Productivity Hacks Are Dumb. Try This Instead

like a struggle because it is. You know, you and I both do a fair bit of writing, and honestly, it can come down to like I will write a sentence and then I will not write sentences for ten minutes, yeah, twenty yeah, which we talked about in the new Yeart resolution episode. How both of my resolutions were productivity focused because it's become such an issue for me. That's right. One of my two were productivity focused. The other was

fat focus, but that's for another episode, different issue. So yeah, if you google productivity hacks, there are lots of bad suggestions, a lot of what we might call horse hockey. Yes, Sam's favorite term, A little malarkey maybe, Yeah, it's like drink water. I swear. One of them was drink. Yeah, it's nothing good concentrate, you know, it's just honestly, And there are thousands of these articles, and by the way, there will be thousands more. This is a continual cottage

industry of crap. Yeah. There's also a genre of these about how often you're supposed to take breaks. And there was some research that came out a couple of years ago that got a lot of press because it's said the exact amount of time that you're supposed to work in the ratio that you're supposed to take a break is fifty two minutes of working in a seventeen minute break. See. Now that lies contrary to what I've found online, which

is the Palmidoro method. The Tomato method apparently sounds real, it's delicious, and it is five minutes of work five minute breaks. Okay, so the ratio is similar ish, I don't know, Matt, No, Actually you wind up with a better break ratio with So the general thinking is that brakes are good. Sure, but then also the problem is that I take too many breaks, right, so we need a timer forto. That just sounds hard. Yeah, it seems also if you're in the middle of something at fifty two,

you're not going to stop exactly. We don't work in isolation, at least not usually. And then also on top of that, like bigger picture, there's a lot of research about how vacation kind of brakes are good to which I can definitely get behind. But who's going to argue with that? Your boss, fair point fair wanted back up. So yeah, it just seems like there's obviously no quick fix to

being more productive. It's the human condition and we always are reaching for a slightly better version of ourselves and we probably never get there. But today is it going to happen today? Today we're talking to somebody who has studied in an academic lee rigorous way, various ways that you can really achieve your goals. That's right, and he's looked at it not only in the conscious mind, but also in the subconscious mind. We have here with us,

Gary Latham. He's a professor of organizational effectiveness at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Thanks so much for coming on and talking to us. Pleasure. So we're talking about getting things done, and you've done some research on how to achieve goals consciously. Can you

talk about that all. I started working in this area way back in the late nineties, sixties, early nineteen seventies, working with logging crews, and in many ways they were similar to the people you saw in the movie Deliverance with Burt Reynolds, highly uneducated people who might come to work two days one week, zero days the next week.

And I found early on that if you gave these people pacific high but attainable goals to pursue in terms of number of trees to cut down from day one right through the remainder of the work weeks, their productivity swords, their job attendant swords, and what was perceived by them as backbreaking, meaningless work suddenly became highly meaningful and almost like a game, whether it's bowling or golf, keeping score as to how many trees they were cutting down, and

induced competitiveness and a sense of pride in what they were doing. And so I'm sorry to interrupt your guard I'm just curious. So are you suggesting that it is in the specificity of the goal that promotes that kind of effort. You can't overstate the importance of that word specificity as opposed to general so a general goal might be look me in the eye and tell me you're going to do your best, or a general goal might

be before summer, I'm going to lose weight. All of those types of goals we found have all but a meaningless effect on your performance. The goal has to be specific. Have you been able to replicate this outside of logging since most of our listeners I think aren't loggers, but we're working to grow that audience. Actually, so it's really does that work in an office setting? Yes, that's absolutely so.

By the mid seventies we were working in office settings and perhaps our most impressive finding was with people with masters and PhDs and engineering and the sciences, and we found, once again, those who were assigned specific high goals did better than those who just had general goals, and those who participated in the goal setting process with their boss sad even higher goals than those that were assigned unilaterally, and they had the highest performance of all And that

was extremely impressive. And as two thousand and seventeen, we have found that goal setting is extremely effective on close to a hundred different tasks. So it's by no me restricted to logging. That sounds like a lot of work that you were doing, as as Becca described, sort of in the conscious realm. But you've actually moved on, as I correct, You've now looked at ways in which the subconscious can help us achieve goals. Yeah, yes I have, and I should preface by saying that I did so

very reluctantly. There was a number of studies coming out of social psychology showing that if you left books on a table, and in one group the books had to do with dieting, and then the other group the books on a table had to do with, um, let's say, gardening or what have you. And then someone comes in later and says, hi, you must be getting hungry. Would

you like an apple or a chocolate? And those who saw the books on the table that had to do with hitting, unbelievable to me, chose the apple with the chocolate. Now I've never done that in my entire life. I would always choose a chocolate. And when you ask people afterwards did you notice the magazines on the table, they would say no. And for those the few who said yes, I did notice the books on the table, and you said what were the books about, they didn't have a clue.

