11/10/2017 A Brief History of Productivity: How Getting Stuff Done Became an Industry

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MARKETING | 11 MIN READ

A Brief History of
Productivity: How Getting
Stuff Done Became an
Industry
Written by Amanda Zantal-Wiener
@amanda_zw

Anyone whos ever been a teenager is

likely familiar with the question, "Why
arent you doing something
productive? If only I knew, as an angsty
15-year-old, what I know after
conducting the research for this article. If
only I could respond to my parents with
the brilliant retort, "You know, the idea
of productivity actually dates back to
before the 1800s." If only I could ask,
"Do you mean 'productive' in an
economic or modern context?"

Back then, I would have been sent to my

room for "acting smart." But today, I'm a
nerdy adult who is curious to know
where today's widespread fascination
with productivity comes from. There
areendless tools andapps that help us
get more done -- but where did they
begin?

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If you ask me, productivity has become a

booming business. And it's not just my
not-so-humble opinion -- numbers and
history support it. Let's step back
intime, and find out how we got here,
and how getting stuff done became an
industry.

What Is Productivity?
The Economic Context
Dictionary.com defines productivity as
the quality, state, or fact of being able
to generate, create, enhance, or bring
forth goods and services. In an
economic context, the meaning is similar
-- its essentially a measure of the output
of goods and services available for
monetary exchange.

How we tend to view productivity today

is a bit different. While it remains a
measure of getting stuff done, it seems
like its gone a bit off the rails. Its not
just a measure of output anymore -- its
the idea of squeezing every bit of output
that we can from a single day. Its about
getting more done in shrinking amounts
of time.

Its a fundamental concept that seems to

exist at every level, including a federal
one -- the Brookings Institution reports
that even the U.S. government, for its
part, is doing more with less by trying
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to implement more programs with a

decreasing number of experts onSign
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payroll.

The Modern Context

And its not just the government. Many
employers -- and employees -- are trying
to emulate this approach.For
example,CBRE Americas CEO Jim
Wilson toldForbes, Our clients are
focused on doing more and producing
more with less. Everybody's focused on
what they can do to boost productivity
within the context of the workplace.

It makes sense that someone would view

that widespread perspective as an
opportunity. There was an unmet need
for tools and resources that would solve
the omnipresent never-enough-hours-in-
the-day problem. And so it was
monetized to the point where, today, we
have things like $25 notebooks -- the
Bullet Journal, to be precise -- and
countless apps that promise to help us
accomplish something at any time of
day.

But how did we get here? How did the

idea of getting stuff done become an
industry?

A Brief History of
Productivity
Pre-1800s
Productivity and Agriculture

In his article The Wealth Of Nations Part

2 -- The History Of Productivity,
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investment strategist Bill Greiner does

an excellent job of examining this Sign Get
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concept on a purely economic level. In
its earliest days, productivity was largely
limited to agriculture -- that is, the
production and consumption of food.
Throughout the world around that time,
rural populations vastly outnumbered
those in urban areas, suggesting that
fewer people were dedicated to non-
agricultural industry.

Source: United Nations Department of International

Economic and Social Affairs

On top of that, prior to the 1800s, food

preservation was, at most, archaic. After
all, refrigeration wasnt really available
until 1834, which meant that crops had
to be consumed fast, before they
spoiled. There was little room for
surplus, and the focus was mainly on
survival. The idea of getting stuff done
didnt really exist yet, suppressing the
idea of productivity.

The Birth of the To-Do List

It was shortly before the 19th century

that to-do lists began to surface, as well.
In 1791, Benjamin Franklin recorded
what was one of the earliest-known
forms of it, mostly with the intention of
contributing something of value to
society each day -- the list opened with
the question, What good shall I do this
day?

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Source: Daily Dot

The items on Franklins list seemed to

indicate a shift in focus from survival to
completing daily tasks -- things like
dine, overlook my accounts, and
work. It was almost a precursor to the
U.S. Industrial Revolution, which is
estimated to have begun within the first
two decades of the nineteenth century.
The New York Stock & Exchange Board
was officially established in 1817, for
example, signaling big changes to the
idea of trade -- society was drifting away
from thesingular goal of survival, to
broader aspirations of monetization,
convenience, and scale.

1790 - 1914
The Industrial Revolution actually began
in Great Britain in the mid-1700s, and
began to show signs of existence in the

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U.S. in 1794, with the invention of the

cotton gin -- which mechanicallySign Get
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removed the seeds from cotton plants. It
increased the rate of production so
much that cotton eventually became a
leading U.S. export and vastly
increased the wealth of this country,"
writes Joseph Wickham Roe.

