Are you measuring productivity or visibility?
We all get sucked by the idea of looking back on what we've done. But is it always possible in the world of knowledge work?
“It’s safer to chime in on email threads and jump on calls than to put your head down and create a bold new strategy.” Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
I sat flat on my back staring out at the big mountain that used to be a volcano in Tilba Tilba musing at this quote for some time. It’s rare you feel so seen, so admonished, and yet so understood by a book in one tight paragraph.
For a very long time, I have grappled with this sense of what is productivity when you essentially produce knowledge? How do we quantity that creative squidginess that connects together to create ideas, thoughts, solutions, and more?
Is it the reports that you write that barely anyone reads?
Is it the many blogs, articles, comments and summations we create for content thirsty platforms in the vain hope that if we keep pushing, commenting, and thought leading, we may not be pushed into algorithm driven obscurity?
The case studies after the fact? Or the carefully curated and manicured demonstrations?
The length? What the analytics have to say? If it trends?
Knowledge and information was a cascading waterfall before AI writing. Now it is a deluge of perfectly prompted, “in conclusion” summarised, emoji encrusted, thesaurus devotion. A flood that even the knitted brows of the most committed old school editors, proofreaders and writers cannot contain.
With the spell broken, I continue to wonder:
How do we measure knowledge in an age where visibility imperfectly measures value and our writerly intentions?
image: the window from that place in Tilba Tilba with its view over the mountain.
Measuring the immeasurable
In business, we’re all confident and plausible. We’re rolling around the internet in a simmering pile of self-promotion driven by our amazing lives and thought leadership in full colour relatability.
And we talk about what we do to make sure clients, customers, colleagues, and all the other c-words know it.
But talking about work isn’t creating it. In the same way talking about change doesn’t manifest it, we have confused the two. Talking too much about our relevance, our idea’s necessity, has convinced us we’re actually making progress.
Meetings, Slack conversations, social media posts, emails – here we talk about work until it feels like work. But what is it we create and produce? Other than a sensation of instant gratification that our brains find appealing and soothing.
Is it ritualised? Visibility helps us get past the uncontrollable and supplies a patch to hold onto.
“I waz ‘ere” in digital form.
Grabbing every eyeball we can to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.
But even in this world of analytics and visible appreciation as we gamify our fans, followers and our likes, what are we really doing here? Other than burning trees by the thousands from the server load, how permanent are these moments, really?
If we all look the same, we are safe in the numbers. We are the numbers, too, if you believe the analytics and the algorithms. Everyone sharing their idea one step in front of the last person, edging out just enough to stay viable and financially sound as we all disappear into one giant tone of voice and fever-pitch marketing dream.
Checking in with your productivity
Some questions for you to ponder:
How many things are you doing?
How many of them are done well?
Are you enjoying the work and connecting with it, or simply shipping out the next thing?
How many tasks are related to your core focus and how many fall outside your job description or scope?
Things I have been pondering
What are the 24 reasons to hire a coach?
Why you shouldn’t take yourself so seriously in business.
What is person-centred coaching?
Final words
Stepping off the productivity for productivity’s sake treadmill is difficult in a world that praises poor time management and pokes and prods us daily to be visible.
But we can all stop, just for a moment, and be intentional. To create that strategy we’re afraid of launching or the words that linger longer outside the digital din.
As long as we are brave enough to do what isn’t always easy.