Tag: productivity

• Canada has an existential productivity problem

  

  Canada has a lot going for it:

  By land mass it is the second-largest country in the world, with the longest coastline. Bookended by the vast Pacific and Atlantic oceans it has enormous trading advantages, alongside access to the largely untapped Arctic to its north. It is a net energy exporter; it has the third-largest proven oil reserves and is the fifth-largest producer of natural gas — but it also boasts large deposits of critical minerals vital to the green energy transition. And, of course, it borders the world’s largest economy.

  And yet:

  By purchasing power parity, its economy is ranked 15th globally by size, behind the likes of Turkey, Italy and Mexico. The OECD has forecast Canadian per capita gross domestic product growth up to 2060 to be the lowest among advanced nations.

  The problem:

  Poor productivity is at the heart of the country’s growth challenges. In an hour a Canadian worker produces just over 70 per cent of what an American can — that’s below the euro area and even the UK based on 2022 data. Many would have expected the resource-rich economy to benefit as globalisation powered forward, but its relative labour productivity has actually slipped since 2000.

  The solution is probably a simple one: We need to innovate, invest more in R&D, and create stronger links between research and Canadian businesses. But executing on this has proven difficult:

  Enormous efforts have been made to understand why businesses in Canada invest so much less in R&D than their counterparts in the U.S., much of Western Europe, South Korea and Japan. Is it our reliance on the export of natural resources and agricultural products? Is it reduced incentives to innovate for our heavily regulated and profitable oligopolies in sectors such as banking and telecommunications? Is it our decades-old reliance on incentivizing industrial R&D through federal and provincial tax credits?

  It’s hard to imagine a more important topic affecting all Canadians. So I would encourage you to read this recent opinion piece by David Naylor (president emeritus of the University of Toronto) and Stephen J. Troops (president of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research).

  It’s a balanced piece. Neither of them are arguing for “empty credentialism” or for research that remains in academia. What matters is what we do with the work that our smartest minds are doing. And the overarching point is that innovative research needs to find demand within Canadian businesses.

  Right now, we’re very bad at this. That needs to change.

  Chart: Globe and Mail

  2023.10.28

• Why construction productivity sucks and how it might be fixed

  

  We are living through an inflationary hard cost environment. In speaking with one of our cost consultants the other week, he was predicting that overall we could see another 9-10% increase next year here in the Toronto area. Now, who knows what will ultimately happen. But this is top of mind for everyone in the industry and it will continue to impact how and what we build.

  One of the challenges with construction — and this is will documented — is that unlike the manufacturing industry, which has seen sustained productivity improvements over the years, the construction industry has seen relatively little productivity growth over the last half century. In fact, you could argue that it’s been mostly negative in recent history.

  The obvious thought is why not just apply what we’ve been doing in manufacturing to construction. There is, of course, a long standing tradition of trying to do this, with varying degrees of success. But at the end of the day, building a house remains different than building something like a car.

  Probably the key difference is that every construction site has unique constraints and conditions and so the process is constantly changing. Whereas the innovations that Henry Ford pioneered were centered around interchangeable parts and a well-defined process that could be repeated millions of times to generate the exact same output.

  From what I can tell, there seems to be two ways in which we can think about improving productivity. One, we can try to be more Ford-like and drive standardization. This means more off-site factory construction and more standardization. This is the typical “pre-fab” approach and companies like R-Hauz, as well as many others, are already successfully doing this. The trade-off is less design flexibility.

  The second option has to do with better software and hardware. What if we had significantly better “digital twins” for our buildings such that we could see and experience it in 3D before it is physically built? I’m thinking strap on VR goggles and do a walkthrough with the team. This could allow us to pinpoint all of the issues before they actually happen on the job site.

  In parallel to this, what if we had far better on-site automation and robotics to then execute on the above digital twin? Think 3D printing concrete instead of using traditional forms. This is all happening and being worked on, but it doesn’t seem to be at a point where it is changing our industry. But it is exciting to think that it may one day.

  Photo by Di on Unsplash

  2021.11.27

• Economies of agglomeration in London

  The media tends to describe agglomeration economies — one of the benefits of big urban areas — as being entirely serendipitous. Minimize travel. Maximize chance encounters at the local coffee shop. And then all of a sudden patents will go up and new startups will emerge. That does that happen, I’m sure, but there’s a bit more structure to a lot of these encounters. Economies of agglomeration is not just about serendipity. It is about the benefits of and the decision to concentrate economic activity.

