How to increase productivity by doing less
Lessons from a 1999 experiment: quiet time with no distractions and no meetings can boost productivity at work.
🕰️ Reading time: 4 minutes
In 1999, Harvard Professor Leslie Perlow showed how to increase productivity at work by 65%.
Professor Leslie Perlow observed a team of 17 engineers working to develop a new printer over the course of nine months.
What did she find during this period?
The engineers felt that they never had time to do their "real work".
They were constantly being pulled into impromptu conversations with colleagues, back-to-back meetings, putting out minor fixes, or preparing status reports.
All this back and forth left little time to do their actual work.
Fast forward to today, 26 years later, and the problem has only worsened.
We can say that tools like Slack and Zoom have only exacerbated this.
Plus, the average American checks their smartphone 144 times per day.
So we’re not only distracted by meetings and status reports, we’re also heavily distracted by social media.
🎊🕰️ Time Confetti
Trying to do everything, all at once, all the time, is something called “time confetti”. And it’s a famous concept originated from Brigid Schulte.
Time confetti encapsulates the modern human obsession with the idea of productivity every second of the day.
Time confetti is bits of seconds and minutes lost to unproductive multitasking.
Each bit alone does not seem very bad, after all it’s just a quick status report, a Slack message, a short email, or a minor bug fix.
Collectively, though, all that confetti undermine focus and rob us of meaningful work time. And we’re suddenly left with less focus, and less time. Like in the example below:
🧠 The Solution: Quiet Time
Professor Perlow not only documented the problem, but came up with a simple and effective solution.
She set a quiet time policy for the engineers:
🗓️ no interruptions on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday before noon.
The results?
📈 Productivity was above average for 65% of the engineers1.
There was nothing inherently magical about Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Nothing special about these three days.
The real magic happened in NOT having meetings and interruptions, and in blocking distraction-free time to focus on the most important tasks.
You might think: “I’m not an engineer, this does not apply to me.”
Well, think again.
The benefits of not having too many meetings are evident for all business professionals.
With fewer meetings, we have:
less micromanagement
less stress
more autonomy, engagement and satisfaction
more productivity
Business professionals spend 4 hours every week to prepare for “status update” meetings.
🗑️ Also, 35% business professionals believe they waste between 2 to 5 hours every day on meetings.
And 92% multitask during meetings, making them even less effective.
🚫🗓️ “No-Meeting Days”
The lessons from Professor Perlow's research go beyond engineers.
In fact, they're universal.
Focus time (or quiet time) is critical, whether you're:
a founder shaping your company vision,
a marketer crafting a new campaign or some A/B testing,
an operator solving operational bottlenecks,
or an engineer building the new coolest app feature.
It’s during these “uninterrupted blocks of time” that we tackle the work that truly moves the needle. Distraction-free time at work isn’t just a productivity hack, it’s a necessity.
With "no-meeting days", people can finally focus on the work that truly matters.
But what makes them successful?
The key, in my experience, lies in one crucial factor: leaders who respect their own and others' time ✅
✅ I’ve seen people being deliberate and very respectful with their and other people’s time, serving as great inspiration. They create environments where productivity works and initiatives like "no-meeting days" become possible.
🟥 On the flip side, there are those being very disrespectful of their own and others’ time. I call them the “chrono-clueless”. It’s very hard for productive work to happen with them, let alone “no meeting days”.
If you’re stuck working under a “chrono-clueless” leader, it might be time to consider a change (of team, department, or even your company).
But if you’re lucky enough to have a leader who values time and productivity, you’re in a great position. All it may take is suggesting the idea of "no-meeting days" to see them implemented.
📩 Here’s what you might have missed on Getting Better:
See you all next Sunday 🗓️
Thanks,
Giacomo
That resonates a lot with me! Writer Zadie Smith has a similar approach - basically, ever since she had kids she was forced to give her working (writing) hours a bit more structure, and she does all her writing between 10am and 2pm, no interruptions. I maintain that most people can get more work done in 4 hours of focused work, compared to 8 hours of forced presence (at the office or online) :)
If you work in a company and try to block some time out in between meetings, do not create periodic focus blocks in always the same time slot every week.
Try to create multiple series events which repeat every 3-5 weeks. If not, your coworkers will figure it out easily when your calendar is only fake-blocked and thus will call or overbook.
I know that this just cures the symptoms but not the cause, but it’s better than nothing and will allow you to get some focus time.