Source: Gregory Clark

It was one of the first steps in a societal

step toward automation -- to require less
human labor, which often slowed down
production and resulted in smaller
output. Notice in the table below that,
beginning in 1880, machinery added the
greatest value to the U.S. economy. So
from the invention of the cotton gin to
the 1913 unveiling of Fords inaugural
assembly line (note that automotive
was added to the table below in 1920),
there was a common goal among the
many advances of the Industrial
Revolution: To produce more in -- you
guessed it -- less time.

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Source: Joel Mokyr

1914 - 1970s
Pre-War Production

Source: Joel Mokyr

Advances in technology -- and the

resulting higher rate of production --
meant more employment was becoming
available in industrial sectors, reducing
the agricultural workforce. But people
may have also become busier, leading
to the invention and sale of consumable
scheduling tools, like paper day
planners.

According to the Boston Globe, the

rising popularity of daily diaries
coincided with industrial progression,
with one of the earliest known to-do lists
available for purchase -- the Wanamaker
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Diary -- debuting in the 1900s. Created

by department store owner JohnSign Get
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Wanamaker, the planners pages were
interspersed with print ads for the
stores catalogue, achieving two newly
commercial goals: Helping an
increasingly busier population plan its
days, as well as advertising the goods
that would help to make life easier.

Source: Boston Globe

World War I

But there was a disruption to

productivity in the 1900s, when the U.S.
entered World War I, fromApril 1917
tothe wars end in November 1918.
Between 1918 and at least 1920 both
industrial production and the labor force
shrank, setting the tone for several years
of economic instability. The stock market
grew quickly after the war, only to crash
in 1929 and lead to the 10-year Great
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Depression. Suddenly, the focus was on

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survival again, especially with the U.S. Get
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entrance into World War II in 1941.

$12,000
Depression World War II
begins in the U.S Banks closed begins in Europe
Gold convertibility suspended

GDP per American in constant year 2000 dollars

$10,000

$8,000

$6,000
Pearl
Harbor
attack
$4,000

Herbert Hoover Franklin Roosevelt Recession in U.S. rearmament

takes office takes office depression begins in earnest
$2,000
GDP per capita
Full normal GDP
$0
1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942

Source: William D. O'Neil

But look closely at the above chart. After

1939, the U.S. GDP actually grew. Thats
because there was a revitalized need for
production, mostly of war materials. On
top of that, the World War II era saw the
introduction of women into the
workforce in large numbers -- in some
nations, women comprised 80% of the
total addition to the workforce during
the war.

World War II and the Evolving

Workforce

The growing presence of women in the

workforce had major implications for the
way productivity is thought of today.
Starting no later than 1948 -- three years
after World War IIs end -- the number of
women in the workforce only continued
to grow, according to the U.S.
Department of Labor.

That suggests larger numbers of women

were stepping away from full-time
domestic roles, but many still had
certain demands at home -- by 1975, for
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example, mothers of children under 18

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That created a newly unmet need for
convenience -- a way to fulfill these
demands at work and at home.

Once again, a growing percentage of

the population was strapped for time,
but had increasing responsibilities. That
created a new opportunity for certain
industries to present new solutions to
what was a nearly 200-year-old problem,
but had been reframed for a modern
context. And it began with food
production.

1970s - 1990s
The 1970s and the Food Industry

With more people -- men and women --

spending less time at home, there was a
greater need for convenience. More
time was spent commuting and working,
and less time was spent preparing
meals, for example.

The food industry, therefore, was one of

the first to respond in kind. It recognized
that the time available to everyone for
certain household chores was beginning
to diminish, and began to offer solutions
that helped people -- say it with us --
accomplish more in fewer hours.

Those solutions actually began with

packaged foods like cake mixes and
canned goods that dated back to the
1950s, when TV dinners also hit the
market -- 17 years later, microwave
ovens became available for about $500
each.

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But the 1970s saw an uptick in fast food

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roughly $6 billion on it at the start of the
decade. As Eric Schlosser writes in Fast
Food Nation, A nations diet can be
more revealing than its art or literature.
This growing availability and
consumption of prepared food revealed
that we were becomingobsessed with
maximizing our time -- and with, in a
word, productivity.

The Growth of Time-Saving

Technology

Technology became a bigger part of the

picture, too. With the invention of the
personal computer in the 1970s and the
World Wide Web in the 1980s,
productivity solutions were becoming
more digital. Microsoft, founded in
1975, was one of the first to offer them,
with a suite of programs released in the
late 1990s to help people stay
organized, and integrate their to-do lists
with an increasingly online presence.

