Henry T Ford the famous American industrialist believed working too many hours was bad for productivity. In the early twentieth century his company became one of the early pioneers of the forty hour, five day working week and many rivals soon followed suit as they saw the Ford Motor Company’s value soar.
This theme can be repeated over and over in the world of business. Compare the salesmen who haphazardly cold-calls number after number and makes zero sales versus the salesmen who carefully targets a few select leads, makes the calls and achieves a series of sizeable commissions.
There is a big difference between busy and productive.
This concept has repercussions beyond our working lives too. Take resistance training for example. We can perform busy resistance workouts or we can perform productive resistance workouts.
The Busy Workout - Half-heartedly perform a long series of exercises with minimum intensity or week-on-week progression. This eats up time and provides the illusion of productivity but in reality provides minimal long-term benefit aside from burning a few calories.
The Productive Workout - Pull the trigger on a few carefully chosen exercises which force a positive adaptive response from your body. Slowly improve your workout scores and watch your muscles grow stronger, your metabolic rate increase and your body shape change.
Either way we are committing time to the process of getting stronger. We might as well make it productive time.