Your Work Ethic Is Not the Problem — Debunking Three Modern-Day Productivity Myths Productivity is an age-old dilemma. But before you try to solve it, consider whether you're asking the right questions.
By Aytekin Tank Edited by Kara McIntyre
Key Takeaways
- New research and company practices challenge the following productivity myths, showing the complexity and nuance behind long working hours and well-being.
- Innovative approaches like four-day workweeks, hack weeks, automation and more can enhance work satisfaction without sacrificing productivity.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
In ancient Greece, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle were already grappling with the notion of work-life balance. The latter described amusement as a remedy for the "ills of work," which he said was accompanied by "toil and strain." Work, they acknowledged, was necessary for living a virtuous life — and paying for stuff — but it shouldn't be the end, in and of itself.
Nearly two-and-a-half millennia later, we still struggle to define what constitutes a good life and how work and productivity factor in. Our modern-day hustle culture, and many of today's outspoken business leaders, would have you believe that more is more. A steely, unwavering work ethic is a requisite for success. Sleep can wait, so the thinking goes.
But a growing body of research plus some innovative companies are showing that the truth about productivity is more nuanced. More isn't always more — but working long hours isn't always bad either. There are no hard and fast rules.
As CEO of Jotform, one of my priorities is building a culture where people can do their best work without burning out. It requires keeping up on the latest findings on productivity and understanding mainstream misconceptions. Here's a closer look at some surprising myths about productivity and how experts are dispelling them.
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Myth #1: As your workload increases, your health decreases
Disclaimer: I am not discounting the very real risks of working an unhealthy number of hours for an unsustainable length of time. The Japanese have been studying "karoshi," or death from overwork, since the 1970s. Since then, stories of karoshi have only proliferated. What's more, they're not limited to Japan.
In a landmark 2021 study from the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organisation, researchers found that 745,000 people died in 2016 from stroke and ischemic heart disease as a result of having worked at least 55 hours a week. The study also found that the number of people working long hours is steadily increasing.
But before you start booking a vacation or swearing off your morning meetings, there's a caveat. Researchers have shown that your motivation for working long hours can impact whether it negatively affects your well-being. If you're burning the midnight oil for extrinsic reasons (like peer pressure or guilt), your well-being takes a hit. If you're working overtime for intrinsic reasons (like a genuine desire to learn or commitment to your organization), then those extra hours won't hurt your well-being.
One takeaway for leaders is to give people the resources to ensure that their jobs are meaningful. Offering educational and training opportunities helps, as does recognizing people for their contributions. At Jotform, we embrace an automation-first mindset — automating as many rote tasks as possible so that people can focus on more meaningful parts of their job.
Related: 10 Tips And Tricks To Keep Your Productivity Levels High (And Your Stress Levels Low)
Myth #2: The workweek needs a widespread overhaul
Would you work harder and better if you reduced your workweek to four days? That's what an expansive study by Cambridge University and Boston College in the U.K. tried to determine in 2022. In the U.K., 60 companies and nearly 3,000 employees participated in a 6-month test to see the impact of 20% fewer hours (at the same pay rate and with the same objectives).
The results were pretty astonishing: 92% of organizations chose to continue the experiment, reasoning that motivation and productivity had remained the same. Twenty of those organizations decided to permanently switch to a four-day workweek.
Other important findings: While employees reported better sleep, lower stress levels and improved mental health, the companies' bottom line stayed more or less the same. The thing is that when people are challenged to accomplish something in less time, they look for more efficient solutions. They get creative. I've seen it firsthand during our hack weeks — five-day sprints when our product teams focus exclusively on a single idea or problem.
Still, a four-day workweek won't work for all companies. Remember, it wasn't until the 20th century that today's standard five-day workweek was established. There is no magical number. Each organization has to decide what works best for their teams, given their industry, business model, geographical scope and various other factors.
But we can still implement the same ideas that lead to increased productivity and efficiency by changing the pace of work from time to time. If you can't adjust the work week, you can offer hack weeks, demo days, true vacation time and more.
Myth #3: Productivity is a KPI to be hacked
Nowadays, people will try nearly anything to optimize their productivity and performance, from wearing ice packs before bed to sporting electrodes behind their ear lobes to send electrical currents through their brains. It's as if productivity is just another KPI to be hacked.
But what if we stop looking at productivity as a problem to be solved and start looking at the underlying reasons why we struggle to get things done. What's causing us to fall short of our big goals? Why are we procrastinating?
In moments where I'm struggling to progress toward a goal (or to get started), I take a step back and see what's stalling me. Oftentimes, it's unseen tasks that are stealing precious time — just firing off a few more emails or transcribing yesterday's meeting notes — that leave me depleted. That's why, as I wrote in my book, automation is the ultimate antidote for procrastination.
Removing rote, manual tasks from your plate will free up valuable time for more meaningful work — the tasks that don't require scraping our souls for motivation. When we can dedicate ourselves to work that feels intrinsically rewarding, we realize that our work ethic isn't the problem. Your productivity is not an issue to be solved. The problem is thinking that you always need to do everything yourself.
Related: What's More Important for Your Business, Productivity or Efficiency?
Final thoughts
You know the adage: If you love your job, it doesn't feel like work. It's unrealistic to love every moment of your job — we all have daily busy work, and though we can minimize or automate it, we can't get rid of it entirely. Still, finding meaning in your work can transform your relationship to it. To borrow a phrase from the ancient Greek philosophers, it will feel less like "toil and strain," and more like a central part of the good life.
