Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that most of us
Speaker 1: wish we were more productive at work. We're always seeking
Speaker 1: that one quick fix to increase our output and reduce distractions.
Speaker 1: But does that really exist? This weekend game plan, we're
Speaker 1: talking about productivity. Hi, I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Sam Grobart. Sam,
Speaker 1: do you feel productive? Never know? But we must be
Speaker 1: because we get things done. Oh, totally get things done.
Speaker 1: But the efficiency rate is just terrible. Right. It feels
Speaker 1: like a struggle because it is. You know, you and
Speaker 1: I both do a fair bit of writing, and honestly,
Speaker 1: it can come down to like I will write a
Speaker 1: sentence and then I will not write sentences for ten minutes, yeah,
Speaker 1: twenty yeah, which we talked about in the new Yeart
Speaker 1: resolution episode. How both of my resolutions were productivity focused
Speaker 1: because it's become such an issue for me. That's right.
Speaker 1: One of my two were productivity focused. The other was
Speaker 1: fat focus, but that's for another episode, different issue. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if you google productivity hacks, there are lots of bad suggestions,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we might call horse hockey. Yes,
Speaker 1: Sam's favorite term, A little malarkey maybe, Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: drink water. I swear. One of them was drink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's nothing good concentrate, you know, it's just honestly, And
Speaker 1: there are thousands of these articles, and by the way,
Speaker 1: there will be thousands more. This is a continual cottage
Speaker 1: industry of crap. Yeah. There's also a genre of these
Speaker 1: about how often you're supposed to take breaks. And there
Speaker 1: was some research that came out a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago that got a lot of press because it's said
Speaker 1: the exact amount of time that you're supposed to work
Speaker 1: in the ratio that you're supposed to take a break
Speaker 1: is fifty two minutes of working in a seventeen minute break. See.
Speaker 1: Now that lies contrary to what I've found online, which
Speaker 1: is the Palmidoro method. The Tomato method apparently sounds real,
Speaker 1: it's delicious, and it is five minutes of work five
Speaker 1: minute breaks. Okay, so the ratio is similar ish, I
Speaker 1: don't know, Matt, No, Actually you wind up with a
Speaker 1: better break ratio with So the general thinking is that
Speaker 1: brakes are good. Sure, but then also the problem is
Speaker 1: that I take too many breaks, right, so we need
Speaker 1: a timer forto. That just sounds hard. Yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: also if you're in the middle of something at fifty two,
Speaker 1: you're not going to stop exactly. We don't work in isolation,
Speaker 1: at least not usually. And then also on top of that,
Speaker 1: like bigger picture, there's a lot of research about how
Speaker 1: vacation kind of brakes are good to which I can
Speaker 1: definitely get behind. But who's going to argue with that?
Speaker 1: Your boss, fair point fair wanted back up. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it just seems like there's obviously no quick fix to
Speaker 1: being more productive. It's the human condition and we always
Speaker 1: are reaching for a slightly better version of ourselves and
Speaker 1: we probably never get there. But today is it going
Speaker 1: to happen today? Today we're talking to somebody who has
Speaker 1: studied in an academic lee rigorous way, various ways that
Speaker 1: you can really achieve your goals. That's right, and he's
Speaker 1: looked at it not only in the conscious mind, but
Speaker 1: also in the subconscious mind. We have here with us,
Speaker 1: Gary Latham. He's a professor of organizational effectiveness at the
Speaker 1: Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for coming on and talking to us. Pleasure.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about getting things done, and you've done
Speaker 1: some research on how to achieve goals consciously. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about that all. I started working in this area
Speaker 1: way back in the late nineties, sixties, early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: working with logging crews, and in many ways they were
Speaker 1: similar to the people you saw in the movie Deliverance
Speaker 1: with Burt Reynolds, highly uneducated people who might come to
Speaker 1: work two days one week, zero days the next week.
