Silver Clipboard

Beware the Hawthorne Effect: Why You Feel More Productive When You Try a New System and Why it Doesn’t Last

Between 1924 and 1932 the Hawthorne Works Telephone Factory commissioned a series of experiments on their workers. The owners wanted to find out what environment would make the workers most productive. While the researchers never did figure out the best environment, they did stumble on one of the most famous effects in psychology.

The researchers thought that the low light levels inside the factory might be making the workers inefficient, so the first thing the researchers did was brighten the place. Worker productivity increased — but only for a little while. As good scientists, they also tried the opposite. To their surprise, darkening the factory floor also increased productivity. What was going on?

After a number of other experiments, the researchers determined the real cause of temporary productivity increase was change. Any change in environment produces a temporary gain in productivity. It matters not if the change is actually beneficial in the long run.

What causes this effect is still a bit of a debate, but one theory is that changing the environment made the workers more aware of their surroundings, and by extension themselves and their work, hence productivity increases. Once the workers familiarized with the change, the productivity gains disappeared.

Does this sound familiar? Remember how productive and organized you felt the first week after you bought your new computer or new phone? Remember how that feeling slowly disappeared? The Hawthorne Effect at work.

I suspect that much of the self-help industry relies, unknowingly, on the Hawthorne Effect. A new book about getting organized, managing your finances, or losing weight is able to generate enormous buzz because, for the people who try it, it works just long enough to get the book recommended. By the time the reader realizes that their weight has come back, their debt hasn’t gone away, or they are just as disorganized as before, it’s too late.

Just because the Hawthorne Effect exists doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bother making changes in your life — it just means that it’s harder to tell, in the short term, if the system really works or not. You need to make deliberate changes.

Whenever you change something in your organizational system, or your life, beware the Hawthorne Effect and ask yourself several questions:

1) Does this change to the system actually make things easier?

2) Is this change less effort to implement than the previous system?

3) If it’s more effort, am I sure that it’s worth it?

Good luck with making changes, beware the Hawthorn Effect and don’t fool yourself.

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Header photograph by aussiegall

Motivate Yourself by Watching Time Slip Away

Some time ago, my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I traveled to Edinburgh. We stayed in a lovely hotel with one odd feature: an enormous clock on the wall. We thought nothing of it at first, but eventually dubbed it ‘The Clock of Death’.

It turns out that if you have a clock the size of the wall, the grim reaper leans, quite noticeably over your shoulder. If you look away from the clock, then look back in fifteen minutes, the big hand has moved four feet across the wall. That’s hard not to be startled by. Every time.

The Death Clock forced upon us the constant reminded that life and time are fleeting. It sure provided motivation to use our time well.

Recently I came across a little relatively cheap clock to do the same thing. It’s a projection clock that you can adjust to take up your entire wall. When I can have a separate office, I’m getting one of these.

Normally $100, the projection clock is currently on sale for $60.

[Click here for the projection clock from Plow & Hearth]

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Header photograph by GirlReporter

How to Avoid Extra Work Without Being a Bum

Office deadlines: miss them and, you’re in trouble. Beat them and you get extra work. What’s an employee to do?

Here’s one strategy: when given work on a deadline, do it as soon as possible but don’t hand it in until the deadline. This way you are free of the stress of the job, but won’t be given extra (and often unnecessary) work. For bonus points, hand it in on your way out the door the day before it’s due.

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Photograph by Michael mx5tx

Jerry Seinfeld and Productivity

Lifehacker has an article on Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity secret. The key, he says, to writing good jokes is to write them every day. But how to keep yourself motivated? He suggests keeping a calendar just for writing. Every day that you manage to write, put a big red ‘X’ through the day. Your only job is now not to break that chain of ‘X’s. The longer you make the chain, the less you will want to break it. This strategy is adaptable for any habit or action that you want to do on a daily basis.

The story at lifehacker is told seconds hand, so while it may be apocryphal, it is nevertheless valuable. I’ve adapted it for growing a pile of index cards on my desk and it certainly works. If I write for thirteen days straight, skipping out on the fourteenth day is made very unappealing by the thought of having to throw out those thirteen cards and starting over.

[Read the article at lifehacker]

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Photograph by jurek d.

Addicted to Piles

A recent explosm.net comic deals with a topic the organized and disorganized alike constantly have to deal with: pile addition.

Warning: the people behind explosm.net have some serious mental issues and it shows in their work.

[link to the comic]

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Original header photograph by Mario’s Planet