The blog

There are so many fac­tors influ­enc­ing how eas­i­ly we get things done — that much has been made clear to me over the years. How our office is designed, whether or not we get to ​”tick things off” our list often, how green the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment is where we work, how often we are inter­rupt­ed by sounds and move­ment (and col­leagues!) around us, and more, all influ­ence our state of mind and being. Even the weath­er has an effect on how we feel and work.

The Har­vard researchers Lee, Gino and Staats asked 198 peo­ple pri­or to a study how they thought the weath­er influ­ences our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. Over 80% of the peo­ple asked believed that nice weath­er would increase the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and that rainy or bad weath­er would reduce it. They were wrong.

Think of rain
The study that fol­lowed this ini­tial ques­tion, in which 598 393 tasks com­plet­ed by 111 peo­ple dur­ing 2,5 years were ana­lyzed, showed that the com­plete oppo­site was true. When the weath­er con­di­tions were bad, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty increased. 

Why? Well, the researchers inter­pret­ed their results to indi­cate that when the weath­er out­side is nice, we dis­tract our­selves by think­ing of the alter­na­tive activ­i­ties we could be doing instead of work­ing. When it is pour­ing out­side, we have no such thoughts. Then we work. Period.

Do this
How can we use this result to our advan­tage? At least in two ways, if you ask me.

• When the weath­er fore­cast pre­dicts bad weath­er, we can fill our sched­ule with a few extra tasks that need to be done, since we know that it will be eas­i­er to focus on our work and get things done.


• When we know that the weath­er will be nice, we can brace our­selves and exert a bit more effort to get today’s tasks done. Per­haps it is a good idea to make our­selves unavail­able to oth­ers dur­ing these days, so that we can work with­out being inter­rupt­ed and main­tain the focus we have man­aged to muster?

Instead of check­ing the weath­er fore­cast every five min­utes, let the automat­ing ser­vice IFTTT​.com email and tell you if rain is expect­ed for tomor­row. You cre­ate recipes in the ser­vice that takes care of keep­ing an eye at the skies. It is easy; I did it in less than a minute (since IFTTT helped me with that as well).

Opti­mize your days
If you take advan­tage of the myth-bust­ing result from the study and adapt how you plan your days accord­ing to the weath­er, not only will you be assist­ed by the weath­er gods in get­ting things done, but you will also be proac­tive in plan­ning your time so that you do not lose any of it due to the weath­er being unfa­vor­able (mean­ing, nice and call­ing for you to do outside).

What’s your rain dance like?
Does your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty peak when the skies are grey as well? Or, is your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty sub­ject to some oth­er influ­enc­ing fac­tor than the weath­er? Feel free to share in a comment.