Two big productivity lies

“Those email footnotes that say ‘just because I’m sending this message late or early reflects my working hours and doesn’t mean I need you to respond now’ make me FURIOUS”.

I wait to hear the lawyer explain to me why this is, with an inkling I may already know.

“Because when I send an email, at whatever time, I DO want a response. Right then.”

This made me wonder for the gazillionth time why we don’t follow the evidence that decades of research has given us showing that we:

☕️ Work better with regular breaks

⏰ Become unproductive when we work too many hours

📱 Are less effective the more interruptions we get

My sense is that the gap between all that research and the working environment we’ve created in the last 30 years is just too wide. Somedays it feels like only the 20-somethings can see this.

A 23 year old management consultant I interviewed last week said, “My boss been written off sick with burnout, I work 12 hours a day and it’s not enough, I don’t want to live like this.”

In the context of which, the vlog this week is my response to someone telling me I should focus my advice on `busy working moms’.

Next week

Is it possible to get everything done in a five hour work day? We’ll meet someone who thinks it is. Do you fancy it?

Christine