{"id":16069,"date":"2024-06-11T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=16069"},"modified":"2024-06-02T17:18:25","modified_gmt":"2024-06-03T01:18:25","slug":"overlooked-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/11\/overlooked-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Overlooked Way to Be More Productive"},"content":{"rendered":"

In ordinary usage the word \u201cproductivity\u201d is virtually synonymous with \u201cworking hard.\u201d The person who says, \u201cI was really productive today\u201d means that she worked hard and checked off a lot of tasks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting, then, that this is not<\/em> how economists who study productivity think about the term. In some ways, the economic concept of productivity is the opposite of how we typically think of productivity! The people who work the hardest are often those whose productivity stats are abysmal.<\/p>\n

Productivity, as economists define it, is a measure of outputs divided by inputs. Labor productivity is the economic value of goods and services produced, divided by the number of hours a worker needs to invest to achieve it.<\/p>\n

Consider a worker in Burundi. The gross domestic product per capita<\/em> in Burundi is only $240 USD.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span>. In economic terms, the labor productivity of Burundi is abysmal\u2014but it\u2019s certainly not because the workers there are lazy. Instead, they lack the physical and human capital that would let them perform more productive work.<\/p>\n

While a particularly industrious person might perform two or three times as many tasks as a slacker, actual productivity differences among people worldwide differ by many orders of magnitude. In other words, the best way to improve your productivity is not to work harder, but to change where you work!<\/p>\n

Relocating to Higher Productivity<\/h2>\n

Because the environment you work in determines so much of your productivity, it can be by far the most important factor in the effective productivity of your work.<\/p>\n

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Huge inequalities exist in the environment surrounding productivity:<\/p>\n