April 6, 2025

I have no scientific basis for this, but I’ve long thought the so-called 80-20 rule applies to performance in the workplace.

My thinking goes that 20 percent of any given workforce knows how to maximize their personal productivity potential — and 80 percent would tell you that they are part of that 20 percent.

Distraction is a constant threat, whether you’re a student or a member of the workforce, and we don’t necessarily have the self-awareness to recognize when it’s taking aim at us. So I thought it was noteworthy that two separate but related bits of information on the topic crossed my desk in the same day last week.

The first was a recent report by the Sioux Falls School District that involved 11 surveys and more than 12,000 responses, largely around cellphone use in schools.

Parents, teachers, principals and students responded, and it was an interesting contrast at times. Not surprising, middle school and high school students overwhelmingly thought cellphone use should be allowed essentially anytime and anywhere at school, including in the classroom.

But what struck me most was that while 79 percent of high school parents said they believe cellphones in the classroom distract from learning, only 49 percent said students should not be allowed to use their phones during the academic day. And while 95 percent of high school teachers also said the phones distract from learning, one-third of them still said the phones should be allowed during the academic day.

More than half of all high school teachers also said they had to redirect students away from cellphones and smartwatches.

The Sioux Falls School District allows phone use before and after school, at lunch and in between classes.

But nationwide, there’s a growing shift toward banning or restricting them at a statewide level. Here’s a map I found from early this year:

“It doesn’t matter if you live in a big city or a rural town, urban or suburban, all children are struggling and need that seven-hour break from the pressures of phones and social media during the school day,” said Kim Whitman, co-founder of the Phone Free Schools Movement, in this Associated Press report.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t even understand why this is a consideration in a classroom or why phones would be additive to the school day other than before and after the final bell. We are in dire need of higher-performing students to fulfill the needs of the workplace in the years ahead. Minimizing the multiple distractions a cellphone presents is small step toward bringing the focus we need on better performance.

And as an employer, my vote is for students who are more comfortable speaking face-to-face with each other and eventually in the workplace — giving them access to phones between class and at lunch doesn’t help.

Even as adults, we need guidance and guardrails to help foster our productivity.

Case in point: a post I read this week making the rounds on the internet that supposedly contained part of an email sent by CEO Elon Musk to every Tesla employee in 2018.

I, of course, can’t prove the legitimacy of it, but the message is worth sharing nonetheless.

In it, Musk supposedly spells out seven recommendations for improved productivity in the workplace. The first three had to do with meetings.

“Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time,” he reportedly wrote. “Please get rid of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.”

Also get rid of frequent meetings, unless an urgent matter is involved, he continued.

“Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value,” it went on. “It is not rude to leave. It is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.”

Communication also should take “the shortest path necessary to get the job done,” he reportedly wrote. “Not through the ‘chain of command.’ Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.”

As a leader, does some of this make you a bit uneasy? If so, maybe consider why. Musk’s directives recognize that his employees add the most value when focused on work product. Meetings and calls that are unfocused, inefficient or don’t apply enough to them aren’t additive to the broader organizational goals. Clearly communicating objectives and changes, managing through measurable metrics and allowing free-flowing communication up and down the organizational chart lead to greater productivity.

Musk concluded his reported memo by inviting the team to contact leadership “if there is something you think should be done to make Tesla execute better or allow you to look forward to coming to work more.”

Maybe worth posing the same to your workforce?

And I think it would be interesting to ask it of the parents and students who took that survey too. “What could our schools do to execute better or allow you to look forward to coming to school more?” The answers to that could be far more useful than how they feel about cell phones.

I think it’s safe to say there never have been as many opportunities to poke into productivity as digital media presents to those of all ages today. But the increasing complexity of the work we need to do and the outcomes we need students to achieve demand we find better ways to manage those potential distractions.