Source: Wayback Machine

It was preceded by a 1992 version of a

smartphone called Simon, which
included portable scheduling features.
That introduced the idea of being able
to remotely book meetings and manage
a calendar, saving time that would have

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been spent on such tasks after returning

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calendar-ready PDAs, or personal digital
assistants, which became available in the
late 1990s.

By then, the idea of productivity was no

longer on the brink of becoming an
industry -- it was an industry. It would
simply become a bigger one in the
decades to follow.

The Early 2000s

The Modern To-Do List

Once digital productivity tools became

available in the 1990s, the release of
new and improved technologies came at
a remarkable rate -- especially when
compared to the pace of developments
in preceding centuries.

In addition to Microsoft, Google is

credited as becoming a leader in this
space. By the end of 2000, it won two
Webby Awards and was cited by PC
Magazine for its uncanny knack for
returning extremely relevant results." It
was yet another form of time-saving
technology, by helping people find the
information they were seeking in a way
that was more seamless than, say, using
a library card catalog.

In April 2006, Google Calendar was

unveiled, becoming one of the first
technologies that allowed users to share
their schedules with others, helping to
mitigate the time-consuming exchanges
often required of setting up meetings. It
wasnt long before Google also released
Google Apps for Your Domain that
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summer, providing businesses with an

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calendars, and web development tools,
among others.

Source: Wayback Machine

During the first 10 years of the century,

Apple was experiencing a brand
revitalization. The first iPod was released
in 2001, followed by the MacBook Pro in
2006 andthe iPhone in January 2007 --
all of which would have huge
implications for the widespread idea of
productivity.

2008 - Present
Search Engines That Talk -- and
Listen

When the iPhone 4S was released in

2011, it came equipped with Siri, an
intelligent assistant that helps you get
things done just by asking. Google had
already implemented voice search
technology in 2008, but it didnt garner
quite as much public attention -- most
likely because it required a separate app
download. Siri, conversely, was already
installed in the Apple mobile hardware,
and users only had to push the iPhones
home button and ask a question
conversationally.

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Google Mobile App for iPhone, now

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But both offered further time-saving

solutions. To hear weather and sports
scores, for examples, users no longer
had to open a separate app, wait for a
televised report, or type in searches. All
they had to do was ask.

By 2014, voice search had become

commonplace, with multiple brands --
including Microsoft and Amazon --
offering their own technologies. Heres
how its major pillars look today:

The Latest Generation of Personal

Digital Assistants

With the 2014 debut of Amazon Echo,

voice activation wasnt just about
searching anymore. It was about full-
blown artificial intelligence that could
integrate with our day-to-day lives. It
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was starting to converge with the

Signthat
Internet of Things -- the technology Get
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allowed things in the home, for example,
to be controlled digitally and remotely --
and continued to replace manual,
human steps with intelligent machine
operation. We were busier than ever,
with some reporting 18-hour workdays
and, therefore, diminishing time to get
anything done outside of our
employment.

Here was the latest solution, at least for

those who could afford the technology.
Users didnt have to manually look
things up, turn on the news, or write
down to-do and shopping lists. They
could ask a machine to do it with a
command as simple as, Alexa, order
more dog food.

Of course, competition would eventually

enter the picture and Amazon would no
longer stand alone in the personal
assistant technology space. It made
sense that Google -- who had long since
established itself as a leader in the
productivity industry -- would enter the
market with Google Home, released in
2016, and offering much of the same
convenience as the Echo.

Of course, neither one has the same

exact capabilities as the other -- yet. But
lets pause here, and reflect on how far
weve come.

Where We Are
Now...and Beyond

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We started this journey in the 1700s with

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Benjamin Franklins to-do list. Now, Get
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we are, over two centuries later, with
intelligent machines making those lists
and managing our lives for us.

Have a look at the total assets of some

leaders in this space (as of the writing of
this post, in USD):

Amazon: $6,700,000,000

Apple: $293,280,000,000

Google: $159,948,000,000

Microsoft: $181,870,000,000

Over time -- hundreds of years, in fact --

technology has made things more
convenient for us. But as the above list
shows, its also earned a lot of money for
a lot of people. And those figures leave
little doubt that, today, productivity is an
industry, and a booming one at that.

How do you view productivity today,

and whats your approach to it? Let us
know in the comments.

Originally published January 30 2017,

updated November 10 2017

Topics: Productivity

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