Productivity Hypothesis

A friend and I were talking about the state of productivity in our lives and society in general.  We agreed that we would be better served by doing about half as much in order to do what remains that much better.  But of course there are costs.  The density of our productivity is often budget driven where more productive units produce some kind of productivity revenue.  That revenue may be financial but not necessarily.  Often the productive revenue comes in the form of job advancement or pleasing a funder in order to maintain or advance further funding opportunities. But to what end. My friend and I both saw the inevitable reality of this productivity system spinning out of control. 

I wonder what it would be like if we volunteered to cut our budgets by 20% with the promise that we would only reduce productivity by 10%. I hypothesize that the quality of the remaining 90% would increase by 30% netting an overall increase in productivity value while reducing overall costs.

I’m not confident that this hypothesis will ever be tested because budget decisions are made at a level above my pay grade.