Productivity: Definition, Examples, & Tips

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

Learn more about what productivity is and how you can increase your productivity.

*This page may include affiliate links; that means we earn from qualifying purchases of products.

Productivity is something that matters immensely to most of us. We aim to be productive in our careers as well as in our personal lives. At the heart of our interest in productivity is the desire to get the most out of life. Whether we are trying to maximize our wealth and possessions or the number of meaningful experiences we have in our lives, living a productive life seems like a good way to go about it. Let’s talk a bit more about what productivity means and how we can enjoy more of it.

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What Is Productivity? (A Definition)

Productivity is typically not clearly defined. It is thought to be a multidimensional term with definitions that vary by context (Tangen, 2005). In the context of industry, productivity might be understood as the ratio of what is produced to the resources required to produce it (Hill, 1993) or the capacity to satisfy the needs of the market for goods and services while consuming minimal resources (Moseng & Rostaldas, 2001). In the context of how we typically use the term in our everyday lives, productivity might be better understood as performing our necessary or desired tasks efficiently and effectively.

Opposite of Productivity

Antonyms for productive include:

• Idle
  
• Impotent
  
• Inactive
  
• Lethargic
  
• Fruitless
  
• Unhelpful
  

Why Productivity Is Important

We live in an era of nearly limitless information and opportunity, referred to by scholars as the information age. The information age provides a wealth of opportunities that would be incomprehensible to someone living only 100 years ago. This extraordinary potentiality also places an extraordinary number of demands on our time and attention, limiting our ability to actually experience many of the infinite possibilities. Maximizing our productivity is one possible solution to the conundrum of ‘so much to do and so little time to do it.’ In other words, productivity is important because it allows us to experience more.

Examples of Productivity

Being “productive” means something a little different to everyone and can even vary day to day for any one individual. For example, a productive day might be one in which you finish your laundry, clean your home, exercise, and cook a few meals for the week. For others, a productive day might be one in which you answer all of our emails, finish writing a report, attend several meetings, and read through those important documents.

For some, a productive day doesn’t necessitate any observable end product at all. That is, we might have a productive day in which no task was actually completed. For example, consider a computer programmer trying to resolve a bug in their code. They may spend the entirety of their workday problem-solving without success and still consider their day productive. Or a writer might spend their day revising a chapter only to decide they need to start from the beginning.
​
Any one example of productivity doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. For many, spending time on social media is not productive. Whereas, for those whose career includes digital marketing, spending time on social media is an important and productive activity. In other words, productivity is personal.

Productivity Tips

The ways in which we can improve our productivity aren’t necessarily obvious. Often, we think that improving productivity just means “work harder.” Working harder, however, can actually be the last thing we want to do if we want to improve our productivity. Here are a few things to try if you want to improve your productivity:

Take breaks​
It might seem counterintuitive to say that in order to increase productivity you need to stop working more. However, studies have shown that taking breaks increases productivity by reducing stress and improving mood (Fritz et al., 2013).

Set boundaries
Setting boundaries around when you work and how much you do is also an effective way to improve your productivity. Being able to say no helps protect you from burnout and maintain sufficient time for rest and recovery.

Set small goals
Massive, complex goals can feel overwhelming, which may lead to diminished motivation and productivity. The course of action needed to achieve small goals is usually better defined and the goal itself is more attainable (Latham & Seijts, 1999), both of which are important for productivity.

Plan your days ahead of time
Having a clear, concise daily plan or weekly plan is an excellent way to improve productivity. It provides both the small goals mentioned above and increases the likelihood that you will decide against engaging in less productive activities.
​
For more tips for improving productivity, check out this excellent video from The Huberman Lab podcast, which offers a wealth of information about the science behind productivity:

Video: Maximizing Productivity, Physical & Mental Health with Daily Tools

Productivity When Working From Home

Contrary to popular belief, working from home often makes people more productive. One study showed that working remotely increased both productivity and well-being among 278 individuals who transitioned from a workplace to working from home (George et al., 2022). Though for many of us, working from home improves our productivity, not everyone has the luxury of a quiet home with relatively few distractions. If you share your home with friends or family, you are much more likely to face challenges in productivity. Here are a few tips for maintaining productivity when working from home for those that might find remote work challenging:

Designate your own workspace​
Our physical surroundings can have an important effect on our mood, motivation, and ultimately our productivity. That is, we associate different environments with the behaviors we perform in them most often. For example, being in your bedroom may make you feel sleepy because that’s mostly what you do in there. Similarly, sitting on your living room couch may make you feel relaxed because that’s the behavior most commonly associated with that environment. 