And so the social psychologists were saying, this is how you can time a goal in someone's sub conscious to be interested in physical fitness and dieting. What have you? Now? I and my co researcher at Locke and we're working on consciously set goals send the sixties and we just didn't believe any of this, but we considered to be utter nonsense. So we did for see to a laboratory experiments and much to his shock and mine, he replicated

the results of the social psychologists. So my reaction with my doctor, she was then my doctoral students, is now a psychologist, Amanda Shance. I said to her, you know, we need to do an experiment in an organizational setting, and this is the win win if, uh, if it doesn't come out, we can keep this nonsense cementering into our field, which is organizational psychology. If it does work, you'll get your first publication. But if it works, I'm going to eat the paper that you print us on

and it's not going to work. And so, much to my chagrin, this was published in two thousand nine. Much to my chagrin, I would confess I didn't actually eat the pay Well, there was a diet book in the room, and there wasn't that. I didn't like it with salt or sugar, So what the heck? But here's what we found. We had call center employees, and we didn't measure performance, so we couldn't have biased the results in one way

or the other. A computers senses how many donors call center employees can get to contribute money and the amount of dollars actually raised, and we then randomly assigned employees to one condition versus another. In our experimental condition, they saw a backdrop. A backdrop simply means you write the words the instructions for soliciting donations over a picture us a racer breaking the finish line, winning the race. The control people they have the exact same instructions for soliciting

money from donors. And the instructions weren't made up by Amanda's chance or me. The made up by management. So we're simply watching to see if there's any difference between this racer who allegedly, we didn't believe this, but allegedly is priming a high need for achievement, and lo and behold, the racer in fact prime the need for achievements and resulted in way more money being raised. And in the case where they didn't see the backdrop of the racer,

now here's the hoot. When you asked employees when this was all over, by the way, did you notice the racer? They said no, He said, how can you not see the racer? It's right there, It's just the print over. They said, we were too busy making phone calls to notice. And then when we told them the effect that it had on their behavior, they laughed uproariously. They laughed. I didn't, but they laughed. So then I told Amanda she was too young to ruin her reputation with these kinds of results,

and I was too old. We would have to replicate it. So the first experiment that I just told you about was done at the call center at the University of Toronto, calling a LUMBI. She then replicated the results at McMaster University in Ontario and McGill University of Montreal, and we got the exact same results. So now I knew we were onto something. Yeah, it's like those posters in high school that we had to sit here. We're actually doing

something for us exactly. I'm wondering. Yeah, I'm on ding I um so you've you've had these studies and they do seem unbelievable. Have offices integrated any of your findings at all? Well? I think in lots of cases, you know,

the public is ahead of science. And way back in the eighties, I became department chair and my co author of some forty years had locked to congratulate me, sent me these posters around high achievement, you know, the persons jumping over a high bar and touched underneath that something has tried. As at first you don't succeed, try again. So when I first went to publish the these results and in two thousand and eight the editor, one of the comments the journal editor had, uh, do you have

posters like these on your office? I suddenly looked up on my walls and thought, oh my lord, I do have these posters on my walls, and I haven't paid any attention to them in some years. So have they had an effect on my behavior? I suspect they must have. I also understand when we are we had been talking before that you're now working on research about um words and how words can affect us subconscious and emails. Can

you talk about that research a little bit? Well, I've done, I've done studies on asked that it's a huge national retail store. I don't think I've got permission to say who they are. But the CEO sends out a weekly email to all employees and it's kind of a rara speech to get them motivated as of Monday for the rest of the work weeks. We convinced him to let us inserts some achievement related words in his email, but

we only did it for half his employees. And again there's randomly assignments as to who is going to get the achievement message versus those who aren't. Now, the only difference between the two email messages is that those in the experimental group had twelve achievement related words. Oh, I forgot to say. In all these experiments, we really probe people after the fact as to whether they perceived caught on to figure out what we were trying to test.

Uh in this case, could achieve the difference in the message that the CEO said this week versus previous weeks. We've done everything possible to debunk awareness versus unawareness, because remember I'm a cognitive thinking psychologist. I'm into this subconscious stuff. So I'm consciously trying to trip up my own results, and we find again and again and again, with no exception,

people are unaware of what's being attempted. Now, end of the work week, the store's computer, not a researchers who assessed the results, and the computer showed that those twelve achievement related words embedded in the CEO's message sent out by email resulted in significantly higher sales then was the case of their fellow employees who didn't read those twelve words.

