The benefits claimed for both four-day work weeks (June Nature and Science of Work Explore article and podcast) and triple productivity peaks (May Explore article and podcast; May Integrate article and podcast) include increased satisfaction and increased productivity. Perhaps this happy state of affairs exists somewhere.
Not in Oz, though. None of the four “team members” were ever really satisfied. Or productive. Unless they were on a road trip. Otherwise, just a lot of drama. Then it turned out that the guy who wasn’t on the team, and who got to WFH, had been spending all his time creating backgrounds rather than doing real work. And by the end of the project, the Tin Man was constantly carrying around a giant watch. Likely developed a productivity obsession.
Given all the goings on in Oz, to understand the satisfaction/productivity mess, it may be more useful to imagine a lost chapter and land of Jonathan Swift. This one is set not in Lilliput, nor Brobdingnag–but in “Satisprod.”
(In Satisprod, all the residents work 32 hours and their satisfaction is monitored each second, both by app and microchip, to make sure everyone’s satisfaction is (to borrow a phrase) above average. And is–always–increasing.)
In this podcast, we’ll leave behind the Utopias of satisfaction and productivity coexisting by the beneficence of organizations. Instead, we’ll focus on ways you can increase autonomy and control yourself, even when the decks are stacked against you—they’re the house’s decks in the first place!!
Plus, we’ll use these perspectives to explore such gambits as free food at work, “Bring Your Pet to Work Day,” and workplace fitness.
Join us for this Integrate edition of the Nature and Science of Work podcast!
Keep seeing nature in work and work in nature.
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