Performative productivity is quietly replacing meaningful work, and it’s costing us both engagement and outcomes

Our obsession with salaried hours and time in the workplace may have made perfect sense on the factory floors of the industrial revolution, but makes little sense in the days of modern hybrid work patterns. I’d ask, does an hourly working week really make sense anymore?

I know very few people that work less than their specified hours. I know a lot of people who work significantly more for no additional financial reward.

And still, from many businesses' perspectives, the hours are what matter. Funny how it matters mostly if the number is under the contract but has become almost an expectation that the number be higher than contracted. And herein lies performance productivity.

Those who work the longest, those who show up the most often, those who go ‘above and beyond’ are the ones that get noticed.

The biggest failure of leaders and businesses in this age of working is the failure to spot the team members who get their heads down, keep themselves in the zone and produce high quality work time and time again.

If someone is able to enter flow state and complete projects at speed without degrading the quality of work, why should they be expected to keep working for another 4 hours when their colleagues are doing half the work but sending messages all over platforms to show they are online?

There is a vicious loop here. The pressure to show that you are outputting makes accessing focussed states harder which leads to a reduced ability to perform at a high level which reduces the quality of work which drives performative productivity.

Couple that with an ever growing number of meetings, emails and comms and you have a recipe for exceptionally busy, under productive teams.

If you watch your team’s online status like a hawk and punish or shame them for not being online every minute of the day then you are most likely accelerating this cycle in your business.

The rise in digital communication software has no small part to play in this. Where there used to be a physical office door to protect your focus time there is now a direct line to your brain for distraction.

And distraction kills focus. When pulled from a focussed state it takes around 23 minutes to return to where you were cognitively. Now think about how many times a notification ping or that dopamine-inducing red dot pulls you out of focus a day, an hour, even a minute.

Suddenly, it’s not so hard to understand why activity and outcomes can easily diverge in businesses today.

With each new generation over the last century we see a shift in the connection between identity and work, purpose and employment. With the boom in startups, AI making idea creation easier than ever before and select social media entrepreneurs making substantial salaries the concept of ‘you are your job’ is rapidly dissolving.

The school day teaching of finding a career and sticking it out for your full salary pension is no longer relevant, and frankly has it ever been exciting?

Today’s world provides opportunities for young people that have never existed in history and I believe that drives a strong separation between who one ‘is’ and what they ‘do’.

Honestly, I love that for the younger generations. Maybe at parties they’ll stop starting conversations with ‘so what do you do then?’ and human connection can break out of the employment based cage it’s been stuck in for so long.

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Nate Thomas runs FLOWN as Managing Director. He shapes how the company works and how thousands of people find feel-good-focus each week. He also runs international breathwork retreats, and is known for balancing structure, curiosity, and a sense of play.

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