The Limiting Beliefs About Productivity
Recently, Australia joined EU countries and passed the “Right to Disconnect” law. This law protects employees from being penalized if they don’t answer their bosses’ emails or calls during their personal unpaid time.
Some argue enacting the “Right to Disconnect” law is more complex when remote workers located in different time zones have very different work hours. Will this law diminish the flexibility these workers have?
What if we shift the question to address the motivation and mindset behind the expectation of immediate response?
Your boss pinging you about non-urgent work matters when you are off stems from their beliefs about what leads to higher productivity.
From job descriptions, onboarding, to regular status meetings, misconceptions about productivity are very common.
👎More tasks lead to better results
Carrying the weight of work tasks into personal time becomes a recipe for feeling swamped and perpetually behind. This mental burden translates into sluggishness, difficulty concentrating, and a higher error rate. It also takes a toll on employee morale. Instead of achieving peak performance, burnout becomes the inevitable outcome, ultimately impacting the company's financial well-being.
Imagine a world where success is not measured by the number of emails answered outside of work hours, but by the quality of work delivered during dedicated time. How will that affect your bottom line?
👎Frequent meetings boost collaboration
Recurring weekly meetings designed solely for sharing updates lose their effectiveness quickly, transforming into pointless time-consuming exercises. Valuable information gets buried, meaningful discussions are scarce, and employee focus suffers. The same goes for impromptu “Do you have a minute?” that pulls people away from their focused work. We need to move beyond the "meeting for the sake of meeting" mentality and design them to spark collaboration, not stifle productivity.
Opt for asynchronous communication through emails to relay information that doesn't require concurrent discussion, so people can process and respond at a time they have a logical break.
👎Multitasking is key to getting more done
Years ago, research showed that it’s far less efficient to do multiple things at once than focusing on just one task at a time. A neuroscientist at Stanford University, Kevin Paul Madore, analyzed the “task switch costs” of multitasking and concluded that it causes attention lapses and forgetfulness (source). We give less attention and focus to a task when we keep on switching to other tasks, and the result is that our performance is subpar.
Less efficient people are inclined to multitask more to make themselves feel busy and blame their lack of results on “too much going on”. They aren’t able to plan ahead because they are always “fighting fires”, crunching at the eleventh hour to meet deadlines.
Efficient leaders block dedicated time to focus on each task, and respect other people’s blocked time as well.
👎Being available all the time is good service
Like multitasking, some people believe being accessible at all times shows they are dedicated to their customers and colleagues. They set no boundaries and act as poor role models to those they lead. They often neglect self-care and are stressed. Because they don’t set aside “thinking time”, they make poor decisions or misprioritize.
In places where people work flexible hours, good leaders clearly set expectations that they don’t expect an immediate response, given they themselves work during certain hours while their staff work other hours.
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By debunking these limiting beliefs about productivity, leaders can build a culture of trust and open communication. This allows employees to express concerns about workload and availability openly, leading to the development of healthy work practices that respect boundaries and personal time.
Promoting an environment that values employee well-being leads to happier, less stressed employees, ultimately boosting productivity and creativity.