Speaker 1: And I found early on that if you gave these
Speaker 1: people pacific high but attainable goals to pursue in terms
Speaker 1: of number of trees to cut down from day one
Speaker 1: right through the remainder of the work weeks, their productivity swords,
Speaker 1: their job attendant swords, and what was perceived by them
Speaker 1: as backbreaking, meaningless work suddenly became highly meaningful and almost
Speaker 1: like a game, whether it's bowling or golf, keeping score
Speaker 1: as to how many trees they were cutting down, and
Speaker 1: induced competitiveness and a sense of pride in what they
Speaker 1: were doing. And so I'm sorry to interrupt your guard
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. So are you suggesting that it is
Speaker 1: in the specificity of the goal that promotes that kind
Speaker 1: of effort. You can't overstate the importance of that word
Speaker 1: specificity as opposed to general so a general goal might
Speaker 1: be look me in the eye and tell me you're
Speaker 1: going to do your best, or a general goal might
Speaker 1: be before summer, I'm going to lose weight. All of
Speaker 1: those types of goals we found have all but a
Speaker 1: meaningless effect on your performance. The goal has to be specific.
Speaker 1: Have you been able to replicate this outside of logging
Speaker 1: since most of our listeners I think aren't loggers, but
Speaker 1: we're working to grow that audience. Actually, so it's really
Speaker 1: does that work in an office setting? Yes, that's absolutely so.
Speaker 1: By the mid seventies we were working in office settings
Speaker 1: and perhaps our most impressive finding was with people with
Speaker 1: masters and PhDs and engineering and the sciences, and we found,
Speaker 1: once again, those who were assigned specific high goals did
Speaker 1: better than those who just had general goals, and those
Speaker 1: who participated in the goal setting process with their boss
Speaker 1: sad even higher goals than those that were assigned unilaterally,
Speaker 1: and they had the highest performance of all And that
Speaker 1: was extremely impressive. And as two thousand and seventeen, we
Speaker 1: have found that goal setting is extremely effective on close
Speaker 1: to a hundred different tasks. So it's by no me
Speaker 1: restricted to logging. That sounds like a lot of work
Speaker 1: that you were doing, as as Becca described, sort of
Speaker 1: in the conscious realm. But you've actually moved on, as
Speaker 1: I correct, You've now looked at ways in which the
Speaker 1: subconscious can help us achieve goals. Yeah, yes I have,
Speaker 1: and I should preface by saying that I did so
Speaker 1: very reluctantly. There was a number of studies coming out
Speaker 1: of social psychology showing that if you left books on
Speaker 1: a table, and in one group the books had to
Speaker 1: do with dieting, and then the other group the books
Speaker 1: on a table had to do with, um, let's say,
Speaker 1: gardening or what have you. And then someone comes in
Speaker 1: later and says, hi, you must be getting hungry. Would
Speaker 1: you like an apple or a chocolate? And those who
Speaker 1: saw the books on the table that had to do
Speaker 1: with hitting, unbelievable to me, chose the apple with the chocolate.
Speaker 1: Now I've never done that in my entire life. I
Speaker 1: would always choose a chocolate. And when you ask people
Speaker 1: afterwards did you notice the magazines on the table, they
Speaker 1: would say no. And for those the few who said yes,
Speaker 1: I did notice the books on the table, and you
Speaker 1: said what were the books about, they didn't have a clue.
Speaker 1: And so the social psychologists were saying, this is how
Speaker 1: you can time a goal in someone's sub conscious to
Speaker 1: be interested in physical fitness and dieting. What have you? Now?
Speaker 1: I and my co researcher at Locke and we're working
Speaker 1: on consciously set goals send the sixties and we just
Speaker 1: didn't believe any of this, but we considered to be
Speaker 1: utter nonsense. So we did for see to a laboratory
Speaker 1: experiments and much to his shock and mine, he replicated
Speaker 1: the results of the social psychologists. So my reaction with
Speaker 1: my doctor, she was then my doctoral students, is now
Speaker 1: a psychologist, Amanda Shance. I said to her, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to do an experiment in an organizational setting,
Speaker 1: and this is the win win if, uh, if it
Speaker 1: doesn't come out, we can keep this nonsense cementering into
Speaker 1: our field, which is organizational psychology. If it does work,
Speaker 1: you'll get your first publication. But if it works, I'm
Speaker 1: going to eat the paper that you print us on
Speaker 1: and it's not going to work. And so, much to
Speaker 1: my chagrin, this was published in two thousand nine. Much
Speaker 1: to my chagrin, I would confess I didn't actually eat
Speaker 1: the pay Well, there was a diet book in the room,
Speaker 1: and there wasn't that. I didn't like it with salt
Speaker 1: or sugar, So what the heck? But here's what we found.
