What is productivity?

History of productivity

Productivity was first examined as a concept at the dawn of the twentieth century. In an attempt to boost profits and streamline manufacturing, labour economists started looking at why and how workers perform their jobs effectively. As they gained prominence as fields of study, management psychology and business studies soon began looking at these issues as well. During the 1950s and 1960s, when the USA experienced a boom in productivity as measured by worker output based on dollars invested in the business, a cottage industry sprouted up, promoting personal productivity to executives and business leaders. It was tied to the burgeoning self-improvement movement that bloomed in the 1960s and 1970s, which some say was started by Dale Carnegie's seminal work How to Win Friends and Influence People, first published in 1937.

For the first edition of Carnegie's book, only 5,000 copies were printed, but it grew dramatically from then to become an international bestseller. From a course on etiquette taught by the author to businesspeople, it grew to a worldwide phenomenon. The book contains one of the key lessons of self-help and productivity - change begins with the individual who wants change. Ideas on how to improve communication with anyone you may meet in the business world help establish the groundwork for getting things done effectively and efficiently.

This movement strengthened with the rise of the Asian economies in the 1970s and 1980s, especially as Americans looked to compete in the business world. With the advent of the internet and the information age, personal productivity has become a mania. Workers in every field, especially librarianship and information management, deal with issues of information overload and the acceleration of informationsharing. Dozens of books and hundreds of blogs now offer to teach you how to become more efficient and effective in your work life. This particular book will take a closer look at some of the more popular and enduring works in Chapter 5.

In preparing for and writing this book, I have read many of these books and blogs, and find that the perspective is beginning to shift a bit in the new century. While books in the 1980s focused on how to get the most out of your workday to free up time for your personal life and save money for your organisation, productivity resources are now beginning to consider a more holistic approach to free up time in all aspects of your life. Rather than focusing on productivity as a means to a more financially and time-effective end in your work life, in the past decade it has become more of a healthy lifestyle choice all around. It has shifted back from a profit motive to a self-help endeavour. More recent works have attempted to keep a focus on the business world and the practical implementation strategies of time management to avoid what can be a stigmatising 'self-help' label.

Defining productivity exercise

Now that we have discussed how others describe productivity, how do you, yourself, define productivity? Take a moment to think about what you would hope to get out of a goal of 'productivity' and write it down.

Keep this definition in mind as you proceed through this book. You may differ a bit in your mindset but we should be talking about the same basic things.

This book will function best if, as a reader, you actually work through the exercises and questions, and commit your answers to paper or an electronic file if you are the sort who prefers computers to paper. The reasons for this are threefold. First, the act of physically creating a response to these prompts will cause you to engage with the material and ideas presented in a way that passive reading cannot. You will need to read closely and think about things in order to respond to the questions and exercises. Second, writing out your thoughts will allow you to gain perspective on your own thinking about the material presented and your life situation in a way that keeping it all in your head would not do. Finally, writing things down helps build accountability. Compared with keeping the information in your head, once you have a written goal or plan, it is harder not to follow through.

One of the main recurring themes in productivity literature is to get information out of your head and into another storage receptacle. Why not start with this book? Throughout the book there are prompts for recording responses to certain exercises - all you'll need is plain paper, a computer file or a notebook.

What productivity is not

Productivity is not just producing widgets as fast as possible. As information workers, most libraries have different metrics and assessments of productivity, so this is usually not too much of a mindset shift. However, there is still the impression that increasing productivity means producing more, faster. As alluded to above, improving productivity is about much more. Issues of balance and of quality are also part of the equation and this book will consider these in depth.

Productivity is also not about consuming information, although you may be confused as there is a plethora of information out there, with more coming out each day. This may sound odd, coming from a book devoted to making you more productive, but productivity is not about the book or the website you are reading or even reading more of these resources. It is about taking action. It is also about deciding what actions should not be taken, and working more intelligently to get the right things done.

In our workplace culture and in our lives in general, it seems that doing just one thing at a time is no longer enough. Workers are encouraged to multitask by working on two or more things at once. E-mails are read and responded to while we are in meetings, we take phone calls while reading the latest news on new products, or we eat lunch while working on reports. Even worse, we may take computers and cell phones home with us or on vacations and act as if we are 'on call' all the time.

Do you feel like you are able to provide your full attention to more than one task at a time? Most of us would honestly say no. Yet the pressure to multitask has become so high that it often feels an indulgence to close the office door, shut down the e-mail program, take the phone off the hook, and get some work done. We brag with co-workers about how busy we are and how much we have to work on. No one brags about how they produce better work faster when they focus on just one task or how they never have to take work home with them.

Later chapters will discuss multitasking and how to avoid it in more depth; the remainder of this chapter will however focus on library workers and why productivity matters to us. The next two chapters of this book will deal with issues of motivation, and then procrastination. After that, the book will explore time management - what leads to good time management and some tools for the tasks involved. Next we will talk about systems of productivity and what they can offer. We will then look at managing for productivity. Finally, we will examine ways to stay on track and stay productive.

Chapters will contain exercises to help clarify the points I make and relate them to your own situation. There will also be questions for consideration in each chapter, to further help with the application of productivity to your career. The book will close with a list of resources. Mention is also made of an online community (http://libraryproductivity.ning.com) to inform readers of new tools and tactics. Where possible, this community will also celebrate successes and work on overcoming obstacles.

Why librarians? Why libraries?

What makes libraries, and those who work in them, special? Why do they merit a whole book on productivity? There are three factors: de-professionalisation, the proliferation of information resources, and the growing expectation of immediate gratification by users.

Libraries are becoming de-professionalised in recent decades and much has been written on the topic. Budgets are tight all over, and one way in which libraries save money is by changing staffing structures. One worker often must accomplish what two may have done a few years ago, and sometimes this worker is at a lower level educationally or professionally than was the case previously. Reference librarians may spend less time on the reference desk as they take on more specialised tasks, like marketing, teaching, developing collections, and so on. The desk hours end up being filled by staff or students who answer basic questions and refer more specific needs to subject librarians. Cataloguers may be pushed into management positions while classified staff personnel perform the lion's share of actual cataloguing. In addition, the advent of the internet has led the general public to believe that they can directly find answers to their questions online without libraries at all and therefore reduce funding and other support, which further de-professionalises libraries.

While the amount and educational level of workers reduces, the information tools and resources library workers and people in general must deal with is increasing exponentially. We now live in the age of 'infobesity' (Bell, 2005), where library users can find overwhelming amounts of low-quality information with just a few keystrokes on...