The Best Self-Help is Free: The Benefits of Repetition to Productivity

This is Chapter 12 of The Best Self-Help is Free, a treatise by Mr. Stolyarov. You can read all chapters of this freely available treatise here.

An important question to ask when establishing any given productivity framework is how much maintenance the framework itself requires. Rules for productivity are of no use if just keeping them in mind all the time necessitates significant mental effort. Likewise, productive capital that breaks down frequently might be more of a liability than an asset. The more conceptually simple a productivity framework is, the easier it is to follow and thus the more reliably it brings about results. The more of any productive process that one can automate or reduce in complexity, the less maintenance a productivity framework will require.

One of the most reliable ways to reduce the amount of mental effort per unit of productive output is to create many extremely similar units of output in succession. The assembly line worker does this by performing an identical procedure on a multiplicity of different units of a product in sequence. Depending on the nature of one's endeavors, it is possible to do this to a greater or lesser degree in one's personal life as well.

Repetition of work greatly reduces the costs of transition from one endeavor to another. Ceasing to do something and beginning to do something else necessarily entails an expenditure of time and productive resources. Not only do one's physical assets need to be redirected, but one's state of mind must likewise be adjusted to fit the new activity. Some such adjustments are necessary just by virtue of the fact that, in order to flourish, people need to perform a multiplicity of tasks. But by delving extensively into one task, finishing it, and then moving on to another, such costs of transition are reduced as greatly as possible.