If you work with other people (and who doesn’t?) reflect on the last week and notice how much time you wasted in drama: the energy-draining behaviors or exchanges that keep you from what you really want to be doing.  Think about all the infighting, water-cooler talk, meaningless meetings, turf wars, pouting, rants, and other behaviors that blocked positive, productive interactions in your organization.

Late last week, I had several different challenging projects on my plate, each with fast-approaching deadlines. Feeling the pressure, I awoke earlier than usual in the morning and got to my desk by 7:00 am.

Four hours later, I was still sitting there, barely having budged from my chair. To my surprise and frustration, I still hadn’t finished my project.

At first, I attributed my failure to the difficulty of the task. But the more I thought about it, the less that made sense.

A Faulty Instinct to Work Harder

Sinan Aral, Marshall Van Alstyne and Erik Brynjolfsson have been studying knowledge workers’ productivity since many years, in this brief article they pick four tips that can help any knowledge worker boost his/her productivity-

A vast majority of senior executives view employee disengagement as one of the biggest threats to their business, yet most companies ignore the problems caused by disengaged employees. Moreover, a recent study on this issue has found that 47% of C-suite executives believe that they are responsible for employee engagement. However, the truth is that it is the line managers and middle managers who are chiefly responsible. Another study has found that the differences in work climate created by line managers can be responsible for up to 30% variance in business results.

Knowledge workers are getting increasingly important for business but being an entirely new breed of workers organizations all over the world are struggling to find ways for improving the effectiveness of their knowledge workers. The kinds of work knowledge workers do are diverse and amorphous which creates challenges in accessing their productivity and finding ways to improve them. The authors have been researching this matter since 2006 studying knowledge workers in several organizations.

In India various organizations have been able to come out with products and services that are not only significantly cheaper than their western counterparts but also meet global quality standards. Some examples include the cheapest car in the world Tata Nano which costs around US @2,200, a hepatitis B vaccine priced at 1/40th of the cost traditional vaccines and cataract surgeries by Aravind Eye Care performed on 300,000 patients every year at 1/100th of the fee charged in other countries.

When there are two many things to be taken care of, as it happens quite frequently nowadays, people tend to freeze. They try to move fast but do not make much progress leading to stress. Typically this happens because when there are many things competing for a person’s attention, he or she does not know what to begin with and hence does not begin at all. The feeling can be described in common terms as being overwhelmed.

The author of this article identifies loss of control as the primary source of stress. Come to think about it executives are expected work in a superman manner which leads them to take up much responsibilities than they can fulfill. This leads them to fretting over not being able to achieve and continuous overwork. StressCosts.com has posted the findings of a recent research according to which the annual cost of stress related issues in the United States is over $300 billion.

Latest research has not only conclusively proven that controlling bosses have unproductive employees but also that the mere mention/glimpse of a controlling boss can reduce the productivity level of their employees.

Andrew O'Connell is an editor with the Harvard Business Review Group.

Source: HBR