The Productivity Report aims to bridge the gap between what we know about productivity from research and how we carry out our work.

In so many areas of life, we heed advice gained from research. Reading to young children improves their development. Eating fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, as part of a balanced diet, helps to keep us healthy. Walking at least 20 minutes a day might extend our natural lifespan. Sure, sometimes research results flip-flop, and what we thought we knew turned out not to be the case. Red wine was healthy; then it wasn’t; then it was again. And sometimes we have trouble keeping up with recommendations, especially when the benefits only come in the long term, and we don’t get much immediate gratification. Exercise, diet, and even financial wellbeing are good examples.

But when it comes to productivity, we really blow it. There’s very little advice about how to be our most productive selves that we actually follow. We know shouldn’t get sucked into email, but we do. Multitasking is a recipe for disaster, and yet we can’t help ourselves but to juggle three or four things at once.

Well, first off, most of what you thought you knew about productivity isn’t true at all.

And secondly, it’s very difficult to find concrete advice to follow.

The Productivity Report, started in 2015, is an attempt to summarize research about productivity and point to concrete actions that people and organizations can follow to improve their productivity.