  

  Last week, a think tank in the North of England (IPPR North) published a report outlining, among other things, job creation and productivity across England. Based on these metrics, London and the South East dominate, with “productivity” in London being by far the highest. Almost half of England’s new jobs over the last decade were in these two regions. Above is a chart from the Financial Times. The trade-off is wealth and income inequality. And the report does look to how the government could address this centralization of power and wealth.

  Like Singapore’s low fertility rate, this is an instance of leaning into the wind.

  2020.02.23

• The paperless developer

  

  I’m working on integrating an iPad (back) into my workflow as a developer.

  I used an iPad 2 (c. 2011) while I was completing my MBA. I mainly used it for taking notes and saving money on hard copy textbooks. But after it got old and painfully slow, I stopped using it. It was a nice to have, but I never felt the need to replace it with a newer model.

  Lately, however, I have been hearing from a number of developer friends that an iPad – along with an Apple Pencil – is simply invaluable for people, like me, who are constantly reviewing, signing and marking up documents and drawings. So I have decided to reevaluate how I work.

  I am still getting set up, but I can already see how it is going to dramatically streamline some of my workflows (for one, there will be much less scanning).

  I am currently on the hunt for apps that can help with floor plan designs – something that will work like trace paper but with dimensions. We spend a lot time working to make these perfect. It’s the core product, after all. So far I’ve found TracePro by morpholio. Maybe you all know of something better.

  Outside of the office, I also think I’ll be able to replace my laptop when it comes to writing this blog and editing photos on the road. There’s Lightroom for iPad and all you need is an SD card reader to download all of your photos to it. (Too bad it isn’t possible to connect my Fujifilm directly.)

  I’ll let you know how all of this goes. But if any of you have already gone paperless, please feel free to leave your tips in the comment section below.

  Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

  2019.01.31

• No is the second best answer

  

  In addition to email, phone, and text, we live in a world where you can also easily and directly connect with people on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Swarm, WhatsApp, Slack, as well as on many other platforms.

  As much as I love tech, I personally find this exhausting and far too distracting. So early last year I turned off all social media and messaging notifications – on both mobile and desktop – other than on the two platforms that I most commonly use. (Facebook and LinkedIn are not on this shortlist.)

  The result is that I am now missing (and consequently ignoring) a ton of direct messages. But as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as too much information, just poor filters. If you really want to reach me, I am not hard to find. You’re reading my public and daily journal right now.

  Zooming out from social media DMs, I am reminded of one of my all-time favorite Seth Godin posts where he talks about the value in saying no – which is, of course, just another kind of filter:

  No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

  No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.

  And nobody should feel bad for saying no. A friend of mine likes to remind me that no is the second best answer. Yes is obviously the best, but a firm no is far better than an indecisive maybe that leaves everyone wondering what to do next.

  I should probably say no more often than I do. But I am working on it. Every now and then I remind myself that there’s huge value in saying no. Today’s post is that reminder and maybe it will be yours too.

  Photo by Kai Pilger on Unsplash

  2018.02.01

• How to achieve peak productivity

  

  Lately I’ve been finding that I need to divide my time between multitasking and blocks of uninterrupted time. The multitasking phase is doing calls, responding to emails in 3 seconds, going from meeting to meeting, and so on. It’s a mode that many of us probably exist in virtually all of the time.

  But I can’t stay in this mode all of the time. I think of it as short attention span mode. There are times when I need blocks of uninterrupted time so that I can “go deep.” One example would be to review drawings. I really need to focus so that I can think of all of the externalities associated with the decisions being made.

  This is related to my post about managers and makers, but it’s also the focus of a recent book by Cal Newport called, Deep Work: The Secret to Achieving Peak Productivity. You can read more about the book here at Knowledge@Wharton, but I wanted to highlight two concepts. The first is this equation:

  High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus).
  

  Obviously the argument here is that if you want to maximize your output, you need to increase the intensity of your focus. Minimize distractions. Ratchet up the intensity. There’s only so much time in the day.

  Newport gives the example of Adam Grant. He is a New York Times bestselling author and the youngest tenured professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. 

  He is so committed to intensity of focus that he batches all of this teaching into the fall semester, allowing him to truly focus on the students. He’s the highest rated teacher at Wharton. At the same time, this lets him focus on research and writing during the spring and summer semesters. He’s also known to regularly use auto-of-office responders when he’s in the office, but needs to focus.

