The Best Self-Help is Free: Quantification and Productivity Targets

With an accurate, rational analysis of the existing state of affairs and the possibilities it entails, along with a realistic setting of expectations and a willingness to be satisfied with a sufficiently good result, the decisional component of productivity can be adequately addressed. The next challenge is to actually achieve what one desires, in the quantity in which one desires it. The following insights have been developed as a result of combining extensive deliberation with my practical experience; not only have they visibly worked, but it is possible to explain why they did.

Human minds tend to have a peculiar limitation; they are immensely well-suited to observing and accurately interpreting absolute states, but they are - when unaided - far less adept at adequately judging matters of degree. The presence or absence of something can be easily observed, but its quantity is a far more difficult matter. If Ayn Rand's "crow epistemology" might be taken as a guide, the human mind can only focus a finite, extremely small number of discrete pieces of information at once. Thus, while we might visibly distinguish between three things and five things, differentiating between 25,456 things and 11,233 things by simply looking at a collection of them is far harder. Rather, the latter case, most people would only be able to say that they see a lot of things - many more than they could count without undue expenditure of effort. But while the increase from 3 to 5 is about a 66.67% increase, that from 11,233 to 25,456 is an increase of 126.18%. While this increase might be missed by raw human observation, the presence of mathematics as a tool enables us to quickly grasp the significance of these relative differences in magnitude.

What mathematics accomplishes is truly monumental: it takes tens of thousands of discrete pieces of data - namely, observations of entities - and condenses them into just a few - namely, numbers which can be manipulated using simple and accessible rules. The significance of mathematics as a tool for not only measuring but actually achieving the quantitative component of productivity cannot be underestimated.

Most human productive endeavors involve accomplishment on a far larger numerical scale than six or seven units of output - which is as much as the human mind can simultaneously analyze if unaided by higher-level concepts. Thus, quantifying productivity becomes absolutely essential - even if the quantifiers used are not entirely reliable.

Quantification enables an individual to set productivity targets for himself and to escape underachievement on one hand and perfectionism on the other. The productivity target - set reasonably - enables him to conclude how much work per given unit of time is sufficient. Furthermore, it enables him to gauge improvement relative to past work. On days when the individual feels motivated to raise his productivity, quantification gives him far more than his subjective estimate in guiding him toward raising his output. Using numbers, ratios, and percent increases, an individual can easily say whether he has exceeded his prior levels of output and, if so, by how much. So quantification of productivity serves a multiplicity of roles: it facilitates record-keeping, systematic improvement, accountability, and motivation. Numbers are far more reliable guides to sustained productivity than subjective impressions of how much one has worked. After all, objective productivity has no necessary relationship with an individual's mental or physical fatigue. An exhausted individual might yet have performed insufficiently, whereas a still energetic worker might already have exceeded all of his expectations.

Quantification of productivity in the world of business by means of money explains why most people are far more successful in their careers than they are in other aspects of their lives. Money furnishes an excellent, versatile measuring rod for how much work one has accomplished and the value of this work to others with whom one trades. Money is not a perfect measure of objective productivity; it is only as good as the judgment of those who spend or invest it in rewarding the productive. Nonetheless, we cannot expect it to be a perfect measure - for perfection is a fiction and money is what it is; we cannot force it into an ideal role to which it, by nature, is not suited. Rather, we ought to appreciate the tremendous coordination of individual endeavors and rewards for productive work that money can and does facilitate.

Furthermore, money is not the only possible quantifier available to measure productivity. With manufacturing physical things or even intellectual products, units of output can be another reliable measure. A factory that sets productivity targets in terms of units of output will, on the whole, generate a far greater monetary return than one that does not. Furthermore, a writer who sets daily targets for number of words or number of essays written will, over the long term, accomplish far more than an individual who simply writes when he feels like it - or, as he would prefer to put it, when he "finds his muse."

What is less commonly recognized is that virtually any human endeavor to which productivity is relevant can be quantified. Grades serve this role in an educational setting, in part explaining why every academic institution that has abandoned grades as a measure of student performance has suffered significant declines in student accomplishment.

As a further example, anybody embarking on an exercise program can devise some underlying quantifier that can relate various types of exercises to one another. The quantifier - again - need not be fully accurate in order to fulfill its role as a motivator and accountability device, so long as it reflects reality to some significant extent. Calories expended per unit of exercise might be an excellent measure which encompasses all conceivable exercise types. But in the absence of the ability to measure calories by means of an electronic heart rate monitor, an individual can simply produce a rough estimate: a minute of running might for instance be deemed equivalent to four minutes of walking - and each could be assigned "exercise point" values according to this proportion. Every day, by meeting a given exercise point target, one is certain to obtain a sustained increase in fitness. Depending on the accuracy of the quantifier, the actual fitness improvement might vary from day to day, but on the whole it will be sufficient to increase one's health over time.

Read all chapters of The Best Self-Help is Free.