"The longer you stay...the longer you stay."

There's an old saying (there's even a post about it on the blog KevinMD) that I learned from one of my chief residents all the WAY back when I was a third-year medical student on my 2nd month of Internal Medicine.  I was finishing up some charts and it was getting late.  My chief looked at me and said, "Why don't you get out of here?"  I replied that I was trying to finish up a few last minute things so that I would be better prepared for tomorrow.  He shook his head, took one look at me, and said, "Derek, the longer you stay...the longer you stay.  Go home."  So I went home.

His point is that there is always one more thing that you could do before leaving work at the end of the day.  Just "one more thing" always leads to one more thing.  The latest research suggests that our days are becoming more and more packed with things to do.  There never seems like we have enough time to do all of the things that we are supposed to do.  Just ask anyone at work, "How are you doing?"  There's a really good chance that their reply will be, "Busy" or some variation thereof.  Ashley Whillans, a researcher at Harvard Business School analyzed data from Gallup and noted that the percentage of employed Americans reporting that they "never have enough time" increased to 80% in 2018.  It's called "time poverty" and it's getting worse.

Our family took a trip to Guam, and we stopped for about a week in Tokyo on the way home (technically, we had to travel even farther from home in order to get to Tokyo, but the direct flight from Tokyo to home was significantly shorter than the return flight from Guam).  It was a great trip, but two things really stuck with me.  First, the Japanese work very, very hard.  I heard that it's not good for workers to leave before their bosses.  Most bosses have figured this out and stay long hours after the normal work day just to keep everyone working hard.  Notably, despite the long work hours, Japanese workers have consistently ranked last among G7 countries in terms of worker productivity since the 1970's.  Second, the suicide rate in Japan is apparently very high.  Overall mortality rates from suicide in Japan are almost twice as high for males and almost three times higher for females compared with the United States.  I suspect these two statistics are related.

Adam Waytz wrote an article for the March-April 2023 issue of Harvard Business Review, "Beware a culture of busyness".  Waytz writes that "Busyness has become a status symbol.  People consider those who exert high effort to be morally admirable, regardless of their output."  Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden (see my posts "Believe" and "Bill Walton's Haircut" for more on one of the all-time great leaders) once said, "Never mistake activity for achievement."  And that is perhaps the point that Adam Waytz is trying to make.  The prevailing corporate culture continues to reward busyness, but just because someone is busy doesn't mean they are productive.  All it's really doing is increasing mental fatigue, stress, and burnout, all of which actually decrease productivity!

Waytz goes on to suggest ways that we can "reverse busyness."  First, we should be rewarding productivity, not just activity.  Shift to performance-based pay rather than time-based pay.  As an example, Waytz cites a study by the economist Edward Lazear that found that when the automobile-glass-repair company Safetlite switched from hourly pay to pay based on the number of windshields installed, productivity increased by 44%!  Second, eliminate low-value work, i.e. waste (there's a lot of waste that methods such as Lean/Six Sigma can help remove - more on that in a future post).  Third, force people off the clock.  A number of companies have shifted to open leave policies (i.e. no caps on the number of vacation days).  They've found that these policies encourage their workers to actually take vacation without adversely impacting their productivity in the long-run.  Fourth, leaders need to model the correct behaviors - leaders and managers should go home at a decent hour and take time off too.

The American philosopher and writer, Henry David Thoreau, once said, "It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"  And most importantly, "the longer you stay...the longer you stay."