Speaker 1: We had call center employees, and we didn't measure performance,
Speaker 1: so we couldn't have biased the results in one way
Speaker 1: or the other. A computers senses how many donors call
Speaker 1: center employees can get to contribute money and the amount
Speaker 1: of dollars actually raised, and we then randomly assigned employees
Speaker 1: to one condition versus another. In our experimental condition, they
Speaker 1: saw a backdrop. A backdrop simply means you write the
Speaker 1: words the instructions for soliciting donations over a picture us
Speaker 1: a racer breaking the finish line, winning the race. The
Speaker 1: control people they have the exact same instructions for soliciting
Speaker 1: money from donors. And the instructions weren't made up by
Speaker 1: Amanda's chance or me. The made up by management. So
Speaker 1: we're simply watching to see if there's any difference between
Speaker 1: this racer who allegedly, we didn't believe this, but allegedly
Speaker 1: is priming a high need for achievement, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: the racer in fact prime the need for achievements and
Speaker 1: resulted in way more money being raised. And in the
Speaker 1: case where they didn't see the backdrop of the racer,
Speaker 1: now here's the hoot. When you asked employees when this
Speaker 1: was all over, by the way, did you notice the racer?
Speaker 1: They said no, He said, how can you not see
Speaker 1: the racer? It's right there, It's just the print over.
Speaker 1: They said, we were too busy making phone calls to notice.
Speaker 1: And then when we told them the effect that it
Speaker 1: had on their behavior, they laughed uproariously. They laughed. I didn't,
Speaker 1: but they laughed. So then I told Amanda she was
Speaker 1: too young to ruin her reputation with these kinds of results,
Speaker 1: and I was too old. We would have to replicate it.
Speaker 1: So the first experiment that I just told you about
Speaker 1: was done at the call center at the University of Toronto,
Speaker 1: calling a LUMBI. She then replicated the results at McMaster
Speaker 1: University in Ontario and McGill University of Montreal, and we
Speaker 1: got the exact same results. So now I knew we
Speaker 1: were onto something. Yeah, it's like those posters in high
Speaker 1: school that we had to sit here. We're actually doing
Speaker 1: something for us exactly. I'm wondering. Yeah, I'm on ding
Speaker 1: I um so you've you've had these studies and they
Speaker 1: do seem unbelievable. Have offices integrated any of your findings
Speaker 1: at all? Well? I think in lots of cases, you know,
Speaker 1: the public is ahead of science. And way back in
Speaker 1: the eighties, I became department chair and my co author
Speaker 1: of some forty years had locked to congratulate me, sent
Speaker 1: me these posters around high achievement, you know, the persons
Speaker 1: jumping over a high bar and touched underneath that something
Speaker 1: has tried. As at first you don't succeed, try again.
Speaker 1: So when I first went to publish the these results
Speaker 1: and in two thousand and eight the editor, one of
Speaker 1: the comments the journal editor had, uh, do you have
Speaker 1: posters like these on your office? I suddenly looked up
Speaker 1: on my walls and thought, oh my lord, I do
Speaker 1: have these posters on my walls, and I haven't paid
Speaker 1: any attention to them in some years. So have they
Speaker 1: had an effect on my behavior? I suspect they must have.
Speaker 1: I also understand when we are we had been talking
Speaker 1: before that you're now working on research about um words
Speaker 1: and how words can affect us subconscious and emails. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about that research a little bit? Well, I've done,
Speaker 1: I've done studies on asked that it's a huge national
Speaker 1: retail store. I don't think I've got permission to say
Speaker 1: who they are. But the CEO sends out a weekly
Speaker 1: email to all employees and it's kind of a rara
Speaker 1: speech to get them motivated as of Monday for the
Speaker 1: rest of the work weeks. We convinced him to let
Speaker 1: us inserts some achievement related words in his email, but
Speaker 1: we only did it for half his employees. And again
Speaker 1: there's randomly assignments as to who is going to get
Speaker 1: the achievement message versus those who aren't. Now, the only
Speaker 1: difference between the two email messages is that those in
Speaker 1: the experimental group had twelve achievement related words. Oh, I
Speaker 1: forgot to say. In all these experiments, we really probe
Speaker 1: people after the fact as to whether they perceived caught
Speaker 1: on to figure out what we were trying to test.
