PRODUCTIVITY HOMEOSTASIS

How come that as we get better tools to be more productive (software, …), in some jobs, productivity didn’t increase too much?

More tasks that don’t add value, of course. But why do we choose to engage with them, rather than being productive?

1/N

2/ To explain this phenomenon, called productivity homeostasis (which roughly translates to “stays the same”), we must first look at a similar phenomenon: risk homeostasis.

3/ The Fence Paradox (see image below) is an example of risk homeostasis: the idea that, when an activity becomes safer, people often react by increasing their risk taking.

Why? https://twitter.com/drcirillo/status/727526381878403072?s=21

4/ One reason is that people participate in activities to grab resources that they can use to mitigate other risks.

Important: the risk they mitigate might be external to the activity at hand.

For example, …

5/ The car ABS made driving safer all things equal, but people reacted with driving faster, keeping the perceived risk constant to grab more of a precious resource, time, they can spend to mitigate other risks, such as getting divorced if not spending enough time at home (say).

6/ If we were subject to only a single risk in our lives, risk homeostasis would make no sense. Just decrease the risk as much as possible!

However, as we are subject to multiple threats, it might be risky not to take some risks of doing so would decrease another risk.

7/ Hence, the rationality of risk homeostasis (in some conditions).

8/ Of course, in the example of the fence over the canyon, risk homeostasis is not rational. But that’s because we don’t perceive correctly the increased risk.

What I mean here is that, even if we perceived risk correctly, risk homeostasis would still be rational.

9/ Back to productivity homeostasis.

If employees were only subject to the risk of not producing enough, then productivity homeostasis would not make sense.

10/ But if we add in political risk, social risk (losing status with colleagues), etc., then it makes sense to fill the time available with communication rather than production.

11/ Of course, there’s a lot of individual variation, people have different motives, etc.

That said, in general,

12/ Most forms of behavioral homeostasis are explained by people working to get *many* resources to mitigate *many* risks

rather than considering each activity single-purpose like it might seem to a superficial observer

Hence,

13/ When an activity becomes more performant across one dimension, people often react by changing the way they perform that activity to spread the advantage across many of the risks they are subject to.

This is the rationale of work filling the time available, etc.