Why is productivity important?

When we see productivity talked about in the media it’s often in economic terms and laid out in financial models, focusing on volume of output. Productivity in this sense is an important marker of success for governments and businesses.

Productivity is also about people. In fact, productivity is fundamentally about people.

Be it your work to-do list, going to the shops or taking the bins out, our lives are filled with a never ending stream of tasks that require action. Our ability to tick these tasks off the list is often referred to as our perceived productivity, and where we find ourselves on this spectrum – from unproductive to productive – can have a huge bearing on our mental and even physical health. This is why our perceived productivity is so important to us.

Feeling unproductive often sees us fall into a negative mental state – think about your emotional reaction at the end of a day in which you haven’t achieved what you set out to. On the flip side, being in an unhealthy state of productivity – doing too much without taking time to rest and rejuvenate – can lead to us feeling mentally and physically burned out.

Then we also have those spells of productivity where we’re cracking through our list, feeling great while doing it and then have the time and energy afterwards to do the things we love. This is what we call true productivity, and it’s what we should all be aiming for.