  The second concept is that of “attention residue.” The idea here is that when we switch from some Task A to some other Task B, our attention doesn’t immediately snap over. A portion of our attention remains on the original task and distracts us from fully focusing. There’s residue.

  An example of this would be when you’re working on something and you see an email come in. As soon as you turn your attention to that notification, your attention gets divided. And even if you don’t immediately respond to that email, a portion of your attention now remains with that uncompleted task. It lingers in the mind.

  The above probably makes intuitive sense to a lot of you, but in many ways our work culture today does not encourage intensity of focus.

  Thanks for reading today. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that the best way to learn new things is to not simply read about it, but to share it with others. That’s one of the reasons I blog and hopefully you find that valuable.

  2017.04.08

• Move fast and…

  

  I like this article – called Speed as a Habit – by Dave Girouard, CEO of the personal finance startup Upstart. It’s all about the importance of speed in business. Speed wins.

  “When you think about it, all business activity really comes down to two simple things: Making decisions and executing on decisions. Your success depends on your ability to develop speed as a habit in both.”

  What makes this topic so interesting is that, for a number of reasons, speed has a tendency to get sacrificed. It might be because the plan isn’t yet perfect or because there’s a belief that Y can’t happen until X is complete. 

  Perhaps it’s because the value of speed is harder to measure than the value of “perfection.”

  I particularly like the notion that you know you’re going fast enough when there’s a bit of discomfort and you’re feeling stretched, but not overstretched in an unsustainable way. Here’s another excerpt from Dave’s article:

  “While I was at Google, Larry Page was extremely good at forcing decisions so fast that people were worried the team was about to drive the car off a cliff. He’d push it as far as he could go without people crossing that line of discomfort. It was just his fundamental nature to ask, “Why not? Why can’t we do it faster than this?” and then wait to see if people started screaming. He really rallied everyone around this theory that fast decisions, unless they’re fatal, are always better.”

  A big part of this, I find, is momentum. An object at rest stays at rest. But an object in motion stays in motion. Remember this law? In this context, it is decisions that power motion and help to build and sustain momentum.

  Of course, the ideal outcome is both lightning fast and high quality decisions.

  The title of this post is homage to Facebook’s original corporate motto: “Move fast and break things.” This slogan was later adjusted to “Move fast with stable infrastructure”, which I think demonstrates our constant struggle between speed and quality.

  2017.01.21

• I love work

  

  I spent this morning drafting the third post in my BARED blog series. First one, here. Second one, here. If any of you would like to be featured next, or know of someone who you think should be featured next, please send me an email or tweet.

  At this point, I need to move onto other things today. But I did want to mention a post that Ev Williams (Blogger, Twitter, Medium…) recently penned where he talks about keeping technology in check and the drain of being always connected.

  Here are two interesting excerpts:

  “I’ve spent the last 20 years breathing and building the internet. So I have a good sense for the benefits of always-available instant access and all it entails. I also have a strong appreciation for the drain being constantly connected can cause on your health and sense of well-being.”

  “Building companies requires a ton of work — and I love work. But I’ve also found that working 24/7 no longer produces the best work product or the best life experience (not that it ever did).”

  This really resonates with me, as I am sure it does for many of you. I like being always connected. I like waking up every morning and writing a blog post. I like saying yes to things. And I, like Ev, love work. 

  But it can be draining when your ambition seems to exceed your body’s ability to keep on going. And when that happens, you no longer produce your best work, which is the whole point. 

  So in the end, I think we all need these little checks and balances. Exercise is number one for me. It is well worth the time it takes. What do you do for balance?

  2016.12.04

• Tools of the trade and productivity hacks

  Like a lot of people, I am always on the lookout for productivity tools and hacks. This is an old post, but I love the idea of getting rid of voicemail (I hate checking it) and of 3×5 cards where you focus yourself on 3-5 important tasks each day.

  So today I thought I would share some of the tools, apps, and hacks that I use on a regular basis. Then if you feel like it, you can share your tools and approaches in the comments so we come up with a good running list.

  I’ll start with software and then move to actions.

  Google Drive: I have my Google Drive mapped to my computer and I store everything on it. That way I can access any file I need from my phone while I’m away from my desk. There’s also Dropbox and Box for moving around large files.

