Most people into productivity (including myself) had never heard of the most important breakthrough in the history of productivity or the person behind it.I wanted to understand why the 50x shift happened in the first place and how to replicate it with knowledge work instead of just manual work. After all, who doesn’t want a 50x productivity boost?

The Greatest Productivity Hack 

In 1977, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor">Frederick Winslow Taylor</a> was ranked the #1 contributor ever to management thought and practice by a panel of business and economics historians beating out the likes of John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Alfred Sloan, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford.If you read <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker">Drucker</a>, there is no confusion about the root cause of the productivity revolution. It all goes back to one person — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor">Frederick Winslow Taylor</a>.

The Maker of the Modern World (Part 2)

You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.

Taylor was later diagnosed with the eye condition of Astigmatism. A condition which today is easy to diagnose and fix. Straining to focus on words was what caused the headaches.Taylor dropped out. So, by a weird quirk of fate, Taylor went to the shop floor as an apprentice machinist rather than Harvard to become a lawyer.

The Maker of the Modern World (Part 3)

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Winslow_Taylor">Frederick Winslow Taylor</a> is the creator of the science of management. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Drucker">Peter Drucker</a> attributes almost all the important management innovations in the last century:<ul><li>industrial engineering</li><li>work enrichment</li><li>job rotation</li><li>assembly line</li><li>total quality management</li><li>quality circle</li><li>continuous improvement</li><li>lean manufacturing</li></ul>“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.” - Peter Drucker

The Maker of the Modern World (Part 1)

The principles of scientific management “can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, our universities, and our governmental departments.”

An entire week's work in less than an hour

<ul><li>For hundreds of years there had been no increase in the ability of workers to turn out goods or to move goods.</li><li>Over the long run, productivity determines what governments societies adopt.</li><li>If productivity drops for too long, revolutions happen.</li></ul>

More productive without working more hours

The Ultimate RULE of Productivity and why most of what you know about productivity is incorrect. 

Peter Drucker, one of the most respected management thinkers in history, stated these words at the close of the 20th century. Drucker isn’t just talking about 50x productivity for the smartest…