Workers for the world, get a life

“One hundred fifty years of research proves that shorter work hours actually raise productivity and profits -- and overtime destroys them. So why do we still do this?”

For years, I’ve been preaching that productivity comes from working smarter and more efficiently, not longer. Reports of productivity gains that come from firing people and having the remaining folks work do their jobs too are BS.

This article posted on AlterNet, Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity by Sara Robinson is one of the best I’ve seen on the point.

Folks, if you’re regularly working more than about 40 hours, change your life.

Get your Outlook under control

I don’t review products too often, but I have to mention the best productivity aid for Microsoft Outlook I’ve found so far: ClearContext.

There are two versions, personal,which is free and professional which is not. I actually sprung for the pro version, it’s so good.

My problem was too many e-mails and too many folders to sort them into. I also needed to track contacts and project tasks and e-mails and appointments and so on. ClearContext does addressed these issues with a relatively simple to use interface and some great automation features.

For example, with a single click (in version 5, currently in beta) any message in my inbox (or a Spam folder) can be sent to the right folder location and categorized. Send a reply and instead of going to the “Sent Items” folder your message is automatically also put into the correct folder and categorized.

In addition, Outlook follow-up and scheduling features are enhanced and simplified, so they’re easier to use.

Task and project management is where ClearContext really shines. Announced features for the next version promise to make it even better. There’s a feature called the Dashboard which displays all your Projects, Tasks and Actions, Appointments and Notifications (from Facebook, Linked-in etc.) In addition to the this global dashboard, double clicking on any project in the project list will open a tab just for that project which gives you a view of messages, Appointments, Contacts (extracted from the messages and linked to your Outlook Contacts lists or from which you can create an Outlook Contact. You can also see all the attachments relating to your projects and your Tasks.

Here’s a screenshot (borrowed from ClearContext’s web site) of the dashboards:

There are lots more features, but the most important one is the time you’ll save. It seems that I save at least 20 minutes in my AM mailbox cleanup alone. And I’ve been able to find project related attachments while I’m on the phone almost instantly. Just those two features make the software worth the money.

Use MS Outlook to run your life. Get ClearContext to get more control.

John Dvorak says "Promises of Productivity Are Often BS"

Or at least that's the headline his editor came up with.

The last paragraph in the article:

I'm almost tempted to do a book on the whole notion of productivity, since I find it to fraudulent in too many instances. Exactly how do you measure worth in today's white-collar workforce? It's a total crapshoot.

Promises of Productivity Are Often BS - Columns by PC Magazine

The opening paragraph:

I have forever been amused by sales pitches that a product or service will pay for itself within so many weeks, months, or years. Generally speaking, if "pay for itself" means the product or service will actually increase cash flow and sales to an extreme, then I'm in. But if "pay for itself" means an increase in productivity, then the red light on top of my BS meter immediately goes off.

In between he talks about experiences with devices that are supposed to enhance productivity, the faulty metric of time saving because people don't actually work 100% of the time, so a few minutes saved are as likely to be absorbed by IM as by being able to do more work.

Now, I've been touting these themes in TCO analyses for a while, so the article touched home. But the fallacy in the discussion isn't that people don't work 100% of the time, but a misapplying of productivity metrics to work done. For me, being more productive means workers get more done in the same or even less time than before. While a business might gain by increasing the total volume of work product through productivity gains, as John says, these gains are mostly manifest in manufacturing and other repetitive task industries.

An office worker may or may not produce more total work product through the use of higher productivity enabling tools, but other factors will probably have enough affect to limit those gains. OTOH, a systems administrator will definitely be able to handle more devices through productivity enhancing tools as his or her repetitive tasks will be simplified or otherwise be made more efficient.

Ultimately, productivity claims are BS. Usually, as I've stated elsewhere, the problem is claiming a productivity gain because fewer people are producing the same work product. They just work longer hours. Often much longer hours. That's not a true productivity gain. Its a labor rip off by the employer. A true productivity gain is when the same number of employees can produce more work product in the same number of hours.

Now John, in his professional curmudgeony way, is right about the nature of office work and in picking on the marketing around productivity. But the biggest productivity enhancing office too has to be the networked PC/Word Process/Laser Printer combination. The amount of time saved by the use of these three tools is almost incalculable.

Personally, if a better tool enables me to get some kinds of work done so I can write this blog; how bad can it be?