Use the Hawthorne Effect to Boost Productivity

So my buddy on Twitter, he sold his company a couple of years ago for, like, $75 million. Pretty good. Pretty good business guy, pretty good entrepreneur. He knows what he’s doing. He knows his stuff. He shared with me this productivity hack that he had recently stumbled on. That was mind blowing. It was amazing.

For him, at least. He was like, this is incredible. And I was looking into it, and I was like, wow, how is this so powerful? So I went down this. This rabbit hole, and what I discovered was this concept called the Hawthorne effect. And it’s the whole reason why this particular productivity hack is so damn powerful. See, back in, like, the 1930s, this company, I think, was General Electric. They commissioned a study of one of their facilities, one of their plants, one of their factories called Hawthorne works. And they were curious.

What they were measuring was the effect on light on worker productivity. So what they were curious to see, well, if we turn up the lights brighter, will that increase productivity? If we turn down the lights, if we make them dimmer, will that increase productivity? They were just curious to see what’s the effect of light on worker productivity. And so the researchers, they go into the factory, and they do their study. They turn up the lights, and they’re like, wow, this increased productivity. That’s amazing. More light equals more productivity. Very cool. So then they do the other side of it.
They turn down the lights. Let’s see what happens this time and again, their minds were blown. They’re like, holy crap. Productivity went up again. So, how can this be? They’re scratching their heads. It’s a bit of a mystery they can’t quite understand. Well, how is it that regardless of what we do, it seems to increase productivity? Turn up the lights. More productive.
Turn down the lights. More productive. Like, what’s happening here? Well, about 30 years later, this guy. I think his name was John French. I might be getting that wrong, but we’ll call him that. He comes up with a hypothesis that what was actually happening there had nothing to do with the lights and everything to do with the fact that the workers knew they were being observed. And this gave birth to the Hawthorne effect, which has been studied and has been. Has been proven time and time again, which is that we change our behaviors when we know we’re being observed.
And this is why you’ll see signs that say, you know, hey, smile. You’re on camera. Or, you know, just having a camera in an area observing will change people’s behavior. Even if, you know, it’s not plugged in, like, it still has an effect. And so the Hawthorne effect says that we change our behaviors when we know that we’re being observed. And this seems like a pretty duh statement, but how can we leverage this to become more productive? That’s the interesting question, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, a creative, somebody working from home, somebody who’s like, you’re working from home all the time. It can be more powerful in a lot of ways when you’re working right next to somebody, right, there’s a, there’s a powerful synergy, which is why, come to think of it, some of my best study sessions were when I was studying with a friend in the library. Just simple.
Having an accountability buddy there with me. It was very, very powerful. And so my buddy, he was sharing with me that he had recently stumbled on this company called focusmate. And what they do is they connect strangers across the globe into these little silent working sessions. So you, like, you log in and you’re like, hey, I’m going to work for 30 minutes. They pair you with somebody else who’s going to work for 30 minutes. You both turn on your cameras, and so you’re sitting on Zoom just staring at each other or at your screen, right? And you get to work. They don’t see your screen, I don’t think, but you just sit there staring at each other, working, and you’re both on camera.
And simply being on camera for that period of time has this amazing effect on one’s productivity. And then at the end of that half an hour or at the beginning, I guess one of the important things is that you tell the other person, here’s what I’m working on. Here’s what I’m going to do. And at the end, you touch base. Did you get the thing done right? And so just knowing you have this little layer of external accountability has this effect of drastically improving one’s productivity. And we can use this tactic to our advantage if we want to become more productive very simply by finding ourselves an accountability buddy. You could use a resource like focus mate. You know, find a buddy who works on a very similar circadian rhythm as you, and you’re like, do your deep work at the same time each day.

But just that one little hack can make you so much more productive. And it kind of blew my mind. And so I’m looking at ways that I can incorporate this into my own life because I am a, I am a hermit when it comes to working. And I know that I’m much more productive when people are looking over my shoulder because I’m much more self conscious about what I’m working on on my screen. I’m less likely to open up a tab, watch a YouTube video, or play some chess if I know somebody’s watching over my shoulder. So think about how you might be able to utilize this in your own life and let me know how it goes with you guys. And that’s gonna do it for me. We’ll catch you in the next episode.