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You know it’s bad when you start typing “obsession with” in the Google search bar and the first auto-completion prompt is “productivity.”
As workers, we are obsessed with getting stuff done. No wonder there seems to be a bottomless well of advice, filled with evangelists, gurus, and thought leaders proferring hacks, tools, tricks, and secrets to help us pack more output into the waking hours of our workdays. Productivity software alone accounts for an $82 billion market, according to IBISWorld research.
But where, exactly, did this lust for wringing greater efficiency from every possible second originate?
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As old as America itself
There’s no definitive source, but we start to see historical mentions of productivity in that classic economics text Wealth of Nations, written by Adam Smith in 1776. In it, Smith contended that there were two kinds of labor: productive and unproductive.
There is one sort of labor which adds to the value of the subject upon which it is bestowed; there is another which has no such effect. The former, as it produces a value, may be called productive; the latter, unproductive labor. Thus the labor of a manufacturer adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his master’s profit. The labor of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing . . . A man grows rich by employing a multitude of manufacturers; he grows poor by maintaining a multitude of menial servants. The labor of the latter, however, has its value, and deserves its reward as well.
Benjamin Franklin, a contemporary of the Scottish economist with plenty of productivity theories of his own, put forth what might be considered the first “to-do” list in 1791. The productivity measure in Franklin’s list of tasks (wash, work, read, work, put things in their places) was less likely to be measured in hard numbers like Smith’s. Franklin’s assessment was simple: Start the day asking what good shall be done, and at the end of the day evaluate based on what was accomplished. Lofty, to be sure, but an interesting measure nevertheless.
The abuses of labor in the name of productivity
Another milestone advancing the discourse in productivity occurred during the same era when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. This impacted the U.S. economy, particularly in Southern states where cotton was grown and picked by slaves. Of course, slave labor was free, and abuse of slaves was rampant, yet the landowners got an additional boost to their bottom lines by implementing a machine that increased their production 25-fold. We can also thank Whitney’s invention for introducing the term “gin up” (which means speed up) to our productivity parlance.