Speaker 1: Uh in this case, could achieve the difference in the
Speaker 1: message that the CEO said this week versus previous weeks.
Speaker 1: We've done everything possible to debunk awareness versus unawareness, because
Speaker 1: remember I'm a cognitive thinking psychologist. I'm into this subconscious stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm consciously trying to trip up my own results,
Speaker 1: and we find again and again and again, with no exception,
Speaker 1: people are unaware of what's being attempted. Now, end of
Speaker 1: the work week, the store's computer, not a researchers who
Speaker 1: assessed the results, and the computer showed that those twelve
Speaker 1: achievement related words embedded in the CEO's message sent out
Speaker 1: by email resulted in significantly higher sales then was the
Speaker 1: case of their fellow employees who didn't read those twelve words.
Speaker 1: I find this whole thing unbelievable. If this were reversed
Speaker 1: and you were explaining all of this to me and
Speaker 1: I was listening, I wouldn't believe a word of what
Speaker 1: you're saying. The only reason why I believe this because
Speaker 1: I collected the data, and I don't want to believe it.
Speaker 1: But it's true. I'm wondering you've mentioned this a little bit,
Speaker 1: but if the employees catch onto it, does that make
Speaker 1: them aware in such a way that they won't be
Speaker 1: as productive. Yes, people don't like to be manipulated. And uh,
Speaker 1: and there have been some experiments not done by me,
Speaker 1: but in the scientific literature showing that if people catch on,
Speaker 1: then they act the opposite. I could see myself doing that.
Speaker 1: Well sure, you know, in a romantic relationship, if you
Speaker 1: know that she is just buttering you up, that's a
Speaker 1: positive appall some of us like that. But alright, man,
Speaker 1: I was planning on putting all of these motivational images
Speaker 1: on my desk, but now they're not gonna work because
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, well so you wouldn't you know. It's
Speaker 1: not manipulation by others. I think I would be, And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you I have done this consciously. I suddenly
Speaker 1: have looked at the oil paintings on our walls and
Speaker 1: our home, and I'm certainly aware my kids are now growing,
Speaker 1: but for nieces and nephews, I'm certainly aware of the
Speaker 1: photos and stuff that put up on their bedroom walls.
Speaker 1: And I would certainly be aware of the kinds of
Speaker 1: things that you're reading downers versus uppards. I have more
Speaker 1: respect now for books written by Dale Carnegie and others
Speaker 1: saying that I think probably doing fact have a very
Speaker 1: positive effect on your outlook and as a result, your behavior.
Speaker 1: Just another reason for me to stay away from all
Speaker 1: the news on Twitter, exactly bringing me down absolutely absolute.
Speaker 1: This was really really interesting, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on and talking to us. Hopefully we will all
Speaker 1: be more productive because of it. Thank you for It's like,
Speaker 1: so I feel like I owe the makers of all
Speaker 1: those successories posters of you know, power shooters making a
Speaker 1: circle and horses jumping over barriers a big apology, and
Speaker 1: I think, and also you're welcome because we're obviously going
Speaker 1: to increase their sales greatly. That's right, So if you know,
Speaker 1: send a little love this all right, maybe a sponsorship
Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, I mean, we all scoff at
Speaker 1: those silly posters that are up in office buildings, including
Speaker 1: our own, and yet we're the ones that are idiots.
Speaker 1: They work. Yeah, And I'm so inclined to believe Gary
Speaker 1: because he was so incredulous himself. He was like, don't
Speaker 1: believe me, but it's true. I've tested it a lot. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: and he's certainly been doing this for quite a while,
Speaker 1: and you know, he's invested a lot of time in it.
Speaker 1: So there is actually one quick trick to improve your
Speaker 1: work productivity. Look at marathoners crossing a finish line. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But another thing that we didn't really get to is
Speaker 1: I think part of this problem of obsession with productivity
Speaker 1: is that we hold ourselves to this. I hold myself
Speaker 1: to a very high standard and then beat myself up
Speaker 1: when I'm I'm not as productive as I want to be,
Speaker 1: and that seems to making less productive. Even I don't
Speaker 1: even hold myself to a high standard, yet still beat myself.
