Starting a productivity consciousness

Might it help if people started a "productivity consciousness"? First would be setting up measures for one's own productivity - that includes defining "productivity" too. Then making a continuous record of one's productivity. Some people might also measure and keep track of a group overall productivity, too. And extending to the group of all America and of all other groupings, including the whole world's productivity.

"Productivity" seems a better measure of the economy's performance than is "profit." Profit can include moneys made off of something that actually did not undergo improvement by value added, for example, and without value added, although profit increased locally, the overall value of the system did not improve; it was just a shift of money. Productivity seems a better measure than profit, of the economy's performance.

Defining productivity would be a key thing to do; so for starters, each individual could define his/her accomplishments that provided productivity by the person. Productivity could be as basic as preparing a cup of coffee for oneself this morning: checkmark, "one cup of coffee produced, out of the coffee-making resources at hand, work done by myself accomplished." I expect to do more formatting of my latest sci fi novel today; that appears to be planning, part of productivity: "I produced a plan to do more formatting on the novel I started writing last year."

Establishing a viewpoint of "productivity" in oneself conceivably could get more awareness of productivity in one's own life, and hopefully that viewpoint will remain when looking outward as being part of the American economy.

"Productivity" would be made specific at times, such as a foreman measuring how many 6-32x1" screws got put into the widget today by the crew, for example. All the other things that went on to support those screws insertion are minimized in that particular measurement, such as the coffee breaks, the phone call home to check on baby's getting-well progress, the ordering of more screws for the widget to be used tomorrow; yet they all are productivity too.

So some forms of productivity may be more "significant" than others seem to be; thus maybe there needs to be a category like "productivity affecting the American balance of trade with the rest of the world."

In this focus on productivity it is clear that I, as a retiree, am still productive, writing this blog post, despite the fact that I am neither employed to do so nor being paid to do so; yet at least in my fantasy, it could help the economy if read and understood by folks. This is an important aspect of the proposed "productivity viewpoint" in that it does not need to be defined by doing something that someone pays you to do. Usefulness is more the criteria. Usefulness to oneself and usefulness to others. And usefulness in the overall picture, however wide that picture is selected to be in any given scenario.

There is both "potential usefulness" as well as "actualized usefulness," analogous to planting an oak's acorn, vs a giant oak tree that has grown from an acorn's guiding pattern; grown out of, and into, the environment that the growing tree found itself in and being part of all along. Thus "potential usefulness" is a valid parameter, as well as the potential usefulness of the environment the acorn finds during its efforts to produce an oak tree.

Somewhere such a "productivity consciousness" would come back to apply to the specific focus of Bernanke in the referenced article, put in terms of the "economic outlook" and most likely to the economy itself.