Introduction
You probably hear phrases like "I'm overwhelmed," "I don't have time," "I'm drowning" all the time.
And it's not just a feeling. Statistics show that we are indeed working more and more, especially in office jobs.
In France, for example, weekly working hours for managers increased from 42.6 to 44.1 hours between 2003 and 2011. Almost two extra hours per week in less than ten years.
Working more in the age of machines
The strangest part is that this rise in working time happened while we've been inventing machines for centuries to save time.
Tractors to farm, cars to move, industrial machines, robots, computers.
Before, everything had to be done by hand. Today, a big part of physical work is handled by tools and technology.
The economist John Maynard Keynes even predicted, almost a hundred years ago, that with productivity gains we would only work fifteen hours a week in the 21st century.
In theory, that makes perfect sense.
When productivity actually reduces work
Take a concrete example: clothing.
Today, a t-shirt often costs under ten euros, roughly the equivalent of about an hour of work at minimum wage in France.
In the Middle Ages, producing a single garment took weeks of work, from spinning to weaving wool.
For the same result, we went from weeks to about one hour of work.
This effect is especially visible in industrial jobs.
In the 19th century, a factory worker often worked more than one hundred hours per week. Today, legal working time is around thirty-five hours in France. Machines, combined with social movements, did enable a massive reduction in working time.
Why office workers work more
The paradox shows up most clearly in office jobs.
While productivity reduced working time in factories, it did not produce the same effect in offices. In fact, hours increased.
Thirty years ago, office work was mostly paper and pen.
Then computers arrived, supposedly to speed up communication and information processing.
In practice, those tools often created new inefficiencies.
We do not necessarily do more work, but we spend a lot more time at work, juggling tasks, messages, emails, and interruptions.
The economist Robert Solow summarized this with a famous line:
"You can see computers everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
The real problem is not technology
The problem is not that digital tools exist. It's how they are used.
Constant task switching, being interrupted by notifications, answering emails nonstop, or browsing without clear intent turns tools into sources of wasted time and mental fatigue.
In that context, trying to "be more productive" should never mean working more.
The goal is the exact opposite.
As explained in what productivity is really for, the goal is not to increase the amount of work, but to free time and energy for what truly matters.
Regain control instead of reacting
New technologies should free us from repetitive, uninteresting work.
But in reality, we often become so dependent on these tools that we end up suffering them.
So the goal of this approach is not to add more and more digital tools. It's to learn to master them, detach from them when needed, and use them in service of organization, focus, and creativity.
Technical progress should not trap us in more work. It should help us take control of our time again.