Designating a particular setting to be the space where you work creates a psychological association between being in your office space and working. In other words, it helps you get into the headspace of working and eliminates the need to fight off the desire to pop some popcorn and turn on the television.

Work out a family schedule
Depending on your family structure, you may be able to work out a schedule in which each caretaker designates blocks of time as work or caretaking time. Deciding on these responsibilities ahead of time eliminates the need to discuss them during the workday and provides more uninterrupted time than sticking to a chaotic schedule would allow.

Create a morning ritual
Similar to a workspace, a morning ritual that signifies the start of a work day can help put you in a ‘work mode.’ In other words, having a certain set of behaviors that you perform every day before work helps put you in a state of mind that is most conducive to a productive workday.

Productivity vs Efficiency

Productivity and efficiency are related concepts. However, there is an important difference between the two. Productivity refers to the quantity of work, whereas efficiency refers to the quality of work. In a perfect world, our workdays would be both efficient and productive, but, as many of us have likely experienced, it is possible to produce a large volume of poor-quality work (i.e., productive but not efficient) or to produce a very small volume of high-quality work (i.e., efficient but not productive).

Productivity Paradox

The productivity paradox is the observation that, despite the rapid and substantial increases in our ability to organize, communicate, track behaviors, and process and share data, productivity doesn’t seem to improve as much as we might expect. In some cases, investment in digital tools meant to increase productivity may even have the opposite effect (Van Ark, 2016).

Productivity Apps

Productivity apps are great tools for helping us stay focused and organized, track our habits, manage our time appropriately, and prioritize our obligations. Below are a few highly-rated apps that have helped others improve their productivity:

• Pomodoro Clock
• Evernote
• Freedom
• Habitica
• If This Then That (IFTTT)
• Notion
• RescueTime

• Todoist

Quotes on Productivity

• “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” – Paul J. Meyer
  
• “Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.” – Franz Kafka
  
• “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” ― Stephen King
  
• “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.” ― Bruce Lee
  
• “Where your attention goes, your time goes” ― Idowu Koyenikan
  

• “Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.” ― Ayn Rand
  
• “Don’t think about what can happen in a month. Don’t think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.” ― Eric Thomas
  

Articles Related to Productivity

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

• 80-20 Rule (Pareto Principle) Definition & Explanation
• Procrastination: Definition, Types, & How To Stop
• My 10 Year Plan: How to Create a Good Plan for the Future​​​​​​​​​​​

Books Related to Productivity​

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

• ​The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy
  
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
  
• Smarter Faster Better: The Transformative Power of Real Productivity
  

Final Thoughts on Productivity

Productivity is something many of us are regularly seeking to improve. The reasons behind our desire for productivity may be varied, but the strategies for enhancing productivity are the same. Simple steps such as creating a designated workspace, setting small short-term goals, and taking more breaks could be the key to improving our productivity and allowing us to do more of the things we want to do. It is important to note that, although our society places great value on productivity and there are certainly benefits to improving productivity, it’s okay to not always be productive. For many of us, it’s hard to accept those days when we struggle to get out of bed or get off the couch without deriding ourselves, perhaps calling ourselves lazy or defining ourselves with other unkind adjectives. But a life needn’t be maximally full to be a good one. Remember, productivity is personal and it’s good to take some time off.

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References

• Fritz, C., Ellis, A. M., Demsky, C. A., Lin, B. C., & Guros, F. (2013). Embracing work breaks. Organizational Dynamics, 42(4), 274-280.
• Hill, T. (1993), Manufacturing Strategy: The Strategic Management of the Manufacturing Function, 2nd ed., Open University/Macmillan, London.
• Latham, G. P., & Seijts, G. H. (1999). The effects of proximal and distal goals on performance on a moderately complex task. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 20(4), 421-429.
• Moseng, B. and Rolstada ̊s, A. (2001), “Success factors in the productivity process”, 10th World Productivity Congress.
• Tangen, S. (2005). Demystifying productivity and performance. International Journal of Productivity and performance management.
• Van Ark, B. (2016). The productivity paradox of the new digital economy. International Productivity Monitor, (31), 3.

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