Working From Home Tanked My Productivity

Here’s how I reclaimed it

Barry Davret

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Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

Not long ago, I wrote several viral stories about productivity. At the rate I pumped out material, I considered myself an authority on the subject. Yet, a year or so later, my output plummeted even though I had gained two hours per day in free time thanks to my pandemic work-from-home schedule.

Writing always has its ups and downs, and I had done a solid job of making it work between my day job and family responsibilities. But when I no longer had to commute, I found myself with chunks of extra time to write but little motivation to do the work.

It took me eighteen months to accept that more time doesn’t mean more productivity. In that year and a half, I had squandered about 800 hours.

If that had been the only downside of my newfound creative time, I’d have carried on without changing my routine.

But it got worse.

Not only did I fail to exploit my additional free time, but my writing output declined by almost 75% compared to the pre-pandemic era. After a long and honest assessment of my results, the culprit of my woes became apparent, and it should serve as a warning to anyone who thinks they could achieve more if they only had an extra hour or two per day.

Nothing destroys your productivity like an abundance of time, especially if you work on creative pursuits.

Before the pandemic, with seemingly little time, I churned out over 1,000 words daily and published several weekly stories. It took me three days to write the same amount during the pandemic.

The problem started with a well-known and often maligned productivity rule known as Parkinson’s law. It states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. So, if a boss gives you two hours to complete a thirty-minute task, you’ll resort to beautifying your work or stretching out the work to fill up the two hours.

That’s bad enough for rote or analytical tasks, but the effect magnifies when it comes to creative pursuits.

Here’s why.

When we face a tight deadline, we focus more on our mission. We get into a zone where our minds churn out solid output that often feels…

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Barry Davret

Work in Forge | Elemental | BI | GMP | Others | Contact: barry@barry-davret dot com. Join Medium for full access: https://barry-davret.medium.com/membership