I’ve been reading The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. The book rejects this notion of productivity being good for the individual. My disagreement with the book is that in some cases, Ferris relies on others to perform tasks that he would rather avoid. I have difficulty with philosophies that are not sustainable. If everyone followed this philosophy, it wouldn’t work. Nonetheless, the book is filled with tips for individual productivity (doing more in less time).

I think most of us who read and write productivity blogs are thinking of productivity in a more personal sense. For me it means keeping on top of everything at home but also giving me as much free time as possible. In other words, efficiency. If I’m efficient I’ve got time to do the things I really want to do and I’m less stressed. I’m seeing productivity in a holistic sense.

Productivity applied to workers often unfortunately means working harder for the same pay as you point out. Not enough employers look at the big picture. Pushing employees hard isn’t always the best way to ultimately improve productivity for a company. Happy employees will naturally work more efficiently than those that are pushed hard and stressed.

To me, productivity = relevant work completed / time needed for completion. There are two ways to become more productive: cram more relevant work into the same amount of time (bad) or reduce time needed to complete your relevant work (much better).

@Poojan I keep checking out Four Hour Work Week in the bookshop. Is it worth buying? I’m intrigued by some of its ideas.

@Rachel, I agree that we tend to write about productivity in a more personal sense but do you think productivity is the best word to use to describe what we are aiming for? Efficiency seems to be more fitting. As Rolf says, you can reduce time needed to complete work and that involves increasing how efficiently you work rather than how much work you can actually handle.

@James it is worth it. Depending on what you want to do, you may want to skip some sections. I’m only half-way through the Four Hour Work Week. A subset of Tim Ferris’ ideas are relevant to everyone. The book is a good collection of these ideas (Parkinson’s law, Pareto Principle, etc). They are available elsewhere, but it’s nice to have a centralized resource. However, there is a portion of the ideas that are only relevant to those looking to live a similar lifestyle as Tim Ferris. For those people, it is basically an instruction manual.