3588: Productivity and the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs by Jacob Lund Fisker of Early Retirement Extreme

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[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00] This is Optimal Living Daily. Productivity and the goose that laid the golden eggs. By Jacob Lundfisker of EarlyRetirementExtreme.com. And I'm Justin Malek. Welcome back to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD Podcast where I read to you from some of the best articles I can find and get permission from. Covering personal development or self-help, minimalism, productivity and more. So with that, let's get right to it and continue optimizing your life.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_00] Productivity and the goose that laid the golden eggs. By Jacob Lundfisker of EarlyRetirementExtreme.com. Most of the misunderstandings concerning productivity appear because productivity gurus measure productivity with time as the variable. If only we could manage time more effectively. We would get more things done, the thinking goes.

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_00] This is true insofar that one is doing piecework where each action takes a certain amount of time so that work volume is directly proportional to time. Although many people are still paid in the old-fashioned way by the time they put in, most products are more accurately measured by the value they add regardless of how long it took to create this value. From my perspective, the amount of value that can be created on average over time is limited by individual creativity.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00] In other words, a person is capable of producing X amount of value and another person is capable of producing Y amount of value. If a person creates a lot of value in a single day, you can rest assured that very little of the same kind of value will be produced the next day. Simply averages out. To understand this, think of the goose who lays one golden egg a day.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_00] The goose may be considered highly productive during the hour during which the egg is laid. Naively, one would expect that with proper time management, the goose would be able to lay an additional egg every hour. Obviously, that's not how it works. If the goose was asked to do that, it would quickly burn out. As I said, I think we each have the capability to produce a certain amount of value each day without burning out. If left to our own devices, that's exactly how much we'll produce.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_00] We will have a certain amount of creative energy, a certain amount of physical energy, and a certain amount of social energy. Productivity is not about doing bicep curls with your left hand while brushing your teeth with the right hand. It's about using the previously mentioned reserves most optimally. This is not done by maxing out each capacity. Think of the goose. A certain amount of energy must also be spent maintaining the capability.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_00] This is something our culture is not very good at. But consider this. To use any given resource, you absolutely must consider three things. Extraction, maintenance, and expanding. Extraction is the process of taking the energy. Productivity should not be about maximizing the rate of extraction. And let's repeat that three times. Productivity is not about maximizing extraction. The rate of extraction must not be maximized.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00] Maximizing extraction is bad. You must not maximize extraction. Yet this seems to be what many gurus are preaching, certainly the way the career reward system is set up. Without maintenance, think of U.S. infrastructure, for example, the system eventually crumbles. Without maintenance, the system cannot be sustained. If the system is not maintained, it eventually dies with a whimper as extraction is limited as well.

[00:04:39] [SPEAKER_00] Maintenance is what the goose does to recover from laying the egg. And the importance of expansion is obvious. As well as maintenance, the system should be improved. This does not mean bigger or more. It means better. Without expansion, the system stagnates and eventually gets crushed by non-stagnating competitors. And so some energy must be used towards that end as well. Expansion is what the goose does to get better at laying eggs.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00] Productivity must consider all three aspects. Ignoring one of them is fine in the short term, but destructible in the long term. Naturally, there are incentives to ignoring maintenance and expansion in the short term, but this results in long-term costs. Working a dead-end job, letting bridges collapse, running the world on non-renewable resources. Productivity, therefore, is not about expending time more efficiently. It's not about expending more energy either.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00] It's about expending energy most efficiently. This is exactly what happens when one says that work expands to fill the time allotted. This is also the reason why more free time does not result in more things getting done. More free time does not result in more energy unless the previous energy is used to expand capacity. Usually when just leaving a job, which pretty much only focuses on extracting as much as possible from you,

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00] a lot of energy must first be used on maintenance to rebuild yourself. You just listened to the post titled, Productivity and the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs, by Jacob Lundfisker of EarlyRetirementExtreme.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. Hydration isn't just chugging water, it's about absorbing it effectively. That's where Liquid IV shines.

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[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00] Go to shopify.com slash OLD. Shopify.com slash old. Thank you to Jacob. He's more frequently narrated over on Optimal Finance Daily since he typically talks about early retirement. So if you're interested in that and financial independence, all things money, really, you can check out Optimal Finance Daily for more. I thought this one was an interesting take on productivity, a bit different than the typical article we hear.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_00] And I like the golden goose metaphor. Also because I've been playing a board game called Wingspan in which you lay eggs, but the metaphor, it's a clear way to think about our energy and capacity. Just like we can't force the goose to lay more eggs by managing his time better, we can't necessarily produce more value just by squeezing more activities into our day. And I'm glad he mentioned this idea of work expanding to fill the time allotted. I don't think it comes up enough. That idea about work expanding

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00] is something I've definitely experienced in my own life. It's often called Parkinson's Law. And it basically means that if you give yourself like a week to complete a task, it will take a week. But if you give yourself two days for the same task, you'll somehow find a way to get it done in two days. I think this happens because we naturally pace ourselves based on the deadline. When we have more time, we tend to overthink things, get distracted more easily,

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_00] or just work at a more relaxed pace. I've definitely seen this play out in my own life since I make my own hours. The problem is that we might think we need more time to be productive when in reality, we might just need better energy management or clearer constraints. Definitely something to experiment with. So thank you to Jacob. And thank you for coming back to listen every day, wishing you a great rest of your day. And I'll see you tomorrow, where your optimal life, no weights. And the way to ritualize your life,

[00:10:26] it will show you tomorrow. And I'll see you tomorrow, as we do a little bit more. And I'll see you tomorrow. You