  Evernote: I am trying to go paperless. Right now I photo scan almost all of my documents into Evernote (including business cards). I really should invest in an actual scanner. If you know of a good one for this purpose, let me know. Again, the advantage of this approach is that all of my documents are accessible on mobile.

  Asana: I have used Asana off and on over the years for managing team projects. (We used it for Dirt.) Everyone needs to be committed to it though. And we all know how sticky email is for communication/assigning tasks. But if you can get in the habit of listing and assigning action items during or right after meetings, I think it can be a great way to keep projects moving. 

  Slack: I have a tendency to always want to keep everyone on a team informed about what is going on. That way nobody is left out and people can speak up if they see something concerning. I got in the habit of this when I was at Morguard. That was the way we did things in development and I think it’s a sound approach. Today, we have Slack to help do that.

  Buffer: I use Buffer to schedule and share all of my social posts. Some people swear by Hootsuite, but I love the simplicity of Buffer. It couldn’t be easier to add posts to your queues across multiple platforms.

  Pocket: This is my save-it-and-read-it-later tool. I use Pocket to keep a running list of articles and links I find interesting so that when I sit down every morning to write this blog, I have material to refer to.

  Now let’s switch gears to actions…

  Notifications Off: I have all notifications off on my phone during the day (except for phone calls). The temptation to check my phone when it goes off is too great, so I keep it completely silent. It doesn’t even vibrate. Going even further, I also have notifications off for most non-essential apps.

  Directing Messages: I am trying to keep messages directed to Twitter, text, and email. That means I am generally terrible at responding to messages on Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on. But I’m okay with that. There are simply too many channels to stay on top of.

  Routines: When I first started writing this daily blog, people would ask me why I don’t take the weekends off. But I actually think it would be harder to stay disciplined if I did that. By doing it every day it has become a non-negotiable routine. I try to think of productivity in terms of regular actions.

  Today’s Tasks: I am starting to do this more and more. It’s easy to end up with an overwhelmingly long list of things to do. So it can be incredibly valuable to ask yourself: What are the most important things for me to complete today? Then go and do those things.

  Gym: For me, lifting weights is one of the best ways to stay productive. It’s a natural energy booster and I find that it gives me a mental clarity that I just don’t get from anything else. I am not the same person when I fall behind in my workouts.

  What do you use and do to get shit done?

  2016.08.26

• UberPOOL is the new networking tool

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  UberPOOL launched in Toronto last week. It was tested in Toronto last summer and it’s been available in other cities for awhile, but now it’s officially here.

  If you’re not yet familiar with UberPOOL, it basically allows you to share your ride with other people who are headed in the same direction. I’ve heard some people on Twitter complain about route inefficiencies, but I’ve had only positive experiences with it so far.

  The disadvantage of this system is that it’s a bit slower. You’re stopping to pick up other people on the way. But the advantages of this system are twofold. First, it’s cheaper, which means it’s already starting to eat into my transit usage. And second, you get to meet new people everywhere you go.

  This second piece is really interesting to me, because I place a lot of emphasis on getting to know as many people as I can. That’s one of the reasons I blog every day and one of the reasons I spend a lot of time on Twitter. I get exposed to people that I might otherwise not meet. And I believe there’s huge value in that. I want to sit down and have a coffee with everyone. (Time doesn’t always allow that to happen.)

  Because since the beginning of cities, personal connections is one of the things that has made urban life so valuable. Here’s an excerpt from a CityLab article published back in 2013:

  “If you look at the interaction patterns of cities,” Pan says, “You will see that they grow super-linearly with population with the same growth rate as productivity, as innovation, as crime, as HIV, as STDs.”

  All of those facets of urban life have appeared until now to share a somewhat mysterious mathematical relationship. But this research suggests that this particular super-linear growth rate is directly tied to how dense cities enable us to connect to each other. As cities grow, our connections to each other grow by an exponential factor. And those connections are the root of productivity.

  “What really happens when you move to a big city is you get to know a lot of different people, although they are not necessarily your ‘friends,’” Pan says. “These are the people who bring different ideas, bring different opportunities, and meetings with other great people that may help you.”

  Clearly there can also be some negative externalities associated with urban life – such as crime and disease. But it’s also clear that for a many people, the benefits far outweigh the potential negatives. Big cities tend to make us more productive. And as we’ve discussed here before, they can also bring us happiness in ways not associated with economic success.

  If you’ve used UberPOOL before, I would be curious to hear about your experiences in the comment section below.

  2016.01.24