Speaker 1: So that's another issue altogether. But yes, I think it's
Speaker 1: true that there's an unattainable goal here. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as like perfect productivity. No, and all these
Speaker 1: these bloggers and life hackers are feeding into our anxieties
Speaker 1: and making them worse. That's right. There's someone else out
Speaker 1: there more productive than you, and if you're doing up
Speaker 1: your game, you're going to get passed by. So we're
Speaker 1: all distractable, self centered morons. So buy some posters and
Speaker 1: the movie, be kind to yourself, give yourself a little hug,
Speaker 1: and now it's time for half big takes, half baked takes.
Speaker 1: All right, Sam, what is you're not quite fully formed?
Speaker 1: Idea for this week? This one actually came to me
Speaker 1: last weekend. I took my six year old son to
Speaker 1: the movies and it was one of those kids movies
Speaker 1: where I knew I was not going to be interested.
Speaker 1: Some kids movies, I might be, but this was not
Speaker 1: going to be one of them. And I wanted to
Speaker 1: just kind of maybe use my phone audibly, just use
Speaker 1: my phone to read things and you know, text people
Speaker 1: or whatever. And I know that can be wildly annoying
Speaker 1: in a theater full of adults watching an adult movie.
Speaker 1: I would never do it then, But I do think
Speaker 1: this rule needs a slight codicil that makes it okay
Speaker 1: to do this in children's movies, because when you're a parent,
Speaker 1: it's just sometimes I want to ask to watch two
Speaker 1: hours of a weirdo animated movie that makes no sense,
Speaker 1: and just if you can just sit there and you know,
Speaker 1: turn your screen down. Of course, silence your phone always.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to kids movies, I say text away.
Speaker 1: When you told me this, I was a little appalled
Speaker 1: at first, but then I remembered what it's like to
Speaker 1: be in a movie theater with kids and they're really
Speaker 1: loud and disruptive anyway. Yeah, this is not some temple
Speaker 1: of you know, film appreciation, right, They're all talking, they're
Speaker 1: all dropping their popcorn anyway, Yeah, and laughing at jokes
Speaker 1: that are not funny to adults. Not at all. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's okay. I will never reprimand anybody using
Speaker 1: their phone in a kids movie. You do it in
Speaker 1: an adult movie, though, get out. I'm going to get
Speaker 1: all nosy Parker about it. Yeah, all right, I endorse,
Speaker 1: and you Becca, tell me what is sort of on
Speaker 1: your mind this week? I got is what I'm going
Speaker 1: to call it, New Year, New inbox. Yeah yeah, stay
Speaker 1: with me. So is the new year. And you decide
Speaker 1: you want to clean out your life and that includes
Speaker 1: your inbox. I say you make a conscious effort to
Speaker 1: every time you get an annoying email that you're on
Speaker 1: an email list for, you go down and unsubscribe. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at you west Elm Yeah, oh my god. West
Speaker 1: Um everline emails, I get bed, Bath and Beyond, I
Speaker 1: get the hotel chain. I'm not going to you that off.
Speaker 1: Jet Blue. Yeah, anything you've ever bought anything for, They
Speaker 1: somehow trick you into signing up for multiple email lists.
Speaker 1: And if you just methodically when every time you get
Speaker 1: the email, just open it up unsubscribe. It takes a
Speaker 1: little bit of work, but I think it's a good practice.
Speaker 1: I think it really makes a difference. You know, people
Speaker 1: used to have that conspiracy theory that unsubscribing didn't work.
Speaker 1: It just confirmed that you were a person. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: don't tell me that. No, no, I've been getting fewer emails. Yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't listen to Sam, listen to I'm just crazy person.
Speaker 1: Don't mind me? All right, And that has been half
Speaker 1: Big Takes, Half Baked Takes. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: another episode of game Plan. You can find me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I'm at rs Greenfield and i am at Sam Grobart.
Speaker 1: And if you have your own half Big Takes, feel
Speaker 1: free to tweet them at us or at game Plan.
Speaker 1: And if you like this show, please head on over
Speaker 1: to iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts to rate
Speaker 1: and review and subscribe. We read them and it means
Speaker 1: a lot to us. Game Plan is produced by Liz
Speaker 1: Smith and Magnus Henrickson. The head of Bloomberg podcast is
Speaker 1: Alec McCabe. Thank you so much for listening. See you
Speaker 1: next week. And maybe, like productivity is a state of mind,
Speaker 1: productivities is a social construct, right,