Is Science Relevant to Productivity For Business Owners?

Do you think business owners should know some science? Particularly women business owners?

February 11 is International Women and Girls in Science Day, and it’s important for everyone (not just women) to understand how science works. It helps you make smart decisions in business and life.

Science is a pretty broad umbrella, including plate tectonics, biology, evolution, the gut biome, neuroscience, astronomy (that’s not the one that claims random planetary configurations control your life), physics, quantum physics (that’s not the *stuff* people like Deepak Chopra spout), meteorology, and more.

What they have in common is that scientists investigate things, analyze them, and use the data to draw conclusions. Sometimes they think they know the way something will turn out, and then they’re wrong. Also, just as technology keeps growing, so does science. 

For instance, before we ended up with better imaging techniques, we believed that when brain cells die that’s it, no new ones take their place. But now we know how plastic the human brain is, and it can be rewired – helpful when you want to build new healthy habits. 

The saber-toothed animals found in the La Brea Tar Pits were originally thought to be tigers. But DNA and other new technologies show that they belong to the cat family but aren’t tigers, so now they’re known as saber-toothed cats.

How science helps business owners improve productivity in the workplace

You don’t have to major in science to understand how it works so you can evaluate claims. For example, the news told us that red wine was good for us, but that wasn’t actually what the science said. (The science came down positive for resveratrol, which is found in grapes used to make red wine.) 

The news also claimed that moderate drinking is good for you, but more recently it looks like regular alcohol intake isn’t great for us. Although our ancestors were fermenting up a storm, their adult beverages had a much lower alcohol percentage since they didn’t have 21st-century production methods.

When you know how the brain works, at least from a high level (you don’t have to be a neuroscientist), you can then work the way your brain is best suited to work. That gives you a more productive day every day. 

The scientific method helps you when you’re testing out a new product or service or marketing method. Gather data on how it performed for a period of time, and then measure it against your existing products or methods. Determine if there’s an audience for your new idea by using data from your clients based on research tools like surveys or just asking questions.

Science helps you improve time management too

There is a lot of advice out there about how to be more productive. If it’s not based on science, some of it may have a grain of truth in it, some may be true for some people and not others, and some may be a complete waste of time. 

For example, take the advice that you should get up at 5 am. Please, take it. Away, somewhere no one has to hear it ever again. This falls under the “true for some people and not others” category. If you are a lion sleep chronotype (you might think of yourself as an “early bird”) then a 5 am wake-up call could be a great start to your most productive day.

But for the rest of us – bear, wolf, and dolphin chronotypes – in other words, not morning people, this is objectively bad advice. I’m a bear. My most productive time is later in the morning, so waking up early accomplishes nothing but makes me more tired. 

There is science behind the concept of sleep chronotypes (though I’m sure it will advance in future years too). Save the admin and undemanding tasks and decisions during the low-energy times of day. If you want to have a more productive workplace, have everyone working on their most demanding tasks during the time that they are best able to work on those tasks. 

Analyzing data from an objective standpoint helps you make good decisions, so you’re not wasting time chasing things that don’t move the business forward. You might be most familiar with this in marketing: you try an approach and after some period of time you look at your metrics to see if it’s hitting the performance you want. 

If yes, easy decision: continue doing what works until it doesn’t. If no, you might decide to go in a different direction, or you need to change something. Either way, you’re not continuing on with something that isn’t working.

And as new info comes in, you adjust. For example, five or six years ago you might have chosen certain social media platforms to attract your audience. The various channels have different demographics, so maybe it made sense for you to use Instagram and Facebook. 

But then TikTok arrived, and your target client uses it. So you adjust your marketing to include TikTok. Or maybe you were entirely text-based in your marketing, and then you saw all the studies that showed the impact of video. So you start shooting some videos for your marketing. 

You keep measuring your performance to make sure you’re achieving your goals. But at least you have the data to know whether you need to make a change or if everything’s working out the way you want.

Science helps you stop wasting time for a more productive day

Granted, I’m a business owner with an undergrad degree in physics and a nerdy interest in neuroscience, so of course I’d say this. But when you have the facts (which you can gather using the scientific method), you get to make good decisions. 

It’s true that emotions guide your decisions, and sometimes your gut will tell you to avoid something, or that little voice in the back of your head is warning you not to do something. I do believe these signals are worth listening to, even though they may not exactly be “facts”. 

Because the facts might lead you to say, Well, I should be on Pinterest. But you’re a solopreneur who’s a word person who hates designing graphics and spending your days on Canva would be absolute torture. You as the business owner need to love what you spend a lot of time doing, so even though your target audience might be on Pinterest, you should be elsewhere.

But you can measure what you’re doing on the other platform to make sure it’s working, or spend less time on social media and more time doing things in person (if the data leads you that way.)

But at least you don’t have to waste time listening to one guru who says you should get up at 4 am and another who says you should get up at 5. When your body needs you to wake up at 7 so you can be rested and improve your productivity in the workplace.

Recap

Women and girls who study science may go on to be business owners who use science in their operations if they don’t want to be scientists themselves. Science not only doesn’t have to be hard or boring, but it can actually help you make smarter decisions and waste less time.