This is Optimal Living Daily, episode 1684, an excerpt from the book, Home Early, Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner, by Michael Melberg, and I'm Justin Malek. Welcome to Optimal Living Daily or the OLD podcast, where I read to you from some of the best blogs or articles I can find and get permission from, and sometimes books like today. You should know today's author if you've been listening for a while. I narrate from michaelmelberg.com quite frequently.
So with that, let's get right to it and start optimizing your life. An excerpt from the book, Home Early, Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner by Michael Melberg. Three productivity myths that just won't die. If I asked you which country was the most productive in the world, what would you say?
Japan? America? Those were my answers. They're not even the top five.
Every year, expert markets studies the productivity of countries around the globe. Their measurement stick isn't hours worked per week. Instead, they calculate average hours worked divided into the income generated toward the country's gross domestic product, GDP. In other words, how much dough the average citizen earns per hour of effort.
What they found flies in the face of the conventional wisdom. Myth number one, work more, be more productive. Though money isn't the only measure of success, when measuring productivity output across an entire country, tracking money earned per hour worked makes sense. The expert markets study found that the countries that worked the most per week actually earned the least.
For example while the average American worked 33 hours per week and earned GDP per hour worked in 2018 Luxembourg citizens worked on average 5 hours less per week and earned more Luxembourg isn the only example Norway workers hustled 6.5 hours less and earned $24.37 more. Ireland workers worked 1.1 hours less and earned $22.88 more. The list goes on. And while there are some outliers, the trend stays consistent.
The more hours worked, the less money earned. The fewer hours worked, the more money earned. Now there are a lot of factors at play here. and given the breadth of this study making a blanket statement like just work less and you'll make more money is ignorant but at a minimum this data tells us that being productive isn't all about jamming more hours into our workday which is far too easy to do when you run into a problem it's easy to throw more resources at it running behind for a meeting hit the gas and make up the lost time getting behind on a project hire someone else to pick up the slack push drive be aggressive sleep less work more never stop grinding never stop hustling never relent it's a mindset all too pervasive in our country especially in corporate america likely because we feel pressure to keep on working and hustling.
And when we do, we're occasionally rewarded with praise, personal satisfaction, and accomplishment. So like a pigeon that eventually finds a seed in a pile of pebbles, we keep pecking, searching for success, using the same strategy to solve the same problem, but mostly coming up with rocks in our mouth. While it may seem counterintuitive, the data shows that creating more value doesn't mean working longer. Being productive isn't about grinding as much as possible.
Success doesn't come from burning the candle at both ends, and well-being isn't associated with single-mindedly focusing on work. Even if it were, you can't be productive forever. Which leads us to myth number two. Myth number two, you can stay productive forever, just like those Instagram stars.
If you spend even a minute on Instagram, you've seen a dozen influencers pushing the hustle and grind culture. They post selfies at the gym at 4 a.m. They share their 42-point morning routine complete with meditation and gratitude journaling Then they celebrate their success which came from working a 20 day before hitting the sack and doing it all again tomorrow They glorify the push They put never stop on a pedestal They market the idea that they successful because they never quit and never give up. But they are lying by omission.
They omit the fact that to wake up at 4 a.m. and exercise for two hours, they have to go to bed at 8 or 9 p.m. They skip sharing the days that don't go as planned. They auto-post pictures of success while stuck in traffic trying to get home to sick kids and unable to be productive in the least.
These influencers misinterpret the meaning of productivity. They don't share the truth that there's a balance between working hard, staying focused and recovering. They're scared to admit that they can't always be productive, that they don't have the energy to work 24-7. Even if they did, they seem to ignore the science showing that our ability to perform at high levels requires us to change scenery from time to time.
According to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, our brain gets bored with unchanging circumstances, killing our productivity completely. Researchers show that staring at the same document, driving down the same road, or focusing on the same project for too long hinders your ability to think creatively and get work done. In their words, quote, prolonged attention to a single task actually hinders performance, while even brief diversions from a task can dramatically improve one's ability to focus on that task for prolonged periods, end quote. So just as we must make pit stops during a long car ride to eat, shake off the boredom, and stretch our legs, so too must we acknowledge that pushing 24-7 like the Instagram celebs pretend to do doesn't help.
It hurts. After all, what's the use in constantly hustling if those extra work hours aren't helping you get more done? Myth number three, do what the billionaires do and success will follow. It's far too easy for any imbecile on the internet to misrepresent their success.
Take selfies on the beach, share pics of your dinner out, post big smiling photos of yourself at semi-exotic locations, and you too can present the so-called perfect life to your followers. Anyone can talk the talk. What about the real rich folk though? What about the people who have demonstrated massive financial success and truly have the means to live a posh life?
Can we incorporate the tools and techniques they use to be productive and find our own success Years back I got caught up following the advice of successful people on the interwebs I listened to their podcast interviews read articles about their daily routines and took notes on the way they lived Before I knew it, I was waking up early, eating protein, drinking a tall glass of water, and taking a cold shower first thing in the morning. My thought was if I followed the routines of these billionaires, financial windfall would be right around the corner. It wasn't. My mistake was following the tips and tricks of people who were already financially successful instead of the tips and tricks of someone who was on their way to be.
What works for one won't work for the other. Case in point, many of the things I do today aren't the things that contributed to my success years ago. I exercise daily, eat a lot of protein, and journal. I'm also wealthier than I used to be.
But those facts aren't correlated. In fact, I didn't exercise, track protein intake, or journal at all when I first started my career. Instead, I grew myself and my business with a plan, a process for getting things done, a method for achieving goals, and by working on things that mattered, all while maintaining my values so as not to unbalance my family and personal life. Being a billionaire doesn't mean you're productive, and being productive won't make you a billionaire.
Billionaires become billionaires because they had specific knowledge at a specific time in specific circumstances that led them down a specific path. Your path is different. The mountains you wish to scale are different. Your circumstances and knowledge and challenges are all different, which means you get to define what success means to you.
You just listened to an excerpt from the book, Home Early, Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner by Michael Melberg. And congrats on the book. I love it when our contributing authors get their work published. If you've enjoyed his articles like I have, a great way to support him is to get his book.
You can get it on Amazon right now. Again, it's called Home Early, Destroy Distraction, Become Powerfully Productive, and Finish Work Before Dinner. or you can come by his site michaelmelberg.com and get the first chapter plus some worksheets for free. But I'll leave it there for today.
Hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you for being here and listening to me and for subscribing to the show and sharing it. Doing all that fun stuff means a lot. And I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.