Greatly Improving Your Life with Better Sleep: Understanding Productivity (Part 3/4)

What Is Productivity Really?

There’s been a lot of talk about productivity—especially from Part 2. So, we need to clearly define what it is in detail.

Productivity is simply output relative to input (i.e. output divided by input). Think of it as a ratio; the higher the ratio, the better the productivity. In most cases, the input is simply time. The output can be anything that you want to achieve.

Theoretically speaking, the most productive state is achieved via maximum output and minimum input. High output requiring high input is simply average productivity. However, even low output can yield high productivity if the input is much lower.

Here is an example:

Let’s say you make wooden carvings of fat animals (fat dogs, fat bears, fat cats, etc.) for a living.

1. Moderate Productivity: Although the animals might vary, you tend to average 1 per hour. If you work 10 hours a day, that’s 10 wooden carvings over 10 hours. This is the baseline—the average. Since 10/10 = 1, you have moderate productivity.
2. Low Productivity: On some days, you make 5 carvings total within 10 hours. Since 5/10 = ½, your productivity is halved. Therefore, you have low productivity.
3. High Productivity: On some days, you make 15 carvings total within 10 hours. Since 15/10 = 1.5, your productivity is 50% greater than average. Therefore, you have high productivity.
4. Very High Productivity: On some days, you make 6 carvings total within only 3 hours. Since 6/3 = 2, your productivity is 100% greater than average despite the fact that you only work 3 hours that day. Therefore, you have very high productivity. This is an important concept because it means that you can have high productivity despite having low output. The trick is to have your input be much lower than your output. Simply put, you do not have to work a lot to achieve a lot. Naturally, you can have higher time inputs, but productivity is, ultimately, a ratio of output over input.
5. No Productivity: On some days, you don’t even finish a single carving within 10 hours. You work very slowly within the first 5 hours. You then spend the next 4 hours pondering why the hell you’re carving fat animals for a living. The 10^th hour is spent crying. In this case 0/10 = 0, so your productivity is 0%. As a result, you are completely unproductive (and a hot mess).

A Brief History of Labor Around the World

We’ll start off with a relevant history lesson concerning labor and productivity.

For most of the 19^th century, normal working hours around the world ranged from 10 to 16 hours per day, and the workweek was typically 6 days per week. Many countries did not adopt the 8-hour workdays until the early 1900s.

In fact, many countries in Asia still follow the old oppressive work schedules. The Japanese, for example, are notorious for literally working themselves to death. The term “karoshi” means “death by overwork or job-related exhaustion.” Side note: when you have an actual term for it, that means its a very shitty situation. In fact, some workers would put in 30-40 hours for their second job.

But was all this extra time productive?

Do We Actually “Work” 8 Hours a Day?

Clearly working very hard.

Hell No.

The whole 8 hours thing is just an archaic benchmark that most people fail to reach. During Ford’s time, doubling wages was a monumentally significant move, because the pay was more than enough to motivate the workers and increase productivity.

Nowadays, since wages have stagnated over the years as costs skyrocket, motivation is generally lower. Compound this with the distractions of the Digital Age and we have plummeting productivity across the board.

Some research has shown that many people are productive for less than 3 hours per day (out of an 8-hour workday).

Within a single day, distractions include the following:

• Social media
• Daydreaming
• Frequent email checks
• Long unnecessary meetings
• Switching between tasks and taking time to refocus on the main task at hand
• Socializing
• Reading news
• Flirting with coworkers and/or customers
• Getting rejected by coworkers and/or customers
• Having an existential crisis

Due to numerous cause of low productivity, numerous countries (most notably Sweden) are experimenting with 6 hour workdays. Once again, as the Ford example shows, it is entirely possible to reduce hours and increase productivity.

In fact, one can often tell when he or she is productive based on whether or not they are “in the zone.”

Flow and Zone

When you are in a state of flow, you are effectively “in the zone.” And flow can ramp up your productivity several times. There’s even a study on how flow cut in half the time it took to train expert marksmen. I’m assuming this research was…accurate.

Imagine being productive for 3 hours. Now imagine you’re “in the zone” during these productive hours. Let’s say your productivity increased by 100%. That’s effectively 6 hours of work that you crammed into 3 hours.

Taken into the perspective of an 8-hour workday, the average person would effectively get two “normal” days of work done in 3 hours. I am assuming of course that, based on the study, the average person is only productive for less than 3 hours per day.

If you can’t enter the zone, then more hours will not help much. In other words, staying an extra 3 hours at the office might only result in an extra 1 hour of true productivity (maybe). This seems like a rather poor tradeoff.

—Early Mornings and Productivity

Various factors work in unison to influence productivity. Many of these factors (a healthy morning workout, willpower, logistics, quietness, minimal distractions, etc.) can be attained by waking up early in the morning. While there are a variety of methods to increase productivity, very rarely can a single change in the habit so easily influence productivity. The best part is that this method—waking up early—remains well within the realm of possibility for most people.

If the quality of work increases despite having the same amount of time, imagine simply being 10% more productive.

Referring to the animal carving example, let’s say you work 50 hours per week and make 1 carving per hour. With a 10% increase in productivity, you would make 55 fat animal carvings in 50 hours (as opposed to 50 animal carvings in 50 hours). That extra 5 actually saves you an extra 5 hours per week. This really adds up over time. Now imagine productivity increasing by 20% or 100%.

During early mornings, I often find myself completing, on average, 50% more work (personal and professional) than I normally do later in the day. If you’ve read Part 2, then you already know that early mornings have monumental inherent advantages.

On a final note, there are some bodies of research and viewpoints pointing to the idea that waking up early does not increase productivity. I strongly disagree, and I’ll clarify why.

• Rhythm: As discussed in Part 1, mastering one’s circadian rhythm is a crucial step toward healthy sleeping habits. Since productivity is dependent on this adjustable rhythm, setting the rhythm toward an earlier time would be just fine. Furthermore, a rhythm that starts earlier in the day will naturally attain the various fundamental benefits of early mornings.
• Night Owls: Their implied peak productivity is toward the end of the day—long before they have woken up. This means that they can’t simply “wake up” to their productive time. In a shocking revelation, we realize that night owls’ productivity is actually still dependent on what time they wake up. If night owls wake up too late, then their nights become longer. If the nights become too long, they’ll essentially be in graveyard shift—a routine where one sleeps during the day and stays awake at night. In most cases, it’s unwise to be in graveyard shift mode (unless one’s job depends on it) because most of the world revolves around the daytime shift.
• Timing: Most people have to wake up at a certain time to go to work. And, as discussed in Part 2 detailing the reasons to wake up early in the morning, society has an Early Bird Bias. Like most people, you have to be on time for work. Waking up earlier lets you ramp up to maximum productivity sooner.
• Momentum and Proactivity: Productivity is not simply a product of what time you wake up; it’s also dependent on how long you stay productive. But, if you have a head start, then you’re more likely to maintain that head start. If you’re behind, then you’re more likely to stay behind. This is similar to the concept of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. As discussed in Part 2, this is exemplified in Newton’s first law of physics. An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Simply by getting a head start over your peers or competitors, you’ll naturally feel better as the momentum propels you forward. You’ll be more productive simply because you were already productive.

What does this all means?

It means that, if you could simply increase your productivity—and maybe get just 3 additional truly productive hours in your day—then you’re well on your way to having an amazingly productive life. And the easiest way to increase productivity is to wake up earlier. Even 1 extra hour of productivity a day is a major improvement.

Once more, if you’re still doubtful about the benefits of waking up early, refer to Part 2 for a more detailed analysis of early mornings.