Worker productivity has fallen, and experts are puzzled. I’m not. We’re all just tired of watching our industries and economies bleed away the human and physical resources we need to fulfill our daily needs. Here’s how I’m fighting for one of two important changes: reducing our personal carbon footprint, and becoming more productive.
We need to make major changes to our lives–or we need to make changes in the lives of those we care for. Unfortunately, it’s unclear which option is the right one. We don’t really know if being productive and less wasteful is more important than being in harmony with nature.
If you’re at all interested in your own productivity, then you’ve got to figure out how to make use of every bit of time you spend in your life. If you’re a parent, then you have to figure out how to get every bit of energy you give your kids out of your house–that’s productivity. If you’re a worker, then you have to figure out how to make the most of every bit of time you spend at work. And when you look at the productivity of your work, you have to decide how to spend your time differently.
What we need is more time. Not more time for ourselves, but more time to do the kind of work and the kind of work that is most likely to make the most difference in the world.
The first place to start is the workplace. There are two key ways to cut down on the time we spend in work: reduce our individual carbon footprints, and figure out how to make work more productive.
The first way we can reduce our personal carbon footprint is to pay more attention to what we do with our time. We have to start with changing our habits when we get home from work.
A report last year from the European Environment Agency (EEA) revealed that a growing number of Europeans are increasingly using their time at home to do things other than cooking, cleaning, and taking care of their families. The “time to relax” category includes more time spent on work-related tasks, which can lead to a decrease in productivity.
The EEA study found that the percentage of Europeans who use all their time at home to do things other than housework has increased from around 20 percent in 2003 to over 27 percent since 2012