I find this whole thing unbelievable. If this were reversed and you were explaining all of this to me and I was listening, I wouldn't believe a word of what you're saying. The only reason why I believe this because I collected the data, and I don't want to believe it. But it's true. I'm wondering you've mentioned this a little bit, but if the employees catch onto it, does that make them aware in such a way that they won't be

as productive. Yes, people don't like to be manipulated. And uh, and there have been some experiments not done by me, but in the scientific literature showing that if people catch on, then they act the opposite. I could see myself doing that. Well sure, you know, in a romantic relationship, if you know that she is just buttering you up, that's a

positive appall some of us like that. But alright, man, I was planning on putting all of these motivational images on my desk, but now they're not gonna work because I know, yeah, well so you wouldn't you know. It's not manipulation by others. I think I would be, And

I'll tell you I have done this consciously. I suddenly have looked at the oil paintings on our walls and our home, and I'm certainly aware my kids are now growing, but for nieces and nephews, I'm certainly aware of the photos and stuff that put up on their bedroom walls. And I would certainly be aware of the kinds of

things that you're reading downers versus uppards. I have more respect now for books written by Dale Carnegie and others saying that I think probably doing fact have a very positive effect on your outlook and as a result, your behavior. Just another reason for me to stay away from all the news on Twitter, exactly bringing me down absolutely absolute. This was really really interesting, Thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. Hopefully we will all

be more productive because of it. Thank you for It's like, so I feel like I owe the makers of all those successories posters of you know, power shooters making a circle and horses jumping over barriers a big apology, and I think, and also you're welcome because we're obviously going to increase their sales greatly. That's right, So if you know, send a little love this all right, maybe a sponsorship

or something. But yeah, I mean, we all scoff at those silly posters that are up in office buildings, including our own, and yet we're the ones that are idiots. They work. Yeah, And I'm so inclined to believe Gary because he was so incredulous himself. He was like, don't believe me, but it's true. I've tested it a lot. Yeah. No, and he's certainly been doing this for quite a while, and you know, he's invested a lot of time in it. So there is actually one quick trick to improve your

work productivity. Look at marathoners crossing a finish line. Yeah. But another thing that we didn't really get to is I think part of this problem of obsession with productivity is that we hold ourselves to this. I hold myself to a very high standard and then beat myself up when I'm I'm not as productive as I want to be, and that seems to making less productive. Even I don't even hold myself to a high standard, yet still beat myself. So that's another issue altogether. But yes, I think it's

true that there's an unattainable goal here. Yeah, there's no such thing as like perfect productivity. No, and all these these bloggers and life hackers are feeding into our anxieties and making them worse. That's right. There's someone else out there more productive than you, and if you're doing up your game, you're going to get passed by. So we're

all distractable, self centered morons. So buy some posters and the movie, be kind to yourself, give yourself a little hug, and now it's time for half big takes, half baked takes. All right, Sam, what is you're not quite fully formed? Idea for this week? This one actually came to me last weekend. I took my six year old son to the movies and it was one of those kids movies where I knew I was not going to be interested. Some kids movies, I might be, but this was not

going to be one of them. And I wanted to just kind of maybe use my phone audibly, just use my phone to read things and you know, text people or whatever. And I know that can be wildly annoying in a theater full of adults watching an adult movie.

I would never do it then, But I do think this rule needs a slight codicil that makes it okay to do this in children's movies, because when you're a parent, it's just sometimes I want to ask to watch two hours of a weirdo animated movie that makes no sense, and just if you can just sit there and you know, turn your screen down. Of course, silence your phone always. But when it comes to kids movies, I say text away.

When you told me this, I was a little appalled at first, but then I remembered what it's like to be in a movie theater with kids and they're really loud and disruptive anyway. Yeah, this is not some temple of you know, film appreciation, right, They're all talking, they're all dropping their popcorn anyway, Yeah, and laughing at jokes that are not funny to adults. Not at all. So yeah, I think it's okay. I will never reprimand anybody using their phone in a kids movie. You do it in

an adult movie, though, get out. I'm going to get all nosy Parker about it. Yeah, all right, I endorse, and you Becca, tell me what is sort of on your mind this week? I got is what I'm going to call it, New Year, New inbox. Yeah yeah, stay with me. So is the new year. And you decide you want to clean out your life and that includes your inbox. I say you make a conscious effort to every time you get an annoying email that you're on an email list for, you go down and unsubscribe. I'm

looking at you west Elm Yeah, oh my god. West Um everline emails, I get bed, Bath and Beyond, I get the hotel chain. I'm not going to you that off. Jet Blue. Yeah, anything you've ever bought anything for, They somehow trick you into signing up for multiple email lists. And if you just methodically when every time you get the email, just open it up unsubscribe. It takes a little bit of work, but I think it's a good practice.

I think it really makes a difference. You know, people used to have that conspiracy theory that unsubscribing didn't work. It just confirmed that you were a person. Oh my god, don't tell me that. No, no, I've been getting fewer emails. Yeah, no, no, don't listen to Sam, listen to I'm just crazy person. Don't mind me? All right, And that has been half Big Takes, Half Baked Takes. Thank you for listening to another episode of game Plan. You can find me on Twitter.

I'm at rs Greenfield and i am at Sam Grobart. And if you have your own half Big Takes, feel free to tweet them at us or at game Plan. And if you like this show, please head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts to rate and review and subscribe. We read them and it means a lot to us. Game Plan is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. The head of Bloomberg podcast is Alec McCabe. Thank you so much for listening. See you

next week. And maybe, like productivity is a state of mind, productivities is a social construct, right,