological Association). That’s why you shouldn’t work on many things simultaneously, but devote a separate block of time for each task.

Why it doesn’t work:

If you’re a writer, quitting multitasking might be an option. But most of the contemporary jobs involve dealing with a couple of issues at the same time. Your performance relies on your co-workers activity and vice versa, so an individual working on her terms might just stop the work of the whole team.

Many business people also declare that operating on many fronts increases their energy and well-being because they feel they can accomplish more. (Alyssa Gregory)

It’s not about mistaking being busy with getting things done. Moments of focused, solo work are valuable, but it’s not the only mode in which you can be productive. Sometimes the character of a complex project of the whole team requires giving up focus and adopting the multitasking approach, which is not inferior, but needed under some circumstances.

6. These awful distractions!

Myth: Distractions. Social media, blogs, news, notifications or messages. Self-help discourse pictures them as the most dangerous threat to your productivity. Turn off your mobile phone, disable wifi, isolate yourself from the constant buzz.

Why it doesn’t work:

Our brains need distractions for two reasons. One, distractions help us relax. The cat memes you watch provide a much-needed break, so you can’t replace watching funny memes with baby penguins with reading a couple of passages from Heidegger. Just like a muscle, your brain must loosen up from time to time.

Two, distraction can help you generate new ideas. As Jonah Lehrer points out in his book Imagine, our brains can’t produce anything new if fed with the same monotonous fuel (as it happens when you’re focused on one thing for a long time). Distractions provide new stimuli and allow you to see the problem from a different angle. Nike famous “Just Do It” slogan was created that way – they’re the last words that Gary Gilmore, a murderer, said before his execution. You need unexpected associations to create something original while focus can limit your imagination.

Of course, you can’t just watch those cute baby penguins all the time and wait for your Eureka! moment. But don’t feel guilty when your brain calls for a pause.

Nobody will help you hack your work, but that’s OK

We can give you a quick, easy to consume bullet list with hacks that will transform your life. Nobody can. Your work, innovation, and productivity are way too complex and individual issues to be dealt with with a couple of tips. You need to find your style, testing various ideas and trying to be as critical as possible.

It’s not a bad news, it’s liberating: you can set your rules. Maybe things that you considered a sin before (like working in your PJs or multitasking) don’t limit your productivity, but boost it? Trust yourself instead of implementing somebody else’s tricks.

Resolutions you shouldn’t make

New Year is coming. But don’t promise yourself that now everything changes and you will start to get up early, improve your focus and apply other self-help ideas. Rather try to understand yourself!

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